This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
Now and then I make a mistake. Here's one example.
About 20 years ago, I wrote a short piece about the small river town of LeClaire, Iowa. I thought the title was especially clever: "The Town That Couldn't Turn Itself Around." I was referring to the fact that when LeClaire was founded in 1836, it was built facing a busy Mississippi River. Located at the head of the treacherous Rock Island Rapids. It grew in importance as the home of some 50 rapids pilots who were hired by steamboats to take them across the rapids. Soon it could boast of its Van Sant Boatyard, "best on the river." It gave the river many legendary steamboat captains and became the winter home of several hundred steamboat and raft crews. Every river man knew LeClaire.
You can still see some of LeClaire's original glory if you cross the river to Port Byron and look back. Many of the original storefronts still remain, ready for a Hollywood movie. By 1900, steamboats and the rafts of white pine had all but ended. LeClaire began a rapid decline. By the middle of the 20th century, driving through LeClaire on Highway 67 was like driving through a back alley, which of course, it had been. The buildings with their magnificent storefronts facing the river could not turn around.
So, I wrote LeClaire off, and that was my mistake. I had forgotten about the citizens of the town. I had forgotten that turning around has always been a human specialty. Turning around, starting over is what brought most of our ancestors to America and sent them further and further west to remake their lives. We have the same restless dreams today.
And that is what happened to LeClaire a couple of decades ago: an abandoned building turned into an antique store here, an art shop there, upscale restaurants opened as imagination soared. Soon there was a born again LeClaire; the back alley became Main Street.
LeClaire has learned its lesson. It has not forgotten the river that created it. Tourist buses now make regular stops, both to shop for antiques and gifts, but also to visit the Buffalo Bill Museum in a repurposed steamboat by the river. LeClaire is no longer one sided. I can't promise that I will stop making mistakes; I'm not nearly as good at turning around as the people of LeClaire, Iowa.
Rock Island Lines is underwritten by the Illinois Humanities Council and Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, with additional funding from Humanities Iowa, the Iowa Arts Council, and Augustana College, Rock Island.
