Little Known Secrets in the Quad Cities You Can Discover Now

The Quad Cities still has some secrets up its sleeve.  Plan some time to discover the stories just waiting to be told and experienced of these unusual artifacts and locations in our family of communities on the world-renowned Mississippi River.  In fact, see if you can figure out the river connection with each of these little-known elements.

How often do you see John Deere (1804-1886) dressed like a Roman Emperor?  At the Deere-Wiman House in Moline, a bust depicts John in a fashion typical of sculpture in the 1880s.  Artists often portrayed famous men to look like famous men of the past.  We wonder what John Deere thought of the completed artwork.

As our young nation grew during the 1800s, surveying the land to divide into states was a daunting task. Before admitted as a state in 1818, Illinois was part of a much larger U.S. territory whose borders fluctuated due to various treaties and agreements at the federal level.  In 1821, surveyors Flack and Bean created a north/south boundary that ran directly through the Deere-Wiman House property, establishing land ownership to the north as Wisconsin and to the south as Illinois. Although that border line was eventually altered giving Illinois more land, you can still see the line marker and monument on the Deere-Wiman lawn. And in 1821, if you had planted one foot to its north and one foot to its south, you would have been standing in two states at the same time.

The Bix Beiderbecke Museum in Davenport has a special Mandolin owned by guitarist Eddie Condon (1905-1973).  If you look closely, you’ll see the back of the instrument has a padlocked compartment.  Why?  The compartment would have rendered the instrument almost unusable since it alters the acoustics of the instrument.  It has been surmised that Condon most likely never played the instrument regularly, but rather he used it to hide liquor inside the Mandolin since Prohibition was still in effect. 

The notorious lawyer-turned-gangster John Looney’s huge mansion in Rock Island still stands to this day on 20th Street.  The book “Road to Perdition” and the movie of the same name starring Tom Hanks are based on John Looney’s life.

The downtown Davenport Skybridge has kaleidoscope lighting you can see at night.

The Drake Hotel in Chicago or Paramount Theatre in NYC may have the big names, but the Adler Theatre in Davenport was beautifully designed by the same talented architect, A.S. Graven.  The theatre (formerly RKO Orpheum) hosts both the Quad City Symphony Orchestra and Ballet Quad Cities, and it showcases Broadway-touring plays and concerts throughout the year.  The marquee was redone in 2019 to look like the original.

The Quad Cities’ Lock and Dam No. 15 is the largest roller dam in existence.  Tours will have to wait, but you can take a virtual tour.  You can also watch the lock and dam at work from the riverbank in downtown Davenport.

Modern Woodmen Park, named by “USA Today” as the top minor league ballpark in the country, features a zip line, rock climbing wall, bounce house, carousel, and a 110-foot Ferris wheel.  Games started playing at this stadium on the Mississippi River in downtown Davenport in 1931.  Now it is home to the Houston Astros affiliated Quad Cities River Bandits.

The FBI helped return the Tiffany Glass Window—now on display at the Figge Art Museum—to the Denkmann family 20 years after it had disappeared from their mausoleum in Rock Island’s historic Chippiannock Cemetery.  The valuable Tiffany window was made in 1905 and is now part of the Figge’s permanent collection.

The canoe, hollowed out from a tree and used by the Sauk tribe, at John Hauberg Indian Museum in Rock Island was discovered underwater and in the river mud.  It is one of only a few preserved wooden canoes still left.

At the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum in Rock Island, they have Brigham Young's bill from the Singer Sewing Machine Company in 1873.  The bill for needles, thread, cotton, etc. for only 11 of his wives totaled $372.80!  That's possibly the cost of a house in 1873.  Considering that he had a total of 55 wives, the bill could have been almost $2,000 just for sewing things.
Editor's Note: The Karpeles Manuscript Library and Museum permanently closed in 2023 

How is there an Egyptian mummy in Iowa?  The Putnam Museum’s iconic female mummy is believed to have died more than 600 years after the coffin was created.  The sarcophagus, or coffin, on display at the museum in Davenport does belongs to Isis Neferit.  It has her name written all over it in hieroglyphics.