Keokuk is a city in and a county seat of Lee County, Iowa, United States. It is Iowa’s southernmost city. The population was 9,900 at the period of the 2020 census. The city is named after the Sauk chief Keokuk, who is thought to be buried in Rand Park. It is in the extreme southeast corner of Iowa, where the Des Moines River meets the Mississippi. It is at the junction of U.S. Routes 61, 136 and 218. Just across the rivers are the towns of Hamilton and Warsaw, Illinois, and Alexandria, Missouri. Keokuk, along in imitation of the city of Fort Madison, is a principal city of the Fort Madison-Keokuk micropolitan area, which includes all of Lee County, Iowa, Hancock County, Illinois and Clark County, Missouri.

Situated amongst the Des Moines and Mississippi rivers, the Place that became Keokuk had permission to a large trading area and was an ideal location for settlers. In 1820, the US Army forbidden soldiers stationed along the Mississippi River from having wives who were Native American. Dr. Samuel C. Muir, a surgeon stationed at Fort Edwards (near present-day Warsaw, Illinois), resigned his commission rather than leave his Indian wife and crossed the river to resettle. He built a log cabin for them at the bottom of the bluff, and became the area’s first white settler.

As steamboat traffic on the Mississippi increased, more European Americans began to grant here. Around 1827, John Jacob Astor received a make known of his American Fur Company at the foot of the bluff. Five buildings were erected to home workers and the business. This Place became known as the “Rat Row”.

One of the prehistoric descriptions of Keokuk was by Caleb Atwater in 1829: