Keokuk Pins and Buttons

Gate City

KEOKUK IOWA

Defunct Keokuk Pirates Baseball Team

The Western baseball club of Keokuk, Iowa, or Keokuk Westerns in modern nomenclature, was a professional baseball team in the National Association in 1875, the last season of that first professional league. It is considered a major league team by those who count the NA as a major league. It was geographically the farthest west that major league baseball had progressed up to that time.

The Keokuk Pirates, a minor league baseball team, played in the Central Association and Central League between 1947 and 1949.

Iowa

Remembering Younkers Department Store. Younkers was adepartment store chain founded as a family-run dry goods business in 1856 in Keokuk, Iowa. In 1899 the Younker brothers' main store in downtown Des Moines was moved to 7th and Walnut Streets, and it operated at the same location for 106 years before closing on August 12, 2005. The downtown Des Moines store became known for its Tea Room restaurant, which opened in 1913 and closed shortly before the store did. It also installed Iowa's first escalator, known as the "electric stairs," in 1939.