Moline ( ) is a city in Rock Island County, Illinois, United States. The population was 42,985 as of the 2020 census, and was estimated at 42,362 in 2025. It is the largest city in Rock Island County and the 36th-most populous in Illinois outside the Chicago metropolitan area. Moline is one of the Quad Cities at the confluence of the Rock and Mississippi rivers, along with neighboring East Moline and Rock Island in Illinois and the cities of Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa. The Quad Cities metropolitan area had a population of approximately 380,452 as of 2025.
Moline was established in 1843. The name derives from the French moulin meaning "mill [town]". The corporate headquarters of Deere & Company is located in Moline, as was Montgomery Elevator; its acquirer Kone has its U.S. division headquartered in Moline. Quad Cities International Airport, Black Hawk College, and the Quad Cities campus of Western Illinois University-Quad Cities are located in Moline. It is a retail hub for the Illinois Quad Cities, as South Park Mall and numerous big-box shopping plazas are located in the city. Moline's downtown serves as one of the civic and recreational hubs of the region as many events take place at the 12,000-seat Vibrant Arena at The MARK and at John Deere Commons.
History Early history to 1848 In 1837, David B. Sears and a group of associates built a stone-and-brush dam across Sylvan Slough, thereby connecting the southern bank of the Mississippi River to what is today called Arsenal Island. The dam not only served as an access road between the island's settlements and the mainland, but it provided water power for a mill which Sears built to saw wood, grind corn, and card wool. The water power generated by the dam attracted many industrialists. Over the next seven years, a number of factories sprouted up along the shoreline. A factory town was platted in 1843 on the Illinois shore under the working name of "Rock Island Mills". The name did not stick. When Charles Atkinson, one of the major landowners in the area, was offered the choice of naming the town Moline ("City of Mills", from the French moulin, as suggested by a local surveyor P.H. Olgilvie) or Hesperia (meaning "Star of the West"), he chose Moline. The town of Moline was incorporated on April 21, 1848, under Illinois state law and granted a charter for a trustee form of government.
The same year, John Deere, the inventor of the self-scouring steel plow, relocated his steel plow company from Grand Detour, Illinois, to Moline. At the time, Moline had a population of only a few hundred, mostly involved in work at the mill. Despite Moline's small size, Deere saw several promising elements there: Moline's dam and coal deposits would provide a good source of power; Moline was near the other well-established towns of Stephenson (later renamed Rock Island) in Illinois and Davenport in Iowa; and Moline's access to the river would make shipping goods cost-efficient. As Deere expanded his factories, Moline grew in area and population.
Charles Atkinson and others successfully lobbied the federal government to get the first transcontinental railroad to pass through Moline and to cross the Mississippi over Arsenal Island. The railroad, which arrived in 1854, carried thousands of immigrants – at that time mostly Swedish, Belgian, and German, reflecting areas of economic problems in Europe – to Moline's borders. The immigrants, most of whom knew little or no English, responded to the call of "John Deere Town" by the conductor. The railroad connected the region to the national economy, ending its previous isolation, and ensured the future success of the area. Manufactured goods were increasingly transported over rail instead of by water.Bess Pierce, Moline: A Pictorial History, Virginia Beach: The Donning Co. Publishers, 1993, p. 17.
Moline's founding fathers were primarily ambitious industrialists from New England. David B. Sears came to Moline from the Northeast by way of Cairo, Illinois, and Atkinson, John W. Spencer, and Spencer H. White, other prominent founding men, were also New Englanders. They brought a stern work ethic and controlled civic life; Moline, in contrast to its neighbors, was not a "shoot 'em up river-town".Jae Bryson, "Moline follows industrious path", Quad City Times, Apr 30, 1998, p. 4C An article in the Moline Workman in 1854 noted that a "much duller town could not be scared up this side of Sleepy Hollow".Roald Tweet, The Quad Cities: An American Mosaic, Rock Island, Illinois: East Hall Press, 1996, p. 20. Moline attracted large waves of immigrants from Sweden, who were believed to be family-minded, God-fearing, community-oriented workers who rarely went on strike."Moline: Its Interests and Industries", Promotional pamphlet and map, Moline: Porter Printing Company, 1888.
Following incorporation, Moline was laid out in an orderly initial grid of sixteen square blocks with streets named after the primary landowners of the time. The New Englanders chose not to install a town common or park along the river, as they thought the space would be better used for industrial purposes. Many of these founders clearly envisioned a "Lowell on the Mississippi", after a major industrial city of Massachusetts; Moline was marketed as a "Lowell of the West" to potential investors and immigrants.
