24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Sabula, IA

Sabula is a city in Jackson County and is Iowa's only island city, sitting on an island in the Mississippi River with its own beach, campground, and a harbor with boat docks.

Sabula was established in 1835 when, according to legend, Isaac Dorman crossed the river from the Illinois side on a log and decided to settle on the present site of the town.

Before it was Sabula, the town was platted in 1837 as Carrollport and then renamed Charleston; in 1846 the name Sabula was adopted from the Latin word for sand, a nod to the area's exceptionally sandy soil.

Sabula was incorporated in September 1864, and its post office had opened back in 1846.

Sabula did not actually become an island until 1939, when the Army Corps of Engineers' Lock and Dam No. 13 between Clinton, Iowa and Fulton, Illinois permanently flooded the lowlands west of the townsite, creating the 'Island City.'

In the late 19th century Sabula thrived on the river, with a large pearl button factory that produced buttons from clam shells harvested from river clam beds, a large hog slaughtering industry, a sawmill, and a productive celery industry in the backwaters.

Sabula is the northern terminus of U.S. Route 67, and it is linked to Savanna, Illinois by the Dale Gardner Veterans Memorial Bridge and to mainland Iowa by a causeway running between two lakes.

After severe flooding in the 1950s, new levees were built that completely surround Sabula, making it not only Iowa's only island city but very likely Iowa's only city entirely ringed by a levee.

Sabula had 506 residents in the 2020 census living in 261 households, a long way down from its peak of 1,223 people in 1880, and its median age of 54.3 makes it one of Iowa's older small towns.

Sabula students belong to the Easton Valley Community School District, formed in 2013; Sabula's own school, which first met in a settler's home in 1838, was demolished in 2015 after standing vacant for several years.