Sioux City, Iowa: Waterfront sets the stage for dancing, biking and hiking

Sioux City and Sioux Falls are often considered the same place by the national media, and the two Siouxs do share a first name and geographical proximity. However, they are different towns.

Sioux Falls, S.D., has gotten most of the recent attention with high Money magazine livability rankings and has a booming economy. Meanwhile, Sioux City, Iowa, 80 miles to the south, has been at the bottom of Money rankings and struggling economically.

Growing up in Yankton, S.D., in the 1960s and '70s, I thought of the "Two Sues" as our nearby big cities. Sioux City was the older, more established town. Sioux Falls was younger and smaller.

But like a younger brother that got the student loans and the lucky break, Sioux Falls, in a sense, got to go to college in the 1970s and '80s. It got credit card processing, financial services, and an ever growing medical community. On the other hand, Sioux City remained a hard-working, blue-collar kind of a place with packing plants, chemical plants and old warehouses down by the Missouri, the railroad and a historic tugboat.

Sioux Falls was up. Sioux City was down.

However, Sioux City didn't give up. Like a proud worker, the town spruced up its front yard, so to speak. The city's developments along the shore of the Missouri River are an example of what a riverfront should be.

The area caters to all tastes and pocketbooks. For art lovers, there are the curves and arches of the Anderson Dance Pavilion. It anchors the area. At the east end is the Belle of Sioux City gambling riverboat. At the west end is a marina. In between are an up-to-date playground and the Sergeant Floyd, an old Army Corps of Engineers river tug. The boat has three facets: a museum expounding on its former days plying the Missouri, an excellent museum on the history of exploration and transportation in the region, and a visitor center.

A biking/walking path winds its way through all the sites. In warmer weather, those who like the wet and wild can take advantage of the Missouri for water-skiing, Jet Skiing, boating, fishing and swimming.

The surrounding hills are a more recent tourist development. Sioux City sits on the Loess Hills, a rare geological phenomenon of silt-blown hills covered with a heavy canopy of trees. The only other area like it in the world is in China. The Loess Hills Visitors Center is one of the best hands-on nature centers in the area. The center is alive with the happy, active sounds of children playing with coyote pelts, listening to bird calls and learning all about surrounding trees, hills and critters.

The hills are a great place to take in the vista of the city and the surrounding river valleys. Scenic drives in Woodbury and Plymouth counties pleasantly wind you through, around, and into the hills. They are an unexpected gem in a land of corn.

Nearly 200 years ago, the Lewis and Clark expedition poled and pulled its heavy riverboats up the Missouri past what is now Sioux City on its exploratory mission. Sioux City has had its struggles since then, too, but the results, though hard-earned, are worth a visit.

--Todd Epp, a graduate law student at the University of Houston Law Center, is a a freelance writer from Harrisburg, S.D.