1.
Davenport, Iowa
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Davenport was founded on May 14,1836 by Antoine Le Claire and was named for his friend, George Davenport, a colonel during the Black Hawk War stationed at nearby Fort Armstrong. According to the 2010 census, the city had a population of 99,685, located approximately halfway between Chicago and Des Moines, Davenport is on the border of Iowa and Illinois. The city is prone to frequent flooding due to its location on the Mississippi River, there are two main universities, Saint Ambrose University and Palmer College of Chiropractic, which is where the first chiropractic adjustment took place. Several annual music festivals take place in Davenport, including the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival, The Mississippi Valley Fair, an internationally known 7-mile foot race called the Bix 7 is run during the festival. The city has a Class A minor league team, the Quad Cities River Bandits. Davenport has 50 plus parks and facilities, as well as over 20 miles of paths for biking or walking. Four interstates and two major United States Highways serve the city, Davenport has seen steady population growth since its incorporation, with an exception being the 1980s, when the population decreased due to job loss. The Quad Cities was ranked as the most affordable metropolitan area in 2010 by Forbes, in 2007, Davenport, along with neighboring Rock Island, won the City Livability Award in the small-city category from the U. S. In 2012, Davenport as well as the Quad Cities Metropolitan Area was ranked among the areas in the nation in the growth of high-tech jobs. The current mayor of Davenport is Frank Klipsch, the land was originally owned by the Sauk people, Meskwaki, and Ho-Chunk – indigenous peoples of the Americas. In 1803 France sold it to the United States under the Louisiana Purchase, lieutenant Zebulon Pike was the first United States representative to officially visit the Upper Mississippi River area. On August 27,1805, Pike camped on the present day site of Davenport, in 1832, a group of Sauk, Meskwaki, and Kickapoo people were defeated by the United States in the Black Hawk War. The United States government then concluded the Black Hawk Purchase, sometimes called the Forty-Mile Strip or Scotts Purchase, the purchase was made for $640,000 on September 21,1832 and contained an area of some 6 million acres, at a price equivalent to 11 cents/acre. Although named after the defeated chief Black Hawk, he was being held prisoner at the time, the purchase was therefore agreed to by Sauk chief Keokuk, who had remained neutral in the war. It was made on the site of present-day Davenport, army General Winfield Scott and Governor of Illinois, John Reynolds, acted on behalf of the United States, with the future Davenport founder, half-Native, Antoine Le Claire serving as translator. Chief Keokuk gave a portion of land to Antoine Le Claires wife, Marguerite. Antoine built their home on the spot where the agreement was signed. Antoine did so, finishing the Treaty House in the spring of 1833, Davenport was established on May 14,1836 by Le Claire, and named after his friend Colonel George Davenport, who was stationed at Fort Armstrong during the war
2.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
4.
Duck Creek Parkway
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Duck Creek Parkway is located in the cities of Davenport and Bettendorf in the U. S. state of Iowa. The parkway is 13.5 miles long and passes through multiple parks as it makes its way along Duck Creek, the parkway is the oldest recreational trail in the Quad Cities and has its roots in the 1930s when the first section was built as a park road. The present design for the parkway and the bike path date from the 1970s, in Bettendorf it travels through Middle Park, Veterans Memorial Park and Devils Glen Park before it comes to an end. The parkway stretches 8.36 miles in Davenport and 5.14 miles in Bettendorf, there are plans to connect the parkway and recreational trail with the Riverfront Parkway and Sunderbruch Park
5.
PGA Tour
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The PGA Tour is the organizer of the main professional golf tours played primarily by men in the United States and North America. It is headquartered in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, a suburb of Jacksonville, the remaining events on the PGA Tour are run by different organizations, as are the U. S. -based LPGA Tour for women and the other mens and womens professional tours around the world. The tour began 88 years ago in 1929 and at times the tournament players had attempted to operate independently from the club professionals. With an increase of revenue in the late 1960s due to expanded television coverage, the tour players wanted larger purses, where the PGA desired the money to go to the general fund to help grow the game at the local level. Following the final major in July 1968 at the PGA Championship, several leading tour pros voiced their dissatisfaction with the venue, the increased friction resulted in a new entity in August, what would eventually become the PGA Tour. Tournament players formed their own organization, American Professional Golfers, Inc. independent of the PGA of America, the board consisted of four tour players, three PGA of America executives, and three outside members, initially business executives. Joseph Dey, the recently retired USGA executive director, was selected by the board as the tours first commissioner in January 1969 and he was succeeded by tour player Deane Beman in early 1974, who served for twenty years. The name officially changed to the PGA Tour in 1975, Beman was succeeded by commissioner Tim Finchem in June 1994. On January 1,2017, Jay Monahan succeeded Finchem as commissioner, in late August 1981, the PGA Tour had a marketing dispute with the PGA of America and officially changed its name to the TPA Tour, for the Tournament Players Association. The disputed issues were resolved within seven months and the name was changed back to the PGA Tour in March 1982. Without the tour players, the PGA of America became primarily an association of club professionals, both events are very important revenue streams for the PGA of America. Due to the multiplicity of names, there is confusion as to what the PGA Tour organization does and does not run. Of the events in the PGA Tour schedule, it not run any of the four major championships. The PGA of America, not the PGA Tour, runs the PGA Championship, the Senior PGA Championship, and co-organizes the Ryder Cup with Ryder Cup Europe, a company controlled by the PGA European Tour. Additionally, the PGA Tour is not involved with the womens golf tours in the U. S. which are controlled by the LPGA. The PGA Tour is also not the body for the game of golf in the United States, this, instead, is the role of the United States Golf Association. What the PGA Tour does organize are the remaining 43 week-to-week events, including The Players Championship and it also runs the main tournaments on five other tours, PGA Tour Champions, the Web. com Tour, PGA Tour Canada, PGA Tour China, and PGA Tour Latinoamérica. The PGA Tour operates six tours, three of them are primarily contested in the U. S. and the other three are international developmental tours centered on a specific country or region
6.
