Museum showcases Mississippi River life

DUBUQUE, Iowa -- It's the nation's most famous river, slicing the continent in half as it runs through 10 states from Minnesota to Louisiana, serving as a commercial thoroughfare, a wildlife refuge, a source of drinking water for millions, and a watershed for 40 percent of the country.

And now, with the recent opening of a museum and aquarium in Dubuque, the Mississippi River has a world-class showcase for its history, ecology and lore.

"Dubuque has had a great reverence for the story of the Mississippi," said Jerry Enzler, executive director of the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium. "We want to tell the great story for the whole Mississippi River."

The museum, which opened June 28, has riverboat exhibits, a theater and library, a boardwalk trail through a wetland, and plenty of live creatures, including fish, turtles, alligators, snakes and otters.

Long-nosed gar -- tube-shaped fish with rod-like noses -- share a floor-to-ceiling aquarium with sturgeon, blue catfish and snapping turtles, darting around rock ledges and sunken tree limbs as visitors walk by. "We can show people under the surface for the first time," Enzler said.

The museum also offers a riverboat launching, every two hours, into The Port of Dubuque Ice Harbor; towboat tours; a floating dock; and an outdoor trail where visitors can weave cattails, help cut logs for a log cabin to be built on the site, or listen as park officers tell stories of American Indians, fur traders, fishers, clammers and early pioneers.

Major attractions

In addition, there are hands-on exhibits where people can touch animals; stream tables that demonstrate river flooding, and a theater with seats that shake to give visitors a realistic experience as they take a film tour of the river channel.

Another major attraction is a 1934 steamboat, the Willie M. Black. A National Landmark vessel, the boat is nearly the size of a football field. It was a working dredge boat on the Missouri River before retirement. Visitors can walk the decks and tour the engine room and pilothouse. A stateroom and the galley are made available to those who want to spend the night and experience life on a working steamboat.

Stretching for five acres along the riverfront, the museum is part of a larger $188 million America's River project, which also includes a conference center, resort and river walk.

The Mississippi River is 2,552 miles long from its headwaters in northern Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana, passing through Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi along the way. It is both a major commercial and natural resource, transporting 470 million tons of cargo a year while serving as a migratory flyway for up to 40 percent of North American ducks, goose, swans and eagle populations. Its watershed covers more than a million square miles, draining parts of 32 states and two Canadian provinces, Ontario and Manitoba.

The idea for a river museum began as a modest local project. A group of Dubuque residents began planning a riverboat museum when the Dubuque Boat and Boiler Works shut down in 1975. A small museum opened in 1980. Over the years, funding from private, corporate and government sources grew to $57 million, enabling the construction of the new museum. The original museum remains part of the new complex, with boat-building demonstrations among its exhibits.

The new museum also incorporates another older institution, the 20-year-old National Rivers Hall of Fame, with exhibits on explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.