June 14, 2022

Steve & Sandy Swan donated a large and rare Natural Lake Pepin Pearl to the Muscatine Pearl Button museum, to represent Lake Pepin and Lake City, MN for the history of the clamming industry. If you lived in Lake City in those days you , or some of your family probably made a living harvesting clams or working in one of the three button factories that resided along the shore of the Mississippi.

Pictures below show the donated pearl and equipment on display at the Muscatine button museum.

Equipment on display include Shell cutters and punches used to shape buttons and a full scale clamming boat complete with rows of “crows hook” which the clammer would pull through the water catching clams. When the crows hook would touch the clams, the clams would shut quickly and would be captured and hauled into the boats.