History of Davenport, Iowa
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Davenport, Iowa, was part of the Louisiana Purchase. In 1814, during the War of 1812 the British military, along with the Saux, in August, Major Zachary Taylor, later President, fought a battle east of what is now Credit Island Park, in Davenport. An outpost was set up at Fort Armstrong and George Davenport, Davenport was established in 1836 by Antoine LeClaire and named after his good friend Colonel George Davenport. The first settlers of Davenport were mostly Germans, after a county seat dilemma with neighboring town Rockingham in 1840, Davenport was established as the county seat of Scott County. Davenport was declared to be Iowas first military headquarters just before the Civil War by Governor Samuel J. Kirkwood, in November 1865, the Iowa Soldiers Orphans Home was opened in Davenport to take in children left orphaned by the Civil War. In 1895, the city hall was built, and in 1897, Davenport experienced an economic and building boom in the 1920s and early 1930s. The Kahl Building and the Capitol Theatre, the stadium, the Parker Building. The Great Depression brought economic tough times to the city, the inclusion of new factories in the 1940s and 1950s helped turn the economy around after World War II. Davenport was on hard times again with the farm crisis of the 1980s. The city was rejuvenated once again in the 1990s and present by renovations, in 1832, Chief Keokuk and General Winfield Scott signed a treaty to end the Black Hawk War. Antoine LeClaire, who was part French and part Pottawattamie, served as translator, a generous portion of land was given by Chief Keokuk to Marguerite LeClaire, Antoines wife, as she was the granddaughter of a Sac chief. Keokuk stipulated that Antoine build their home on the spot where the treaty was signed or forfeit the land. Antoine did so, finishing the Treaty House in the spring of 1833, Davenport was established in 1836 by Antoine LeClaire and named after his good friend Colonel George Davenport. Colonel Davenport arrived in 1816 with the establishment of Fort Armstrong and he acted as a sutler, or supplier, for the armys Fort Armstrong. Fort Armstrong was located on the tip of Arsenal Island with the purpose of monitoring fur trade traffic in the area. He contributed to the organization and mapping out of the community and he also aided in establishing plans for the first railroad bridge to cross the Mississippi River. In 1837, shortly after Scott County was formed Davenport, as stated by the Iowa Territory, the city with the most votes at the February 1838 election, would become the county seat. On the eve of the election, Davenporters secured the temporary service of Dubuque laborers so that they could vote in the election, Rockingham supporters however, did not like this
7.
Central Fire Station (Davenport, Iowa)
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The Central Fire Station is located in downtown Davenport, Iowa, United States and serves as the headquarters of the Davenport Fire Department, as well as the downtown fire station. Built from 1901 to 1902, it is the oldest active fire station west of the Mississippi River and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The first group of firefighters in Davenport were organized in 1856 and called the Independent Fire Engine. The citys early fire fighting corps were all volunteer hook and ladder and hose companies, which were paid a fee to extinguish a fire. They were located throughout the city in makeshift quarters and generally possessed poor equipment, by 1880 the city determined it needed a professional, paid fire department. The Davenport City Council authorized the formation of a fire department in 1882. Marsh Noe was the first fire chief and twelve men made up the first paid fire department, the city’s first fire house, Hose Station No. 1, had built on Perry Street in 1877 for the Fire King Engine 2nd Hose Company. Before the turn of the 20th century the city built other small stations throughout the city. By 1901 the city decided it needed a new and larger fire station downtown, at this time there were six hose companies located throughout the city, a citywide alarm system was in place as well as a fire hydrant network. The city and its buildings in the area continued to grow in size. The fire department also grew in size so a station was needed to care for all of these realities. Local architect Gustav Hanssen was contracted to build the new station and he had designed several homes in the city including Sacred Heart Rectory, which is also on the National Register of Historic Places. The location of a double engine firehouse across West Fourth Street from the Scott County Court House was selected as the location for the new building, the building was opened in 1902, which makes it the oldest active fire station west of the Mississippi River. It was built at a cost of $21,000, as the city and the fire department grew a two-story annex was added to the rear of the building around 1940. It added three truck bays. The building continues to serve as a fire although it does have space. The station itself houses Engine 1, Engine 2, Truck 1, in 2015 the city addressed the space problems of the facility
8.
