Keokuk, Iowa

City: Keokuk

County: Lee

State: Iowa

Lat/Long: 40.3833, -91.3833

The city of Keokuk is located in southeastern Iowa on the Mississippi River. The earliest white settler to build a home in what is now Keokuk did so in 1820. Isaac Galland, an agent of the New York Land Company, platted the city in 1837, and the plat was recorded three years later. In 1841 Keokuk received its first appointed postmaster, and the city was incorporated in 1847. The following year the Iowa General Assembly split the district court functions of Lee County between Keokuk and the existing county seat of Fort Madison, making both cities, in effect, the county seat. The city took its name from Sauk leader Keokuk. The Sauk and Fox peoples called the location where the city now stands Puck-e-she-tuck.

Merriam-Webster’s Geographical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1997), 585; Nelson C. Roberts and S. W. Moorhead, eds., Story of Lee County Iowa (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1914), 1:135-40, 147; Tom Savage, A Dictionary of Iowa Place-Names(Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2007), 121; “An Act Fixing the Times and Places of Holding the District Courts in the First Judicial District,” 24 January 1848, Laws of Iowa (1848), 51-52.