Fort Madison

Town and co-administrative headquarters with Keokuk of Lee County, southeast Iowa; population (1990) 11,600. It is situated on the Mississippi River, across from Niota, Illinois, and 23 km/14 mi southwest of Burlington. The headquarters of the Sheaffer Pen Company are in the town, which creates almost 500 jobs; other local industries include paper, fertilizer, cement, paints, industrial brushes, meat canning, and corrugated board and containers. There are also railway work shops and petrochemical plants.

The first fort west of the Mississippi River stood here from 1808-13, when the American Indian leader Black Hawk destroyed it. The fort was reconstructed on a different site in 1983. The modern city dates from 1833; it soon became an important river port and commercial centre. The first Iowa State Penitentiary was built here in 1839. The Santa Fe Railroad made the city a division point in 1879, and the railway depot of 1910-30 is on the national register of historic places. Fort Madison is one of two county seats in Lee County (the other is at Keokuk). The courthouse dates from 1842, and is the oldest such structure still in use west of the Mississippi River, but is actually a reconstruction of the original after a fire in 1911. The 1927 swingspan Santa Fe bridge is the largest double-decker swingspan bridge in the world.