At the crest of Brady Street Hill are monumental busts of the founder and developers of the Palmer College of Chiropractic. At their center is an imposing bronze with these words: “Dr. Daniel David Palmer, Discover and Founder, 1845-1913.”

On October 6, 1922, hundreds of baseball fans gathered around a scoreboard in the front window of the Argus in downtown Rock Island to follow the third game of the World Series. Halfway through the game, two large black cars pulled to a stop in the middle of the street. Exiting their cars, several men stood in the street to fire guns at two men who returned their fire. The fans scrambled away from the ricocheting bullets in panic. Several men were shot.

These are the first words on an historic marker at the Black Hawk Historic Site in Rock Island. "The marker states that La Main Cassee was 'a true friend of the American cause during the Revolutionary War' who confronted a British war party here in 1779. The same marker then commemorates the burning of Saukenuk by the American military in 1780."

George Davenport traveled with an army expedition in 1816 to establish a frontier military outpost on the Mississippi River. The outpost would be built on a wooded island within several miles of Native American villages. The military estimated that 10,000 people lived these villages.