Muscatine, Iowa For Sale By Owner - Local Information
Muscatine is a city in Muscatine County, Iowa, United States. The population was 22,697 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Muscatine County. The name Muscatine is unique in that it is not used by any other city in the United States.
Muscatine is the principal city of the Muscatine Micropolitan Statistical Area (2000 census population 53,905), which includes all of Muscatine and Louisa counties.
Additional information about Muscatine, Iowa
Muscatine began as a trading post founded by representatives of Colonel George Davenport in 1833. Muscatine was originally called Bloomington when incorporated in 1839, but was changed to reduce mail delivery confusion as there were already too many Bloomingtons in the Midwest. Before that, Muscatine had also been known as "Casey's Woodpile". The name "Muscatine" is believed by some to be named after the Mascouten native American tribe. This seems somewhat unlikely, however, since the tribe existed almost exclusively in what is now Michigan and Wisconsin, and was lost to history almost a hundred years before the renaming of the town. More probable is that the town name was taken from the surname "Muscatine."
A button company was founded in 1884 by a German immigrant named J.F. Boepple, producing buttons by punching them out of clam shells harvested from the Mississippi River. Muscatine was known as the "Pearl Button Capital of the World." Hole-punched clam shells can still be found along the riverfront.
From the 1840s to the Civil War, Muscatine had Iowa's largest black community, consisting of fugitive slaves from the South and free blacks who had migrated from the eastern states. One of the most prominent community leaders was Alexander Clark Sr., a Pennsylvania native, barber and eventually a wealthy timber salesman and real estate speculator who helped found the local AME Church, assisted fugitive slaves, and petitioned the state government to overturn racist laws before the war. In 1863, Clark helped organize Iowa's black regiment, the 60th United States Colored Infantry (originally known as the 1st Iowa Infantry, African Descent), though an injury prevented him from serving. In 1868, he successfully desegregated Iowa's public schools by suing the Muscatine school board after his daughter Susan was turned away from her neighborhood learning center. Eleven years later his son Alexander Jr. became the first black graduate of the University of Iowa College of Law, and in fact its first black graduate from any department. Clark Sr. became the second black graduate five years later despite being fifty-eight years old, saying that he wanted to serve “as an example to young men of his own race.” Clark also rose to prominence in the Republican Party, serving as a delegate to various state and national conventions. In 1890, he was appointed ambassador to Liberia by President Benjamin Harrison. In fact he was one of four Muscatine residents to serve as a diplomatic envoy between 1855 and 1900, a remarkable feat for a town of such small size: George Van Horne was consul at Marseilles, France during the 1860s; Samuel McNutt served at Maracaibo, Venezuela in 1890; and Frank W. Mahin represented his country in Reichenberg, Austria in 1900. Less than a year after arriving in West Africa, however, Clark died of fever. He was laid to rest in Muscatine's Greenwood Cemetery. In 1975 a low-income apartment complex for senior citizens was built on the site of his long-time home and named the Alexander Clark House. The actual home in which he lived towards the end of his life was lifted from its foundation and moved to a new site about two hundred feet away. The University of Iowa's chapter of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) is named for the Clarks as a testament to their accomplishments and their place in the history of civil rights in Iowa.
Sam Clemens (better known by his pen-name Mark Twain) worked for a while at the local newspaper, the Muscatine Journal, which was partly owned by his brother, Orion Clemens. He made a few recollections of Muscatine in his book
Life on the Mississippi.
"And I remember Muscatine—still more pleasantly—for its summer sunsets. I have never seen any, on either side of the ocean, that equaled them. They used the broad smooth river as a canvas, and painted on it every imaginable dream of color, from the mottled daintinesses and delicacies of the opal, all the way up, through cumulative intensities, to blinding purple and crimson conflagrations which were enchanting to the eye, but sharply tried it at the same time. All the Upper Mississippi region has these extraordinary sunsets as a familiar spectacle. It is the true Sunset Land: I am sure no other country can show so good a right to the name. The sunrises are also said to be exceedingly fine. I do not know." -Mark Twain
His other, less flattering recollection of Muscatine is of being accosted by a lunatic who threatened to kill him if he did not proclaim the man the one and only son of Satan.
Muscatine's slogan is: "Pearl of the Mississippi." The term refers to the prior days when pearl button manufacturing by the McKee Button Company was a significant economic contributor. In 1915, Weber & Sons Button Co., Inc. was the world's largest producer of fancy freshwater pearl buttons. From that time forward, Muscatine was known as "The Pearl Button Capital of the World". Weber is still manufacturing today, and celebrated its 100-year anniversary in 2004. Next to the mother of pearl button history, Muscatine is nearly as well known as the "Watermelon Capital of the World".
Muscatine was hit by an
EF3 (Enhanced Fujita Scale 3) tornado on the afternoon of June 1, 2007, which destroyed or damaged wide areas of the city.
