Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Keokuk, IA

Keokuk is Iowa's southernmost city and, together with Fort Madison, one of two county seats of Lee County — the only county in Iowa with more than one county seat.

Keokuk is named after the Sauk chief Keokuk, a leader who advocated conciliation with settlers; he is thought to be buried in the city's Rand Park.

Dr. Samuel C. Muir became the area's first white settler in 1820, resigning his Army commission and crossing the Mississippi rather than leave his Native American wife, and John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company opened a trading post at the site around 1827.

The village took the name Keokuk shortly after the Black Hawk War of 1832; it was incorporated on December 13, 1847, and chartered as a city on December 14, 1848.

Keokuk stands where the Des Moines River meets the Mississippi, at the foot of the Des Moines Rapids, a natural transshipment point that earned it the nickname the Gate City.

The 2020 census counted 9,900 residents in Keokuk, living in 4,138 households — down from a peak population of 16,316 in 1960.

During the Civil War, Keokuk was an embarkation point for Union troops and a hospital center for wounded soldiers brought up the river; the Keokuk National Cemetery, one of the first national cemeteries designated, holds the graves of more than 4,000 soldiers.

Lock and Dam No. 19, completed on the Mississippi River in 1913, tamed the Des Moines Rapids for navigation and hydropower and created Lake Keokuk upstream.

Mark Twain lived briefly in Keokuk in the 1850s around the print shop of his brother Orion Clemens, later wrote of the beauty of Keokuk and southeastern Iowa in Life on the Mississippi, and is remembered by a collection of memorabilia at the public library.

Keokuk recorded the highest temperature ever measured in Iowa: 118 degrees Fahrenheit on July 20, 1934.