Iowa archaeologists uncovered traces of the camp where workers lived while building Sioux City’s railroad shops

Wooden structural elements, still sitting where they were left, turned up this fall beneath the grounds of the Sioux City Railroad Museum, and they may be the first physical trace of the camp where construction workers lived 110 years ago. Michael Betsinger of the University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist led the team, and Archaeology magazine reported on Oct. 2, 2026 that the crew had uncovered traces of a worker camp from the building of the Milwaukee Railroad Shops Terminal, which ran from 1916 to 1918.

Betsinger was cautious about how far the evidence reaches. He told Siouxland Public Media the feature “has the highest potential to be related to the 1916 to 1918 camp,” a wording that stops short of a confirmed date.

Timber and a possible barracks at the museum grounds

The excavation ran from Sept. 24 to Oct. 2, 2026, on the grounds of the museum, which sits in the Milwaukee Railroad Shops Historic District at 3400 Sioux River Road. According to the magazine’s report, the team found wood structural elements preserved in situ, meaning they were recorded where they lay rather than lifted out.

Siouxland Public Media’s Bret Hayworth described the find as what appears to be a makeshift barracks area. Betsinger said it would be the first known artifact from that time, and museum founder Larry Obermeyer called it a significant feature. Neither report lists artifacts recovered from the feature, and neither gives a laboratory date for the wood, which is why “traces” is the accurate word.

A 350-man construction crew from 1916

The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, known as the Milwaukee Road, announced a repair shop for Sioux City in 1912, and construction began in 1916 and finished two years later. Before the dig, a Siouxland Public Media report on the planned work said at least 350 laborers built the roundhouse, repair shops and engine terminal, and that the investigation timed itself to the 110th anniversary of the September 1916 groundbreaking.

The August announcement said researchers hoped to find intact features, refuse dumps and personal artifacts that show how workers lived. A crew of that size needed somewhere to sleep and eat while the roundhouse went up, and a temporary camp of that kind is easy to lose from the written record once the work is done. That is the gap the 2026 excavation was designed to fill, and the plans also referred to an Indigenous site on the same ground, details of which the September coverage did not give.

Siouxland Public Media’s September preview, published Sept. 18, put the repair shop’s peak workforce at 565, recalled that an earlier dig with University of Iowa participants had taken place at the site a few years before, and said the state archaeologists would work from Sept. 24 to Oct. 2 alongside museum volunteers.

From 30 stalls to a museum

The finished complex was large. Its roundhouse had 30 stalls, and at the peak of the Second World War the shops employed more than 500 people; sources differ on the exact count, giving 560 and 565 in different histories. Diesel engines ended the work: by the mid-1950s the payroll had fallen to ten and the roundhouse shrank from 30 stalls to six, according to the district’s history. Preservation Iowa’s award profile notes that the site spans 30 acres, holds what it calls one of seven surviving roundhouse terminal landscapes in the nation, and passed to the Siouxland Historical Railroad Association in 1995, after railroad operations ended in 1980.

The district drew national attention in 2018, when it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and Siouxland Public Media reported that the museum received a $1.9 million National Park Service grant earlier in 2026. Preservation Iowa credits the association’s volunteers with more than 160,000 hours of restoration work, and gave the group its 2019 Preservation at its Best: Community Effort award.

The 2026 dig was not the first on the grounds. In April 2022 archaeologists and volunteers worked there, and KTIV reported that Cherie Haury-Artz of the Office of the State Archaeologist described finding “lots and lots of stuff associated with the railroad, all kinds of nuts and bolts and big pieces of trains and melted bricks.” That earlier work was backed by a $32,250 research grant from the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the 2026 season continued the partnership between the museum and the state archaeologists.

What remains to be done is the dating. Betsinger’s own phrasing, that the feature has the highest potential to belong to the 1916 to 1918 camp, is the claim that analysis of the wood and any associated artifacts will have to confirm or revise.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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