MUSCATINE, Iowa — Construction is now underway at Muscatine's historic Fairport Fish Hatchery.
The 60-acre area will soon have an education pavilion to capstone the interpretive trail system created by Friends of Fairport Fish Hatchery.
The hatchery has been on the banks of the Mississippi River since 1908, when the U.S. Federal Biological Station at Fairport was established to research freshwater mussels and fish in their natural habitat. At the time, the nation's supply of freshwater mussels was being over-harvested to supply the pearl button industry.
"So Congress decided we needed to research if we can grow freshwater mussels fast enough to sustain this pearl button industry," Jim Elias, a member of Friends of Fairport Fish Hatchery said.
The research station was the first of its kind in the inland United States.
Today, it continues as part of the Iowa DNR. Northern pike, walleye, bass and bluegill are reared at the hatchery each spring. However, the freshwater mussel research has picked up once again, and baby mussels are now being reared as well.
Once crews complete construction on the education pavilion, it will have a number of informational panels detailing the history of the hatchery, its importance and continued mission.
"It has a timeline that shows all of the important things that happened there over the last 120 years," Elias said. "In the 1940s, during World War Two, the hatchery and laboratory building served as barracks for a prisoner of war camp, where some German prisoners of war lived in and went to work at the Heinz factory in Muscatine."
The Fairport Fish Hatchery Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in October 2023.
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