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by J. S. |
Clamming, fishing for clams, used to be very common on the upper Mississippi. The clams were used for buttons before plastic was invented. |
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| The boats they used to hunt for clams were flat bottom boats. These boats had a rack on each side. There was a bar that was hung on the rack. Each bar had hundreds of lines with hooked tips. They would hang one bar off the boat and drag it along the bottom. The clams would snap shut on the hooks. Then the fisherman would haul the bar into the boat and hang it up on the rack while he dropped the other bar into the river. The clam hunters pulled the clams off the hooks. If they were too small, they were thrown back into the water. The clams that were kept were thrown into the boat and taken to shore. | |
| The whole clam was used. The meat from the clams were put into dog, cat or hog food. The shells were shipped to button factories. There were many button factories along the Mississippi. There were 11 in Muscatine, Iowa. Many clam shells were sent there. There was even a button factory in East Dubuque for a short time in 1909. It was owned by Joseph Webb, who was from Dubuque. | |
| After the buttons were cut, the left-over shells were ground-up and sent to Japan, where they were ground up and used to start pearls in oysters. Some of the left-over shells were thrown out and there were after piles of shells with holes along the shores. | |
| The shells were taken to shore and they were boiled in water to get all of the clam out of the shells. After they are boiled, the clams pop open and are cleaned out. Sometimes they find pearls in them and the men get to keep the pearl as a reward. The clams were for animal feed. They drilled disk shapes from the shells then they drilled holes into the disks to make the buttons. | |
| Although clamming is now under Federal control, people still go clamming on the upper Mississippi. If you want to go clamming you have to have a license by the Federal Government. If you don’t have a license and you get caught you will get fined. | |
| If you go to the upper Mississippi, you can still find clam shells with holes in them where there used to be a button factory. | |
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Bibliography Field trip to Dubuque River Museum, 3/3/00. Larson, U.S.M.M., Ret., Ron. The Upper Mississippi River. Winona, Minnesota: Steamboat Press, 1994. Lyon, Randolf W. Dubuque: The Encyclopedia. Dubuque, Iowa: Union Hoerrmann Press, 1991 |
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