Port of Dubuque, Iowa Marina Throwback T-Shirt

This design is one-of-a-kind and found only at Dubuque Clothing Co. — the Port of Dubuque, Iowa Marina Throwback T-Shirt is printed on a premium tee using high-quality, soft inks built to last through every trip to the harbor.

Long before pleasure boats tied up here, this stretch of water was a serious engineering problem. Dubuque's early riverfront was, in the words of local historians, "a maze of peninsulas, sloughs, and bayous" that made steamboat commerce a headache, so in 1851 the city hired Abel Hawley to cut a 100-foot-wide, four-foot-deep channel from Lorimier's furnace to Eagle Point. By 1858 Congress had officially designated Dubuque a "Port of Entry," and the cut was steadily evolving into a true protective harbor where barges and river craft could shelter from winter's crushing ice floes, hence the name Ice Harbor. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers widened and dredged it further, with roughly $40,000 in congressional funding finishing most of the work by 1885. The harbor spent decades as a working boat-building center, home to the Iowa Iron Works and the Dubuque Boat and Boiler Works, and even doubled as a community ice-skating rink in winter, before riverboat gambling's 1991 arrival kicked off the harbor's modern transformation into the museums, casino, and marina found here today.

The Port of Dubuque Marina is a 70-slip transient marina in downtown Dubuque, Iowa, located at mile 579.4 of the upper Mississippi River inside the protected Ice Harbor. Guests can spend a day, night, or a few hours enjoying the many downtown and Port of Dubuque attractions.

Reference: Ice Harbor - Encyclopedia Dubuque