1967 Map of Savanna

About this map

The Mississippi River creates a complex network of islands and backwater lakes along the border of Iowa and Illinois in the late 1960s. Savanna sits on the eastern bank, its grid extending toward Mississippi Palisades State Park and the Chicago Burlington & Quincy railroad tracks. Across the water, the town of Sabula occupies a narrow island linked to the mainland by the Chicago Milwaukee St Paul and Pacific line. The landscape is dotted with several rural cemeteries, including Dickinson Cem and Canada Hollow Cem, serving the farming communities of Union and Elk River townships. To the south, the river widens into the Savanna Spring Lake and the Fish Refuge, where numerous named islands like Cook Island and Mound Island dominate the waterway, reflecting an era before modern hydrological shifts altered these riparian corridors.