E. M. DICKEY COMPANY (THE)

E. M. DICKEY COMPANY (THE). The E. M. Dickey Company, Joseph "Diamond Jo" REYNOLDS, president and E. M. Dickey, secretary and treasurer, was incorporated August 1, 1886. The business was an extensive buyer of grain at almost all MISSISSIPPI RIVER points above Dubuque. The firm extended this business into western Iowa where it constructed a number of elevators and warehouses on the main line of the ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD and also at the principal stations on the Cherokee and Dakota extensions of the same road.

In 1887 the elevator operated by the company at Dubuque was too small to handle its business. The company then leased the Illinois Central Railroad elevator under construction in East Dubuque, Illinois and operated it as a cleaning and distributing house for both river and western grain. This elevator had a storage capacity of 200,000 bushels and a handling capacity of forty to fifty cars a day.

The company made a specialty of furnishing choice grades of milling wheat, barley and oats in round lots. E. M. Dickey also handled anthracite and smithing coal, besides being an agent for the sale of the coal on the Illinois Central and Minnesota & Northwestern Railways.

Besides the chief items of grain and coal, the company was a large dealer in salt, cement, lime, stucco, and land plaster. It was the supply agent of the DIAMOND JO LINE carrying a large stock of steamboat and raft supplies, manilla rope, tackle blocks, fire brick, tile and clay, oars and row locks, oakum, cotton duck and all other articles usually found in a first class ship chandlery store.

The 1890-91 Dubuque City Directory listed 1 Levee.