Live cameras in Clinton, United States

Clinton is the easternmost city in Iowa, a river town on the west bank of the Mississippi in Clinton County, of which it is the county seat. About 24,500 people lived here at the 2020 census. In the second half of the nineteenth century Clinton and neighboring Lyons, which merged with it in 1895, floated logs down from the northern forests and milled them into lumber, earning the title Lumber Capital of the World. Just upstream, Lock and Dam No. 13 holds back the river at one of its widest points, close to two miles across, and the waters around it belong to the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge.

The cameras here are run by the Iowa Department of Transportation, and they mix ordinary traffic views with road-weather cameras that sit beside sensors measuring pavement and air temperature. Pictures update every few minutes. U.S. Route 30, the old Lincoln Highway, passes through town and crosses into Illinois on the Gateway Bridge, while U.S. Route 67 follows the river as part of the Great River Road. Expect riverfront approaches, the bridge ramps and stretches of highway leading inland toward DeWitt.

When to look

Clinton is on Central Time. In midwinter the sun sets before five, and the road-weather views are most useful then, when ice can form on bridge decks before it shows on other pavement. Each winter bald eagles gather below the locks and dams of the upper Mississippi to fish in water the dams keep open, so the riverfront draws birdwatchers on cold, clear days. Summer brings warm, humid weather, barge traffic, long evenings that stay light past half past eight, and shows at the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre, a riverboat moored on the levee.

Across the river lies Fulton, Illinois, known for its Dutch windmill, and a short drive north on the Great River Road leads to Eagle Point Park, whose bluff-top tower looks out over the Mississippi.

Sources: Clinton, Iowa - Wikipedia · Iowa 511 traveler information · Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge - U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.