Named for the town's famous son, "Buffalo" Bill Cody, Cody Road in LeClaire is a great place for travelers to stop and stretch their legs.

With restaurants, boutiques, and even celebrities, this riverfront offers plenty of local culture to explore.

♪♪ Nestled next to the mighty Mississippi, this historic town experienced a revitalization in the early 2000s thanks to a shared community vision.

Hey, what's going on?

He's got a couple of Harleys for sale.

Okay.

Old ones?

Kohlsdorf: To learn more, we turn to Mike Wolfe, host of the long-running TV show "American Pickers," whose energy and innovation helped put this small town on the world stage.

So, this is Antique Archaeology.

This is random chaos.

You got a lot going on in here.

You know, that's the biggest thing.

You know, we don't have a lot of square footage and a lot of people, when they come in here, they're like, "Oh, my gosh, it looks so big on the show."

And I'm like, "Well, there's big ideas here."

I want people to experience some of the things that I have over the years.

And so, when they see me pulling something like this out of a barn, like this old Indian, they don't ever get a chance to, like, actually see it and touch it.

And I think that's intriguing to a lot of people.

Right now the show is in 63 countries, and so we get people from literally all over the world.

Since we're so close to Chicago, they can fly into there, and then they travel on I-80.

And so, downtown LeClaire here, this area, we're only a mile and a half off of I-80.

So, we're drawing a lot of people.

And that's a huge thing for me because, you know, I was involved with city council and I was on the tourism board.

And I understand how all of those things have to plug into our downtown, our Main Street, to make that happen.

Okay, so we built this building about seven years ago because, obviously, you can see there wasn't a lot of space next door.

And, you know, we did brick walls inside.

The ceiling's pickled.

There's a lot of natural light.

And I wanted to kind of create a space that, like, the things that, you know, the areas that I find things in.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I want people to feel like antiques, that word isn't intimidating.

Mm.

Because when you say that word, they're like, "Well, that's...

I don't know anything about that.

That sounds expensive," or "I don't really know what to pay."

And so that's what you want for people who come here.

You want that experience for them of being able to see some of these finds and see what's out there.

For that short, little moment that we have people's attention, you know, I want to be impactful.

♪♪ Kohlsdorf: That impact has helped create a momentous movement of new establishments along Cody Road.

LeClaire has a lot of really unique things to offer.

One, we are right on the Great River Road.

Our Main Street's right on it.

We have retail shopping.

We have a lot of great restaurants.

We have wine bars.

We have a distillery.

We have a brewery.

All that's going on.

But the best thing that we've got is we have no levee.

We have no dam walls.

You can literally walk down to the shore and dip your toe in the water.

The river, you have full access.

You have full access of this river visually, which is really incredible.

Yeah, and not a lot of places have that.

So, you could go all the way to McGregor down to Keokuk, and it would be difficult to be on Main Street and be right on the river.

You know, "Buffalo" Bill played here as a child.

We have the Buffalo Bill Museum.

We have one of the last wooden-hull paddle-wheel boats on display in that museum that worked on this river.

You know, there's just so much tremendous amount of history here.

This place right here is beautiful, this LeClaire River Loft.

So, you can stay right downtown above a coffee house with a big porch and look out over all of this in the morning and kind of take it all in.

Kohlsdorf: Let's go and take in a few other things that LeClaire has to offer.

Our first stop, the Mississippi River Distilling Company, which has become a popular spot along the Great River Road.

For some reason, when we came down Highway 67 and hit that bend in downtown LeClaire, and you see the streetlights and you see the river and the antique downtown, it was just like, "Oh, this belongs here.

This is the place."

The distillery brought something new, you know, to antique shops and clothing stores, things like that.

It then kind of led itself to some more of that stuff.

Boom, we get a brewery next door.

We have a winery down the street right now.

We call it "Libations Lane" now that you can walk from all three, and it just brings an atmosphere and an energy when you can bounce around.

And then it provides for great nightlife with the restaurants and things like that that we have going.

So, the rising waters float all the boats.

Collier: Right now we're at the north part of the downtown in LeClaire.

My wife and I, Kim, decided to purchase this last May, and it's Root 67 Shops.

We have four tenants in here.

We've got Buttercupp Candles, the Nest, modern-day general store, the Clothing Company.

And then we have Cody Rose Flower Company, as well.

This property, which has been underutilized for such a long period, is really a key piece to utilize what's here, not let it sit empty for a number of years, and really try to bring in a younger crowd into LeClaire with giving them an opportunity of a storefront.

Kohlsdorf: Mike and I are stopping in at his friend's shop in a building he helped restore.

Wolfe: Emily.

Gwin: Hi!

Hey!

We have a visitor in town.

Ooh, this is a cool place.

And I wanted to show her your store because it's so incredible.

Yeah!

What is this?

Where are we?

Gwin: This is Emily Found It.

It's my vintage boutique.

Wolfe: I restored this building, and while I was restoring it, Emily and I had worked together for 12 years.

And she would come down, and she'd take pictures of the building, and then she's like, "The building's so cool.

It's so cool."

And then one day she came to me and she's like, "It's so cool.

I want to quit, and I want to open my own store."

And I was like, "What?!"

You know?

And so, she's been doing it, and I love it.

Kohlsdorf: LeClaire is part of the Great River Road.

Why do you think people should stop here?

So, LeClaire really has a lot of tools in their toolbox when it comes to tourism and bringing, you know, the masses to our town and to the Great River Road here.

And I think, you know, just being a small bit of that, having a shop here that specializes in vintage and kind of unique off-the-wall items, it kind of just brings this whole experience into a clearer picture.

Does small town matter?

Like, this is authentic.

This is what people want.

If you want to come down and meet the guy who made your whiskey and talk to the lady who, you know, ordered these clothes and did this and that curated these knickknacks that you're buying and these antiques, and talk to the chef and all those, that happens in LeClaire.

That happens in places like this.

And rural Iowa can offer something that no city in the country can when we put our best foot forward.

♪♪