May's Island: Government on an Island

In the middle of the Cedar River, anchored between the east and west halves of downtown, sits a flat sliver of land housing a county courthouse, a jail, and a veterans memorial building. This is May's Island, and the list of cities that have placed their government on a river island is short: Paris, Osaka, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The island's early history is unglamorous.

Before the city took real shape, it was a low, marshy strip covered in scrub brush, reputedly used by horse thieves as a hiding place for their loot. Then, in the eighteen fifties, an entrepreneur named John May acquired the island after noticing it had never appeared in any official government survey. He persuaded the federal government to recognize its existence, then sold it to him.

May's ambition was a separate town of his own called May Island, but the flooding and the lack of bridges made that unworkable. What made it workable was civic politics. Cedar Rapids had long been divided between its east side and west side, with residents of each sector regarding the other with the mild contempt that defines twin-banked river towns everywhere.

City leaders concluded that placing government in the river itself, in neutral territory, might quiet the rivalry. In nineteen oh nine, the city acquired the island and began planning for government buildings there. Today the Linn County Courthouse still stands there, connected to both banks by short bridges.

It is one of the stranger arrangements in American civic design, and one of the most peaceful, the river passing on both sides, the courtrooms in the middle.