Dubuque

Dubuque, a city and port of Iowa, on the right bank of the Mississippi, built partly on bluffs rising 200 feet above the river, which is here crossed by an iron railway bridge, 198 miles WNW. of Chicago. It is the seat of an Episcopal and of a Roman Catholic bishop, and contains numerous churches, a city hall, a custom-house of marble, and a German Presbyterian seminary. It has a number of manufactures, and a large river and railway trade, and is the chief centre of the great lead region of the North-west. The town is the oldest in the state. Julien Dubuque, a French trader, engaged in lead-mining here as early as 1788; but the first permanent settlement was made in 1833. Pop. (1870) 18,434; (1890) 30,311.