Davenport City Hall
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Davenport City Hall is the official seat of government for the city of Davenport, Iowa, United States. The building was constructed in 1895 and is situated on the northeast corner of the intersection of Harrison Street and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and on the Davenport Register of Historic Properties in 1993. Davenport started to outgrow its previous city hall, which had built on Brady Street from 1857-1858. The role of city government expanded during the administration of Henry Vollmer. Among his major achievements were several public works projects, streets were paved in the older sections of the city and developers laid out new subdivisions around the perimeter. In 1895, in the midst of a national economic depression. The cost was about $90,000 — an astronomical sum at that time —, the bulk of the funds came from a new state law which applied to the citys 150 illegal saloons and amounted to around $50,000 per year. This tax allowed for not only of City Hall, but also paved streets and a new sewer system, and from 1902–08. Besides Vollmer there were two other noteworthy Davenport mayors associated with city hall. Alfred C. Mueller served the city during two separate periods and he was responsible for initiating the citys building code, sewer planning and construction, street paving, and planning and implementing improvements to the riverfront. Barewald was the citys first Socialist mayor and they were also opposed to the Republican Partys support for national prohibition of alcohol so they threw their support behind the Socialist Party of America. Two years prior to Barewalds election as mayor two Socialists were elected as aldermen and they were reelected in 1920, during his term as mayor Barewald began several public works projects that put people to work and enhanced city improvements. The municipal natatorium was built, new streets were opened and a sewer was completed. Barewald and the other two Socialists were overwhelmingly voted out of office in 1922 because of the debts these projects, the prohibition of alcohol was a major issue in the city of Davenport from the 1840s until national prohibition became official in 1919. The activities of the temperance movement thrived in the 1880s and were renewed during the Progressive Era. Local ordinances were passed that exempted the city of Davenport from state laws and mayors, especially Ernst Claussen. Debates were held in the city council and among other groups until Iowas prohibition amendment was passed in 1916. It was reinforced by the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1919, however, the illegal production and consumption of alcohol continued in the city
9.
Davenport Public Library
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The Davenport Public Library is a public library located in Davenport, Iowa. With a history dating back to 1839, the Davenport Public Librarys Main Library is currently housed in a 1960s building designed by Kennedy Center architect Edward Durell Stone, the library began with a reading room in the Le Claire Hotel established in 1839. Another reading room and circulating library were announced in an 1853 article in the Davenport Gazette, the library eventually leased an entire building. Although then named the Young Mens Library Association, it was managed by the communitys women, in 1877, one of them—Clarissa Cook—pledged $10,000 to the library for the construction of its own building if property were obtained for the construction by the citizens. After successfully raising the funds to purchase a lot, the city laid the cornerstone for the Cook Memorial Building on November 7,1877, the library eventually outgrew its space. Even though the Library Association no longer had to pay rent and charged a fee for borrowing books, it was struggling financially, local author Alice French requested the assistance of her personal friend Andrew Carnegie, who was already becoming known for his philanthropic assistance of libraries. Carnegie promised to donate $50,000 to construct a new public library if the library were tax supported, the question was successfully put to the vote at the April 1900 election, the first in Iowa which permitted women voters. The city opened its Carnegie library, the largest west of the Mississippi River in 1904, the building was designed by Boston architect Calvin Kiessling. By 1960, the library had outgrown the Carnegie Building as well and it was expanded in 1963 to provide space for further services for children, but the expansion caused displacement of the sand on which the building was founded, leading to structural damage. In 1966, the Carnegie Building had to be demolished, the subsequent Davenport Public Library building, designed by architect Edward Durell Stone, was opened on October 6,1968. While the library had long maintained branches in area schools, it opened its first official branch and this branch was located in the historic Annie Wittenmyer Complex, in rooms that were used as the kitchen and dining room of the former Iowa Soldiers Orphans Home. However, due to the growth of the area and the proximity of this branch to the Main Library, the citizens of Davenport passed a referendum in 2003 that supported the building and operation of two new library branches. The Annie Wittenmyer Branch closed in November 2005, the Fairmount Branch Library opened on Saturday, January 14,2006, and the Eastern Avenue Branch Library opened on Saturday, July 10,2010, completing the library expansion project. Notes Official website Official Site of the Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center Official City of Davenport site
