Leonland - Leon Barnard
Chapter 4 > Maquoketa, IA
I always go places for work where the land is cheap. This time I ended up in Maquoketa, Iowa, about half-way between Dubuque and Davenport. Pretty much in the middle of the middle of nowhere. It was very quaint though and it really grew on me. I kind of missed it after I left.
My hotel room. Much homier than a Holiday Inn. All the rooms were decorated differently.
My hotel, the Decker House, a very friendly, family-run place with a nice restaurant inside. The kind of place where the people know you by name and vice-versa.
A typical scene, a tractor driving down Main Street.
The other end of Main Street on a dreary March morning.
The barren Midwest in winter.
A partial view of the parking lot of the building I was working at.
Posted by Leon on March 30, 2002 11:05 PM [Top of page]
Comments
oo this is cool, I work in the restaurant at the Decker Hotel, and was trying to find some pictures of it, and came across your website. I'm a sophmore in highschool by the way. I enjoyed reading the part about how Maquoketa is in the middle, of the middle of nowhere. haha, I say that all the time. I'm just wondering why you came to Maquoketa, of all places. I see from your other stories, that you were going to places like New York and other big cities, so it must have been a really big difference for you. Well I enjoyed browsing through your website, it's pretty cool that you kept track of all of that and made a website of it.
Posted by Nikko Francois on November 23, 2006 07:36 PM
Thanks for your post. At the time, I was living in NYC, but working for a company that provided products for distribution centers, which are usually located in small towns. I was in Maquoketa to install our products at the Family Dollar distribution center.
Posted by Leon on November 27, 2006 11:57 AM
Please post more photos of houses..i use to live there and i really miss it....
Posted by Marcy Jo Delarm on July 23, 2007 06:48 PM
Hi there-what a shame that you didn't look at more of the town of Maquoketa-don't know if you visited the Old City Hall Gallery at 121 S.Olive St.-a block from Main-artist Rose Frantzen from Maquoketa and the art gallery will have her work shown in the Portrait gallery at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. Nov. 6th 2009-July 1, 2010. The 180 12x12 oil portraits of the town people will be shown as one huge painting called "Portrait of Maquoketa". A book is being written and also videos plus music written by her composer brother will be featured. The gallery has been open since 1991 and has patrons from all over the world. Top rated artists have been coming into the comunity for workshops with Rose at a old church she purchased with her husband. They fly in from all over the country. Love the quietness-the safety and the friendliness of our town. Rose and her husband also lived in Staten Island for 5 years part time-and know NY quite well. They love to go there also. They also love the midwest. There is room for 2 worlds. A great place to stay besides the Decker is Squiers Manor B&B-we also have 30 some Historic Register buildings in our community-the fire just destroyed one of them. Hurstville Interpretive Center and Ohnward Fine Arts Center has devloped also into top notch tourist attractions-My husband and I were not raised here but came when we were married and raised our children here-but like you they are in far away places-Germany, Czech Republic, Maine, Los Angles, and Chicago-so we do travel quite a bit-but they came out of this small town and love to bring their children back here to see where they were raised.
Posted by Ellen Frantzen on April 17, 2009 12:42 PM