MUSCATINE IA BUTTON MUSEUM BECOMES NATIONAL ATTRACTION
THE Muscatine History & Industry Center has a new
name. It will now be known as the National Pearl Button Museum @ the History
& Industry Center.
The museum
will have an official ribbon cutting to announce the new name and to show off
its newly rearranged modern industry displays on its second floor on March 8th,
2019 at 4pm.
The
button museum has been the main draw to The History & Industry Center, pulling
in visitors eager to learn Muscatine’s pearl button history. Using that history
as a pipeline, it leads people to the modern industry that utilized that
industrious workforce left when the clamming industry declined. Muscatine was
the center of the “Gold Rush of the Midwest”, mining clams & mussel for
mother of pearl instead of gold & silver, taking shell from 19 states
around the Midwest to make 1.5 billion
pearl buttons annually at the turn of the century.
Muscatine
had a population of 18,000 people in the city in the early 1900’s, two-thirds
of those were involved in the button industry, either by working in the
factories, collecting shells, or by developing machinery or tools used in the
making of buttons. Almost all the items in the button museum were donated by
descendants of these workers.
The
modern history displays show the companies that took advantage of that
workforce, which helped make Muscatine what it is today. Some are household
names. Two Fortune 500 companies began here, are still in business today &
are supporters of the museum.
Terry
Eagle, museum Director, believes changing the name will help our efforts to be
recognized as an important national, regional, and state history, as important
as the gold rushes of South Dakota & California. “We hope to make it easier
for people to find us when searching online, and to make it a travel
destination for those searching for history. Too often our history is pushed by
the wayside as unimportant, in the past, people don’t realize, history is what
makes us who we are.
We
hope to expand in the future, to tell our story to the nation, not just
locally. It is a story that teaches us not only how to live off the land, be
industrious, but to be aware of what happens when we aren’t environmentally conscious.
We decimated our rivers of shell, almost to the point of extinction. This was a
national growth story, the need of materials for product. We need to teach our
children about our mistakes through history.”
Currently,
we are one of the #1 tourist attractions in Muscatine, according to Yelp,
Tripadvisor & Roadtrippers, & several other travel websites. We have
had visitors from almost every state & 15 countries in 2018!
You
can help our efforts. The museum is a non-profit supported by donations from
visitors & you can become a donor member. Visit the National Pearl Button
Museum @ the History & Industry Center in Muscatine, IA, or our website.
See for yourself the enormous impact one little pearl button from a small town
in Iowa could have on the world!