Overview
The Mason House Inn faces the Des Moines River in the historic village of Bentonsport, Iowa — built in 1846 by Mormon craftsmen pausing on the westward trail, and serving river travellers ever since: steamboat passengers in the packet era, and, in local record, wounded soldiers as a Civil War hospital stop, with the underground railroad woven into regional telling of the riverfront. Claimed as Iowa's oldest continuously operating inn, its rooms keep original furnishings including a famous fold-down copper bathtub. The inn's keepers have long embraced its reputation as the state's most haunted lodging: house telling counts five gentle spirits — a caretaker figure who tucks in guests' blankets, a boy in the hallways, knocks answered from empty rooms, voices and cold spots — accounts shared over breakfast, collected by regional investigators, and featured in Iowa's haunted-travel canon, unverified and warmly held. Bentonsport itself is a National Historic District of a dozen surviving buildings. Present the Mason House as river-era heritage first, its five residents the friendliest register in Iowa; room details from the inn's pages.