Building iron rails to their future: Examination of Davenport, Iowa\u27s antebellum relationship with the Rock Island Line and Mississippi and Missouri railroads

Typically, railroad studies of communities in the antebellum fall into one of two broad categories. Either a town was a well-established market center that constructed a railroad to increase its reach, or a frontier community largely established and ran at the railroad\u27s discretion. Largely overlooked, however, has been the contribution of a unique subset of Midwestern towns and cities, such as Davenport, Iowa. Utilizing governmental documents, internal railroad documents, and local newspaper, this thesis examines the planning, politics, construction, and eventual shift in relationship of the city into a more regional and national context. This reveals Davenport\u27s entanglement and oversized influence in railroad, land grant, and financial issues at a broad level, while navigating increasingly complex relationships with other communities in Iowa, sectionalism in Congress, and the railroads themselves