This week in Fort Madison
About Fort Madison
Fort Madison grew up on the ruins of the first permanent U.S. Army post on the upper Mississippi, a stockade raised in 1808 that soldiers burned and slipped away from in 1813 after months of siege during the War of 1812. Settlers arrived in the early 1830s, the Knapp cousins platted a town beside the old chimneys in 1835, and the place took the fort's name. Railroads and the river built it from there: the Santa Fe made it a crossing point, and in 1907 Walter A. Sheaffer started a pen company here, after inventing a lever-filling fountain pen in the back of his jewelry store, that would make millions of pens. Families still walk the late-1800s storefronts along Avenue G, tour the museums at the old Santa Fe depot, and watch the 1927 double-decker swing bridge pivot open for barges, trains rolling below and cars above. A rebuilt log fort stands in Riverview Park, and every year the lighted floats of the Parade of Lights stay on display along the river through New Year's.