Moline

	Moline

Moline, Illinois
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Moline (City of Mills )

Moline has always thrived and continues to thrive as a manufacturing base.At one time it was a major manufacturing town in the United States. However, the modern Moline has also become a regional and national destination for tourists, new businesses and is a model for progressive urban planning.

The population is now 43,000 people, bounded on the north and south by the Mississippi and Rocker Rivers and located between the cities of Rock Island and East Moline, is a central and thriving part of the Quad City metropolitan area.

In 1836, when David Sears Jr.arrived, the spot that was to become Moline had only three permanent buildings. Sears built a dam and several mills, driven by the power of the rolling rapids that was the Mississippi River at the time. As the mills prospered, more settlers arrived and in 1843 a town was platted by Sears and six other men. The men decided to name the town Moline, an adaptation of French meaning ' Mill Town' or 'City of Mills'. In 1848, Moline was officially incorporated. That same year, a young entrepreneur named John Deere moved to Moline to take advantage of the water power and access to transportation hubs. His factories eventually grew into a multi-national corporation and forever shaped the workforce and culture of the city, as well as influenced the wider world of agriculture in a tremendous way.

In 1854, the first railroad arrived, and in 1856, the first bridge was built across the Mississippi. Although the bridge crossed in Rock Island, Moline's leaders persuaded the rail company to run the tracks through Moline rather than straight up the Rock River valley, ensuring the benefit to the industry of the city.

Immigrants followed the railroad and employment opportunities with Deere and Company and other manufacturing enters in the city. The largest influxes at the time were Swedes, Belgians, and Germans. In the years leading to the Civil War, Moline was known as a bastion for abolitionists. Several homes in the area were official safe havens on the Underground Railroad.

The post Civil War years saw industry continue to boom in the area, and in 1881, Deere and Company switched on the first 16 electric lights in its shops. Through the 1880s and 90s, immigrants continued to pour into Moline, especially those from Belgium. Around the turn of the century, Moline had the largest Belgian community in the entire United States. By 1900, the city had 22,000 residents and was the center of agriculture and machine manufacturing in the United States.

John Deere
Moline, Illinois had everything a budding industrialist like John Deere could ask for when he built his plow factory here in 1848 - steamboats to bring in steel and other raw materials, roads tracing old Indian trails, and waterwheel driven power thanks to the Mississippi River. Plus, as a community of hard-working pioneer families, it offered a ready source of labor.

John Deere was born on February 7, 1804, in Vermont, where he learned the blacksmith trade. In the 1830's, he listened to the tales of great opportunity to the west - a place where a man could succeed on his own, a place with prairie untouched by the plow. Deere, with a few tools and very little money, struck out on his own, promising his wife, Demarius, and their children that he would return to them after he made a good start. It didn't take long. Grand Detour in Illinois was in need of a blacksmith and John Deere was just the man they needed.

Shortly after arriving in Grand Detour, John Deere learned that the commonly used cast-iron plows of the day performed poorly in the sticky soil of the Midwest. Soil clung to the plow bottoms and had to be removed by hand.

Convinced that a plow with a highly polished surface should clean, or scour itself as it moved through the field, John Deere fashioned just such an implement in 1837, using steel from a broken saw blade. Legend has it that hundreds of people gathered at the farm of Lewis Crandall, near Grand Detour, for the successful debut. A published account noted the plow would "cleave without carrying the rich alluvial earth." Soon manufacturing plows became the main focus of John Deere's business.

In 1848, John Deere moved his operation 70 miles south, to Moline, to take advantage of the waterpower and transportation offered by the Mississippi River. The river proved instrumental in bringing raw materials such as steel to the factory and for moving finished plows to market.

In 1885 the Assessor reported the following items : Improved land, 132 acres; unimproved land, 563 acres; total value, $17,765. Improved lots, 1,150; unimproved, 281; total value, $931,370. Of horses there were 426; cattle, 197; mules and asses, 80; hogs, 5 ; steam engines, 28; fire and burglar proof safes, 54; billiard tables, 31; carriages and wagons, 419; watches and clocks, 321 ; sewing and knitting machines, 748; pianos, 117 ; melodeons and organs, 136; total value of personal property, $469,130.

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