LoginThe Mississippi River built these towns. Now tourism is helping sustain them.
On an idyllic evening at the Trempealeau Hotel, the Mississippi River is as much a draw as the musical act that graces its outdoor stage.
If concert-goers gathered on the hotel lawn are lucky — and they often are — they’ll get to see a sorbet sky before the sun tucks behind the bluffs and a train thundering through with a horn-blast hello. The hotel has watched over the river since 1888.
Amy Werner and Jörg Droll, who have owned the hotel since 2012, have seen a surge of interest in their part of the river since the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in outdoor recreation opportunities. The village of Trempealeau, Wisconsin, with a population of about 1,900, has leaned into the phenomenon.
Just as the river’s path has changed over time, so have communities along it changed and adapted.
The Mississippi has been a vital resource for Indigenous people, a source of employment for fishermen, trappers, boat captains and builders of the locks and dams, and more recently, the main attraction on the beloved Great River Road, a 3,000-mile drive from northern Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico that draws millions of Americans every year.
Along this segment of the Mississippi, river communities are exploring different ways to bring people in, now that the days of commercial fishing, trapping and similar river industries have, for the most part, faded. Many are courting tourists, from those driving the length of the River Road to those simply day-tripping from the Twin Cities. Some are emphasizing the ease and nostalgia of small-town life.
They’re all doing so in the face of the headwinds hitting rural areas across the country — declining tax bases, workforce challenges and aging populations. That means it’s essential not just to attract visitors for a moment, but to get those who live there to stay — something that requires serious introspection and vision for the future.
Still, one thing hasn’t changed. The river is the centerpiece. It’s the reason these communities are here, even as they redefine what life on the river means. They’re counting on others to see that too.
“Without the river, the hotel could not exist,” Droll said. “(It’s) part of daily life for us. Every waking minute.”
Tourism drives success in Mississippi River towns
About halfway between Trempealeau and the Twin Cities is Stockholm, a Wisconsin village of less than 100 people that explodes with visitors on summer Saturdays.
The draw is Stockholm Pie, a charming bakery that started as a weekend gig and has now been named America’s best pie shop, twice. The shop’s head baker begins the day between 1 and 3 a.m., preparing up to 70 pies daily in addition to dozens of other sweet treats baked fresh. Owner Alan Nugent’s slice of choice is the sour cream raisin.
Stockholm “has always been the spot,” said Nugent, who first opened an art gallery in the village in 2004 and has since given over his career to pie. He believes its proximity to the Twin Cities is critical — 80% of customers who come through the shop’s door are from there.
More than a decade ago, Nugent decided it was time to share the wealth and formed the West Coast of Wisconsin, a marketing association for the five communities that sit on Lake Pepin — Bay City, Stockholm, Maiden Rock, Pepin and Nelson.
The goal, loosely based on what communities have done in Door County, the popular Midwest vacation destination on Lake Michigan, is for each village to have its own personality and to support the others at the same time. The association has invested significant energy into making the area a destination, Nugent said.
It’s paying off. The area has become a wedding hot spot that can pull hundreds of people on a single weekend. To serve that need, high-end properties have been converted into luxury vacation rentals, Nugent said.
Being a tourist town comes with its own challenges. So many homes have been turned into rentals, it’s hard for a person to actually move to the area, he said. But the change is inevitable.
“The world has changed dramatically,” Nugent said. “Tourism supports a lot of jobs and brings a whole lot of tax revenue.”
According to Travel Wisconsin’s latest economic impact report, seven of eight counties bordering the river saw an increase in direct visitor spending from 2024 to 2025.
In Cassville, less than an hour upriver from Wisconsin’s border with Illinois, tourism director Tracy Fishnick said the village is focusing on visitors “to help keep our community alive.”
Fishnick said village residents know they need tourists, and the river brings them in. Two summers ago, unexpected flooding brought that to a screeching halt — even the iconic Cassville ferry had to pause, and Fishnick said businesses felt it.
The village is also pitching visitors on becoming permanent residents. It received a grant this spring from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation to offer financial incentives for the next two years for out-of-state residents to move to the Cassville area.
“So many people think of small towns and they’re just like, ‘Oh, they don’t have much’ … once you come and spend a weekend or a day here, you grab some food, it’s cheaper,” she said. “You’re going to have a bartender or a waiter that will sit and get to know you.”
Fishnick said public spaces on the riverfront are part of the village’s appeal, in contrast to communities where that area is largely private property.
“We get so many people to just come walk, and sit there and watch the barges,” she said.
Communities lean into nostalgia, grapple with difficult history
In Fountain City, about an hour downriver from Stockholm, what’s old is new again.