As Moline grew around its mills and factories, and as its neighbor to the west, Rock Island, continued to grow at a similar pace, the neighboring towns ran up against one another's borders relatively quickly. In the mid-19th century, articles about "consolidation" were a daily feature in the Moline Workman and the Rock Island Advertiser; city leaders dreamed of the joint city becoming the largest in the state."Things at Moline", The Rock Island Advertiser, Rock Island, Illinois, May 4, 1854. As local leaders sat down to discuss consolidation, however, disputes arose, with the most important being which city would subsume the other. As the county seat and earliest settlement on the Illinois side, Rock Island argued that it should annex Moline; Moline, being more prosperous and better known nationally, wanted to keep its name. Other points of conflict included that Moline did not want to have to assume any of Rock Island's public debt; Rock Island feared that a union with Moline would drive down its property values; and the citizens of the two towns, representing different regions, classes, occupations and ethnicities, widely disagreed on major political issues of the day. Many leaders of Rock Island, a community founded largely by Southerners, remained sympathetic to the Confederate cause throughout the Civil War. Meanwhile, Moline was ardently Republican.Tweet, p. 21 The talks of consolidation ceased, although they would later return but were never resolved in favor of the merger.
1860s–1940s After the Civil War, the population of Moline continued to grow. The street grid was expanded to the east and west along the shoreline and to the south up the bluffs. There was a severe housing shortage; few men were rich enough to invest in real estate other than what they could afford to build for themselves, and few incoming workers had sufficient funds to build a home.Newspaper clipping from The Rock Island Union, Rock Island, Illinois, Aug. 15, 1868. Nevertheless, Moline's expansion was generally an orderly affair. The street grid remained a set of rectangular blocks, and though no zoning commission or local authority directly oversaw construction, the unwritten code of carpenters, masons, and citizens kept the city a well-planned place. Temperance societies and lyceums joined other reform movements and social organizations in prominence within the community.William Roba, The River and the Prairie: A History of the Quad-Cities, 1812–1960, Quad-Cities, Illinois: The Hesperian Press, 1986, p. 20. The quality of life was generally regarded as quite good: "The laboring men of Moline are among the most prosperous to be found in the country. Instead of spending their spare earnings in saloons and dram shops, they carefully hoard them and in a few years a little home of their own is the result.""New homes in Moline – what our laboring men do with their money", Rock Island Union, Rock Island, Illinois, July 15, 1868.
Over time, John Deere expanded operations into other agricultural equipment, and Deere-affiliated factories employed the bulk of Moline's workforce. Soon other Moline-based companies became known around the country for their products. These include Dimock, Gould, and Co., Moline Pipe Organ Co., and Moline Furniture Works, to name a few. In addition, several pioneering automobile companies operated in the city, among them Moline Automobile Company,Floyd Clymer, Treasury of Early American Automobiles, 1877–1925 (New York: Bonanza Books, 1950), p. 51. Moline Wagon Company, Stephens (a marque of the Moline Plow Company) and Velie Motors Corporation.
During the last few decades of the 19th century, Moline had continued prosperity, expansion of the city to the southwest, west, and east along the Mississippi river, and a stronger relationship with neighboring communities. Consolidation talks began again with Rock Island but failed as the two cities quarreled over which would acquire the other. By 1880, Moline had 7,800 residents, and by 1890 there were 12,000. Rock Island kept pace with 8,500 and 13,000 people respectively. New jobs were created primarily in Moline in this era.Jim Renkes, The Quad-Cities and the People, Helena, Montana: American & World Geographic Publishing and the Quad-City Times, 1994, p. 70.
Several improvements in construction and urban planning led to a shift in urban growth strategies in Moline. The first buildings were equipped with heat in September 1897, and electricity first arrived in Moline in 1881 when John Deere & Co. installed sixteen electric streetlights on the roadway outside its factories. Work on an electric streetcar system soon followed, and within the same decade, an intercity streetcar system linked Moline with Rock Island and Davenport. The diminishing reliance on well water or the river allowed home construction to proceed further up the bluff, and the electric streetcars allowed Tri-Citians to live in one community and shop or work in another. Moline's streetcar system, the state's first and only the nation's third, was also Illinois's best for a number of years, with a minimal five-cent fare and an extensive coverage area.Tweet, p. 34. The state's first garbage collection system was also developed in Moline in 1894. In this time, the municipal administration bureaucracy first began to grow, with departments created for sanitation, public works, utilities, and recreation. New public buildings also were constructed; the first public library came in 1873, the YMCA was built in 1885, and Moline Public Hospital opened in 1896.Jonathan Turner, "Moline authors chronicle ‘City of Mills,’" The Moline Dispatch. Moline, Illinois, Apr. 19, 1998, p. A10.
In the midst of steady growth and changing times, the town's founders struggled to maintain their positions of authority. Moline was re-chartered as a city under a mayor/aldermanic form of government on April 21, 1872, and John Deere, the longtime resident and entrepreneur, was defeated by Daniel Wheelock, a newcomer, for the first mayorship.Roba, p. 86. Belgian and Swedish immigrants began arriving in a huge influx, settling into a neighborhood on the bluffs in the southwestern part of the city. Belgian immigrants came predominantly to work in the fledgling auto industry in Moline, Velie Motors, founded by a Deere relative. For a time, Moline had the second largest Belgian population in the country after Detroit. Swedish immigrants continued to be drawn to Deere & Company, with John Deere as leader continuing to hire new employees in droves until his death in 1886.Renkes, p. 78.