ICE HARBOR

Boat building to skating kept the ice harbor a busy place all year.

ICE HARBOR. Winter refuge for boats and important site of manufacturing. Early commercial development of Dubuque was hampered by physical barriers to STEAMBOATS. The western bank of the MISSISSIPPI RIVER was a maze of peninsulas, sloughs, and bayous. Physical obstacles to transportation in the channel included many islands. The landing was also a considerable distance from the business district of the early 1800s.

Plans for solving the problem began early in the history of Dubuque. As early as 1836 a proposal was made to cut a canal approximately one-third mile long to link the riverbank with a steamboat landing on the inner slough. This plan called for a channel that would allow boats into the business section of town. It would also form a channel through Lake Peosta that would drain both the inner and lower sloughs. Despite a public meeting and the offering of a number of suggestions, nothing was done.

Acting under authority of the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature, a board of trustees was organized in 1837. The first ordinance passed by the trustees called for the removal of obstructions from the slough to make it navigable. A committee carried out this order to the best of its ability.

The St. Louis to Dubuque steamboat commerce continued to expand. While in 1835 only ten steamboats were operating between the two cities, by 1838 twenty-two were part of the commercial link. Newspaper editorials called for action that would enable steamboats to use all or a great part of the two-mile long riverfront at Dubuque.

In 1852 a group of Dubuque businessmen were granted the right to dig a ship canal through an island that existed at the foot of Second Street. This ambitious project was named the "Waples Cut" after Peter WAPLES.

Development of RAILROADS to the eastern shore of the Mississippi also assisted Dubuque in its riverfront improvement. In 1853 a dredge boat named the "George W. Jones" was constructed with monies provided by the Western Rivers Improvement Act of 1852. The project's intent, using the dredge, was to establish a navigable channel across the river from the terminus of the Illinois Central Railroad.

Two years after the right to construct the canal had been granted, the project was still not completed. Hundreds of steamboat landings in Dubuque were now recorded annually. Increasing the need to improve the riverfront was the extension of Dubuque STREETS to the river's edge. This was accomplished between 1855 and 1857 by the Dubuque Harbor Company, Dubuque Harbor Improvement Company, and the Central Improvement Company that filled in sloughs.

Supplies were purchased with “currency” issued by the construction companies.Confidence in the “currency” came from the names of important Dubuque residents who were stockholders in the company.

In 1857 Dubuque recorded one thousand steamboat landings. One year later, Congress designated Dubuque a "Port of Entry." By the end of the 1850s, Jones, Third and Seventh Streets reached the river. Waples Cut was evolving into a protective harbor in which barges and other river craft escaped the ravages of winter and crushing ice floes in the spring.

Beginning in 1880 Congressional financing was sought to develop a winter harbor at Dubuque for riverboats. Various sites were studied by the United States Army Corps of Engineers before it proposed widening and dredging Waples Cut. The plan was to create a harbor with a depth of six feet below the low water level and sufficiently large to accommodate fifty barges and twenty steamboats.

In 1882 Congress appropriated $20,000, and land was purchased from Caleb H BOOTH and Henry L. STOUT. Two dredges began work in the spring of 1883. The future harbor received an additional Congressional appropriation of $20,000 in 1884. By 1885 most of the work had been accomplished.

In 1944 Congress appropriated $7,500-the first federal harbor improvement funding on the upper Mississippi-to deepen the harbor to allow it to accommodate the newer class steamer.

In addition to a safe haven for ships, the Ice Harbor developed into a prime shipbuilding site on the upper Mississippi. The IOWA IRON WORKS and later the DUBUQUE BOAT AND BOILER WORKS built vessels along the harbor's north side.

Winter meant the use of the area for community ice-skating. A circular wooden fence surrounded the skating area on the western half of the harbor. ICE was harvested outside the harbor and north along the Iowa side of the river.

Flood gates, constructed in 1973 to protect the flatlands nearby, now partially block the harbor's mouth and are closed when the river's level reaches sixteen-feet. In 1990 the NATIONAL RIVERS HALL OF FAME and the WOODWARD RIVER BOAT MUSEUM utilized the harbor with their popular floating museum, the WILLIAM M. BLACK. (Photo Courtesy: http://www.dubuquepostcards.com)