Quincy (which has
extensive [v.04 p.0837] construction and repair shops here), the Chicago,
Rock Island & Pacific, and the Toledo, Peoria & Western (Pennsylvania
system) railways; and has an extensive river commerce. The river is spanned
here by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railway bridge. Many of the
residences are on bluffs commanding beautiful views of river scenery; and
good building material has been obtained from the Burlington limestone
quarries. Crapo Park, of 100 acres, along the river, is one of the
attractions of the city. Among the principal buildings are the county court
house, the free public library, the Tama building, the German-American
savings bank building and the post office. Burlington has three
well-equipped hospitals. Among the city's manufactures are lumber,
furniture, baskets, pearl buttons, cars, carriages and wagons, Corliss
engines, waterworks pumps, metallic burial cases, desks, boxes, crackers,
flour, pickles and beer. The factory product in 1905 was valued at
$5,779,337, or 29.9% more than in 1900. The first white man to visit the
site of Burlington seems to have been Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike, who came
in 1805 and recommended the erection of a fort. The American Fur Company
established a post here in 1829 or earlier, but settlement really began in
1833, after the Black Hawk War, and the place had a population of 1200 in
1838. It was laid out as a town and named Flint Hills (a translation of the
Indian name, _Shokokon_) in 1834; but the name was soon changed to
Burlington, after the city of that name in Vermont. Burlington was
incorporated as a town in 1837, and was chartered as a city in 1838 by the
territory of Wisconsin, the city charter being amended by the territory of
Iowa in 1839 and 1841. The territorial legislature of Wisconsin met here
from 1836 to 1838 and that of Iowa from 1838 to 1840. In 1837 a newspaper,
the _Wisconsin Territorial Gazette_, now the Burlington _Evening Gazette_,
and in 1839 another, the Burlington _Hawk Eye_, were founded; the latter
became widely known in the years immediately following 1872 from the
humorous sketches contributed to it by Robert Jones Burdette (b. 1844), an
associate editor, known as the "Burlington Hawk Eye Man," who in 1903
entered the Baptist ministry and became pastor of the Temple Baptist church
in Los Angeles, California, and among whose publications are _Hawkeyetems_
(1877), _Hawkeyes_ (1879), and _Smiles Yoked with Sighs_ (1900).