Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Keosauqua, IA

Keosauqua is the county seat of Van Buren County in far southeastern Iowa, laid out by settlers in 1839 on the north bank of the Des Moines River at its Great Bend.

The name Keosauqua derives from the Meskwaki and Sauk name for the Des Moines River.

The land around Keosauqua became United States territory in 1832 as part of the Black Hawk Purchase that followed the Black Hawk War.

Keosauqua's Van Buren County Courthouse, built in 1843 in the Greek Revival style, is the oldest courthouse in continuous use in Iowa and the second-oldest in continuous use in the United States.

Beside the courthouse, Hangman's Hollow was the site of the first legal hanging in Iowa history, following the murder trial of William McCauley.

The three-story Hotel Manning, built in a Steamboat Gothic style that mimics the riverboats of the Des Moines River's steamboat days, is Keosauqua's most notable landmark; it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in April 1973, and community supporters bought and restored it beginning in 2017.

The Pearson House in Keosauqua, built in 1847, was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

The 1839 Honey War, a nearly bloodless border dispute between Iowa and Missouri sparked in part by the cutting of three bee trees, was fought south of Keosauqua in what is now Lacey-Keosauqua State Park.

Lacey-Keosauqua State Park, one of the largest state parks in Iowa, was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, and its stone lake bathhouse and lodge were quarried from stone within the park.

In 1846, Brigham Young and his Mormon followers crossed the Des Moines River at Ely's Ford, just upriver from Keosauqua, on the Mormon Trail after being exiled from Nauvoo, Illinois.