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Introduction
Almost halfway between Chicago, Illinois and Des Moines, Iowa in the Mississippi
River is an island known today as Arsenal Island because of the presence of the Rock Island
Arsenal on it. The island itself is the largest island in the Mississippi River. Before it
became known as Arsenal Island it was called Rock Island.
In 1898, historian, B. F. Tillinghast in his book, Rock Island Arsenal: In Peace And In War, described the island as follows,
Present day acreage amounts to 945.55 acres.From Chicago, distance by rail is 181 miles; from the Missouri River at Council Bluffs, 316 miles. By river it is 332 miles north of St. Louis and 397 miles south of St. Paul. The Island is about two and three-fourths miles long, and varies in width from one-fourth to three-fourths of a mile. It contains, above low water mark, 970 acres. Lengthwise the Island lies nearly east and west and the course of the Mississippi by the Island is generally about eleven degrees south of west. The highest ground on the island is the part where the great shops are located, and this rises from 17 to 23 feet above the highest high water; the rest of the high ground is generally from 14 to 20 feet above a high stage of the river. (37)
Arsenal Island lies at approximately 41 degrees 28 minutes 28 seconds North latitude by 90 degrees 34 minutes 49 seconds west longitude puts French explorer, Pere Marquette, in the general vicinity of the island. Pere Marquette’s journal entry of his exploration of the Mississippi River in June of 1673 is at latitude 41 degrees 28’. The journal entry reads, “we find that turkeys have taken the place of game, and the pisikious, or wild cattle, that of other beasts” (Austin 25). What Marquette called ‘pisikious’ are the buffalo. His latitudinal readings are accurate for the time he explored but he never provided a longitudinal reading to pinpoint exact locations because the technology for accurately determining longitude wasn’t available. So, knowing exactly where he was at when he made the above journal entry is a guesstimate. Black Hawk spoke of Rock Island in his autobiography. He said,
... this was the best island on the Mississippi and had long been the resort of our young people during the summer. It was our garden which supplied us with strawberries, blackberries, gooseberries, plums, apples and nuts of various kinds; and its waters supplied us with pure fish, being situated in the rapids of the river (Nichols 41).
In a letter dated March 30, 1877 to Secretary of War, George W. McCrary, Brigadier General S. V. Benet wrote,
This arsenal will be the grand ordnance manufacturing establishment in the Mississippi Valley, erected at great expense to the United States, and with a larger capacity, when completed, than any other arsenal within our borders (Tillinghast 3)
These words rang true then and now as the Rock Island Arsenal is the largest weapons manufacturing complex in the free world. It is a state of the art computerized machining and manufacturing complex. (USACE I-1)
At some point prior to the publication of Mark Twain’s Life On the Mississippi, he must have passed the island on an upriver boat trip for he wrote ...
The charming island of Rock Island, three miles long and a half a mile wide, belongs to the United States, and the government has turned it into a wonderful park, enhancing its natural attractions by art, and threading its fine forests with many miles of drives. Near the center of the island one catches glimpses, through the trees, of the vast stone four-story buildings, each of which covers an acre of ground. These are the government workshops; for the Rock Island establishment is a national armory and arsenal. (Slattery 116)
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13 April 2000