Mike Adank moved back to his hometown from New York last fall to take over the Corner Store, an ice cream and soda pop shop with long-standing roots in the community. He whips up sweet concoctions using the building’s 1960s-era soda fountain, which he had painstakingly refurbished.
The shop is full of nostalgic nods: a candy table near the cash register, old newspaper clippings on the walls, Beach Boys over the speakers. Older people are eager to reminisce, Adank said, and young people are glad to have a place besides school to hang out.
“We’ve got all these really cool stories and buildings and history. That was important to me when I came back,” Adank said. “My parents were like, ‘What are you going to call it?’ I was like, ‘It’s the Corner Store.’ That’s what it always was to me, and that’s what it has to be.”
The community has welcomed his venture, he said, signaling another old habit that’s come around: shopping local.
In the 1980s, he recalled, Fountain City lost businesses like a grocer and hardware store as people began to make the 15-minute drive to Winona, Minnesota, for small conveniences.
Now, residents recognize the city flatlines if people don’t invest, Adank said. It’s given them – him included – new momentum to try.
History isn’t always sweet, though. Across the river, that’s something Nicky Buck knows well.
Buck, an enrolled member of the Prairie Island Indian Community, was born and raised on Prairie Island near what is now Red Wing, Minnesota, where her Bdewakantunwan Band of Eastern Dakota ancestors lived long before white settlers arrived. Other tribal nations once came to the Mississippi River valley for its lush abundance of plant medicines, Buck said.
For a long time, the relationship between the tribe and the city of Red Wing was strained due to intolerance of Indigenous people, she said. Her uncle, Art Owen, and his father, Amos, led early efforts to change that, which the community continues today.
In 2022, the two governments signed a memorandum of understanding to share information and give tribal members a seat at the table. That year, Buck and others began the Honoring Dakota Project, which seeks to bridge cultures and create a unified world rooted in Dakota lifeways. A mural unveiled in 2023 depicts Chief Red Wing and the sacred nearby bluff site He Mni Can.
The Honoring Dakota Project has helped facilitate viewings of the tribe’s bison herd, an Indigenous art market and, in 2024, an inaugural wacipi, or powwow. It has also played a role in critical safety upgrades, like the construction of an overpass that opened in 2025 providing a safe way on and off Prairie Island over one of the state’s most dangerous rail intersections.
The work has been healing for Buck’s community.
“We’re making sure there is a place for the next seven generations,” she said, referencing an Indigenous principle about making decisions today that will benefit multiple generations to come.
The river makes everything work
The Mississippi River itself is always changing — in some ways, not for the better. Buck worries about high levels of PFAS, pesticides and plastics that could rob her community of their lifeways. Others are concerned that backwaters are disappearing as sediment fills in from upstream.
Still, the river remains a powerful reason for these communities’ existence.
A little over an hour down the road from Fountain City, Mark Clements and his son Conner run Clements Fishing Barge in Genoa.The river has been integral to the family business for 90 years.
Clements’ grandfather fashioned an early version of their raft using leftover construction materials from the creation of the nearby lock and dam in 1936. The aim of the business hasn’t changed — providing an affordable way for people without their own boats to fish the river.
It’s a fishing destination, Clements said, which is good for Genoa, which reaps the benefits of people spending money to stay. On a nice spring weekend, as many as 100 people might be out on the barge. Helping kids connect to the river through fishing is their priority, he said — so much so that he’s never increased the cost for a child to fish for the day.
Fishing outfits like Clements’ are a clear connection between the river’s past and present, one appreciated by longtime “river rats” like Max Bachhuber. Bachhuber ran the Great Alma Fishing Float in Alma, just north of Fountain City, from 1963 through much of the 1980s.
When businesses would close for the day, Bachhuber recalled, people would spill out onto the river to fish for their dinner. Now, it’s mostly for sport, he said, and the population of Alma is largely retirees. But he loves it despite its changes.
“My favorite thing is to be able to look out and see (the Mississippi River) every day,” Bachhuber said. “If you go away, you’re going to come back. You’re going to miss it.”
Whether river communities are shrinking or expanding, have momentum or are struggling to find a vision, are leaning on their history or learning to reconcile it, Bachhuber’s take is one shared by many: Life on the river is unlike anywhere else.
At the Trempealeau Hotel, Werner and Droll feel that singularity when they serve up river catfish at their restaurant, when they watch a sunset, or when a band plays to a sold-out crowd under a full moon.
Through the challenges that may come, they’ll always have this place.
“It’s just pure pleasure,” Werner said.
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
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The Mississippi River built these towns. Now tourism is helping sustain them. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
