- Historic Sites Cities Of The Middle Border Some became great,
others stayed as they were-- and their story tells of the rise
of the Midwest December 1956 | Volume 8, Issue 1 The decline of
river traffic, which hurt Galena badly, affected Dubuque not at
all. Railroads, fanning out beyond the Mississippi, needed ties
and telegraph poles. Huge rafts of logs floated down from
Wisconsin and Minnesota, and Dubuque’s sawmills did the rest.
Thus the Iowa city found new industries to sustain its growth
while Galena wilted for the lack of anything to replace its lead
mines. But Dubuque differed from Galena only in degree. As other
cities grew along the Mississippi and in the interior of
Iowa—Davenport, Burlington, Waterloo, Des Moines—Dubuque’s
importance as a trading center declined. And finally the lumber
trade played out. A residue of furniture factories and a still
sizeable commercial area kept the city from losing population.
It has, in fact, grown, but far less rapidly than the United
States as a whole, and les