Rock Island is a city in Rock Island County, Illinois, United States, and its county seat. The population was 37,108 at the 2020 census. Located at the confluence of the Rock and Mississippi rivers, it is one of the Quad Cities along with neighboring Moline and East Moline in Illinois and the cities of Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa. The Quad Cities metropolitan area had a population of 384,324 in 2020.
The city is home to Rock Island Arsenal, the largest government-owned weapons manufacturing arsenal in the United States, which employs 6,000 people. The original Rock Island, from which the city name is derived, is now called Arsenal Island.
History
thumb|The Harper House
The original portion of what is now known as Rock Island was called Farnhamsburg – after the original two homes were built by Colonel George Davenport and Russell Farnham in 1826. Davenport and Farnham were business partners, trading with the local Native Americans. The original city plat was filed on July 10, 1835, and was named Stephenson. It was renamed Rock Island in March 1841.
The southern portion of Rock Island, including today's Watch Hill area, was originally known as Searstown. It was named after David B. Sears, who built the Sears Power Dam on the Rock River. Searstown was annexed by Rock Island in 1915.
The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad (RI) was founded here in 1851, known informally as the Rock Island Line; over the next century, the railroad grew to serve fourteen states but ended in bankruptcy in 1980. As part of later nineteenth-century development, two first-class hotels: the Harper House (built by Ben Harper and opened in February 1871) and the Rock Island House were built in town. The Rock Island Arsenal has manufactured military equipment and ordnance for the U.S. Army since the 1880s.
The Rock Island Southern Railway was an interurban line that ran from Rock Island to Monmouth, Illinois, then onward to Galesburg, Illinois. It was built between 1906 and 1910. A portion of the trackage, from Rock Island to Preemption, Illinois, was shared with the CRI&P line that served the coal mines in Cable, Illinois, and Sherrard, Illinois. The line finally folded in 1952.
Construction began in April 2017 for a new Rock Island County courthouse. The $28 million project was completed in the fall of 2018, and the old courthouse was expected to be torn down upon completion of the new building. Resident opposition temporarily delayed the demolition, but the building was demolished in April 2023.
Geography
According to the 2010 census, Rock Island has a total area of , of which (or 94.28%) is land and (5.72%) is water.
Climate
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