Marquette, IA

Marquette is a city in Clayton County, Iowa, on the Mississippi River directly across from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. The 2020 census counted 429 people. The city was first known as North McGregor, incorporated in 1874, and renamed Marquette in 1920 after Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette, who with Louis Joliet reached the Mississippi just southeast of town in 1673. Railroad history followed: by 1920 Marquette had Iowa's largest railroad terminus, with a yard employing more than 400 people.

ATTRHenry Peter Bosse / Public domain

The river still sets the terms of local life. A railroad pontoon bridge built in 1874 once crossed toward Wisconsin, and the Marquette-Joliet Bridge now carries U.S. Route 18 over the river. Floods in 1916 and 1965 destroyed homes and businesses; in 1965 the river surrounded the town, and the Corps of Engineers brought an Army Duck to help with transportation. Effigy Mounds National Monument and Yellow River State Forest are a few miles north, and Marquette is part of the MFL MarMac Community School District. The local scoop is a Mississippi River town where a major rail yard, a bridge, and floodwater all belong to the same local map.