Tourists discovering Iowa’s Driftless Area

Returning to her hometown of Guttenberg and opening a brewery appealed to Kathryn Klaes, but it seemed like something she’d do later in life.

“That wasn’t something I’d thought about doing until I was probably 30 or 35, a little more established than just a year out of school,” Klaes, 26, recalled one recent afternoon.

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But she ended up opening Guttenberg Brewing last year

Klaes had been interested in brewing beer since her days at Iowa State University and had worked at breweries and a winery. She was working as a food scientist in Dubuque when her husband, Jonathan, got an offer to teach science at Clayton Ridge High School in Guttenberg, where the Chamber of Commerce had just conducted a survey of the town’s 1,800 residents.

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“One of the top things they wanted was a brewery and a coffee shop,” Klaes said. “I had always dreamed of opening this brewery, and I was 22 years old. I thought, ‘That’s crazy. They want it, but how is 22-year-old I going to be able to pull that off?’ I knew they want it, but can they really support it?”

So Klaes conducted her own survey on the local economic impact of visitors to Iowa’s corner of the Driftless region.

“I needed to prove there were enough tourists or travelers who were staying here or coming through town and if I could fill that space by serving them,” she said.

Klaes canvassed the area’s campgrounds, Airbnb and vacation rentals, marinas and boat ramps.

“I tried to figure out how many tourists had an intention of staying here, participating in something other than stopping at Kwik Star and driving to Decorah,” she said.

Her findings?

“We basically doubled,” Klaes said. “We have somewhere between 3,800 to 4,800 people coming through every weekend May through October, which is great, because with those numbers, I can do that. It was just something I put together myself to prove to myself that it was going to be viable.”

Those visitors spent $26.3 million — about $72,000 per day — in Clayton County in 2022, according to an Oxford Economics study for the Iowa Economic Development Authority.

Iowa’s five Driftless counties — Dubuque, Clayton, Allamakee, Winneshiek, and Fayette — saw $412.9 million in direct tourist spending that year. Dubuque County’s $296.1 million dominated, but tourism’s economic impact also is felt by communities in the region’s lighter-populated counties.

‘Super important’

“Tourism is super important to us,” said Brandie Tomkins, director of the Guttenberg Chamber of Commerce. “Without tourism we don’t have enough to support these businesses.”

Recognizing that tourist spending helps year-round businesses weather the slower months, smaller communities on both sides of the Mississippi are making a more deliberate effort to promote themselves.

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“There’s always been a lot of tourists,” said Tracy Fishnick, tourism director for Cassville, Wis., a city of 777 across the Mississippi north of Dubuque.

“It’s just bringing more awareness.”

Fishnick’s position became full-time just last year, after the village landed a state grant to offset half her salary.

“That was a test for them, to know that it was really worth having a full-time position,” Fishnick said. “I’m pretty much it,” although she has a high school apprentice for the summer who “does a lot of the social media stuff.”

“She’s working really hard,” said Susan Caya-Slusser, director of Wisconsin Historical Society's sites in the southwestern corner of the state. “She’s branding Cassville, really playing up post-COVID that there’s a lot to do up here.”

Cassville’s pitch includes the only car ferry on the Upper Mississippi. It also offers hiking and camping at Nelson Dewey State Park with its spectacular bluff views, and Stonefield Historic Site, the 2,000-acre farm of the state park’s namesake, Wisconsin’s first governor.

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“It’s a great way for a family to disconnect from tech,” said Caya-Slusser, who manages Stonefield and the Villa Louis Historic Site in Prairie du Chien, Wis. “You can see how Wisconsin became America’s Dairyland. My grandparents can bring people here and say, ‘We used to do this.’ It’s a great way to connect the generations.”

‘Unique area’

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Upriver, the Driftless Area Education and Visitor Center near Lansing draws about 13,000 visitors a year. Since opening in 2017, the center has drawn visitors from all 50 states and 45 countries, but its focus is closer to home.

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“In our geographical position, we’re kind of in a unique area,” Ross Geerdes, director of the Allamakee County Conservation Board, said one afternoon as busloads of students from Winona, Minn., toured the center.

“We also work with the Wisconsin towns across the river, and we go out to Minnesota as well. We try to focus within a three- to four-hour (drive) area.”

“You can focus in on who you’re going after and what they’re looking for,” said Valerie Reinke, executive director of Allamakee County Economic Development & Tourism. “We’re getting better at that.”

Driftless Center staffers refer visitors to other nearby sites that match their interests.

Those with questions about the center’s exhibit on Native American culture, for example, are told about the Effigy Mounds National Monument north of Marquette; the exhibit on the area’s history of commercial fishing at the state’s Decorah Fish Hatchery; and Yellow River State Forest as a destination for campers and anglers.

“We just wanted to give people a snapshot, to give them the tools to go out and discover more on their own,” Geerdes said.

Regional focus

Coordination, often organized through Travel Iowa, the state’s tourist promotion agency, helps extend the reach of the river communities’ tourism efforts, which are funded through county hotel-motel taxes that also apply to vacation rentals.

“If we work together as partners, we can talk about our region,” said Reinke, of Allamakee Tourism. “We’re all on the same page. To expand beyond the state, we need to partner up.”

Community events such as farmers markets and summertime weekend festivals also draw visitors from nearby.

“It doesn’t need to be a whole lot but just something,” said Fishnick, of Cassville. “We have weeknight music in the park. It doesn’t draw a ton of tourists, but it’s one of those features that’s nice to have for your family.”

Such amenities might even boost the year-round population. Reinke said the extension of high-speed internet to Allamakee County opens new opportunities for remote workers.

“We all look for those unique things,” Reinke said. “It’s a really big deal to make everything you’ve got a big deal. We want to attract people here, and maybe some of these people would say ‘Maybe you could live here.’ ”

Two years after opening on Memorial Day 2022, Guttenberg Brewing has become a year-round amenity for locals, thanks to its summertime business.

“It’s very dynamic, it’s interesting, and I have a really good staff and making beer is still fun,” Klaes said. “It’s a community space. That was the vision. What I was missing moving to a small town was that place, and it’s what I was looking for. People bring their kids here. It’s nice, it’s multigenerational.”

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