Leah Eichhorn is thrilled to be back in her hometown of Dubuque. Like a lot of educated young people, Eichhorn packed up and left once she became an adult, lighting out for Phoenix back in 2000 because there was so little opportunity where she’d grown up. The Iowa town, which sits alongside the Mississippi River across from Illinois and Wisconsin, had lost most of its manufacturing and agricultural sector employment during the 1980s, leaving it at one point with the worst unemployment rate in the nation.
Image: IBM is housed in a former department store, one of four old stores in downtown Dubuque, Iowa, that now are filled with white-collar workers. (Photos by David Kidd)
