Descriptions of places that no longer exist.
In the 1830s, two towns sprang to life on the Iowa bank of the Mississippi River. The village of Rockingham was settled in 1835 across from the mouth of the Rock River. The village seemed ideally located—except for the inconvenient fact that flooding turned the town into an island every year. In spite of its
Lowell was a small village on Van Druff Island, platted in 1841, that was never more than a few cabins, including the one occupied by Joshua Vandruff, who operated a ferry. Lowell became part of Searstown when David B. Sears purchased the island; the former village site is now part of Rock Island. © Dean Klinkenberg, 2009
David Sears was one of the founders of Moline. In 1838 he built a dam between Arsenal Island and the Moline mainland (across Sylvan Slough) and opened a mill. He eventually became a major landowner on Arsenal Island, at least until the federal government purchased his holdings in 1865. Sears used the money buy land south of