Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Fort Madison, IA

Fort Madison shares the Lee County seat with Keokuk, making Lee the only county in Iowa with two county seats.

The original Fort Madison was built in 1808 by soldiers of the 1st U.S. Infantry under Lieutenant Alpha Kingsley and named for President James Madison - it was the first United States military post on the upper Mississippi River.

The fort was besieged in September 1812 and abandoned and burned by its own garrison in the fall of 1813 during the War of 1812; the fighting there is remembered as the only War of 1812 battle fought west of the Mississippi River.

The town of Fort Madison opened for settlement in 1833, was platted in 1836, and incorporated in 1838 - by 1850 it was already Iowa's sixth-largest city, with about 1,500 people.

Fort Madison's population was 10,270 in the 2020 census, down from 11,051 in 2010.

Census Bureau QuickFacts counts about 4,548 households in Fort Madison (2020-2024), averaging just 2.05 people per household.

Fort Madison is home to the Iowa State Penitentiary, the state's maximum-security prison for men.

The Sheaffer Pen Company opened in Fort Madison in 1906 and by 1950 employed about 1,800 people as the largest pen company in the world.

The buried remains of the original fort were excavated in 1965 from beneath the Sheaffer factory parking lot, and a replica fort built beginning in 1983 in Riverview Park used labor from penitentiary inmates.

The arrival of the Santa Fe railroad and its Mississippi River bridge in 1887 spurred Fort Madison's growth from about 5,000 people in 1885 to about 9,000 by 1900.