Lyons/Zaremba, the staff of the Mississippi River Museum, and EHDD architects created this Discovery Center, which celebrates the nature, history, culture and industry of the upper Mississippi River. Indoor galleries feature aquarium tanks with odd paddlefish and a huge alligator. Interactive exhibits enable visitors to recreate historical floods by engulfing a model of downtown Dubuque. Spanning one wall of the spacious building is the world’s most accurate satellite photograph of the entire river system.
Outdoors, visitors can wander through a wetland slough that’s inhabited by native waterfowl and songbirds. Guests can experience life in a trapper’s lodge, a boathouse, a fishing shack, and a Native American encampment.
The center was awarded Iowa’s Top Tourist Attraction for 2004.
