A spectacular panoramic view of fifty miles of the beautiful Mississippi River valley rewards visitors who take the sidetrip up the 104-acre Mount Hosmer City Park, situated on a bluff 450 feet above the town of Lansing. This park is named for Harriet Hosmer, a sculptress, who won a footrace to the summit of the hill during a steamboat layover during the 1850s. 
The park overlooks the historic Lansing Blackhawk Bridge that was designed by Melvin Stone and privately built in 1931 by the Iowa-Wisconsin Bridge Company which sold shares and operated the bridge as a toll bridge until an ice dam damaged an auxiliary bridge on the Wisconsin side. The main bridge was operable but sat unused from 1945 to 1957 at which point Iowa and Wisconsin assumed ownership of the bridge and made the necessary repairs to the auxiliary bridge and also raised the causeway to the main bridge to prevent flooding over the road. The original bridge also had a wood deck which was changed to the steel grid in use today. The bridge remains incredibly sturdy despite the occasional yearly barge that runs into one of the outlying pilings erected for this reason.
