Lights on the Mississippi

Because Muscatine is situated on the Mississippi River, there was easy access to the mussel shells.

Apparently, because of a bend in the river here (for several miles the Mississippi River runs east and west) many clams accumulated in this area.

Bet you thought the Mississippi always ran north and south, like I did...well, not here. It does get confusing...to tell people I live north of the Mississippi River.

Because of this vast amount of available shells, a German immigrant by the name of John Boepple settled here hoping to continue his former occupation of making buttons.

While in Germany, he made buttons from animal horns, but also experimented using fresh-water mussel shells.


There were so many shells punched for pearl buttons that uses had to be found for these cut shells and often they were used for road fill in Muscatine.

~courtesy of Kari Pearl's