The Dillon Memorial Fountain

This limestone fountain near the Davenport riverfront honors a hometown boy who became one of America's great legal minds. John Forrest Dillon grew up here, served as chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, and went on to become a federal circuit judge with a national reputation. Though he moved to New York City in eighteen seventy-nine, he always considered Davenport home.

When Dillon died in nineteen fourteen, he left the city money to build a fountain. Erected in nineteen eighteen and carved from Indiana limestone it rises as a column topped by a bronze lantern, with a basin below and relief panels showing lion heads and the judge himself. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, standing at the edge of LeClaire Park along the Mississippi.