Exploring Illinois by Rich Moreno

More crooked than a Chicago politician: Burlington’s Snake Alley

2011-03-08T07:18:00.000-08:00

It’s been called the Crookedest Street in the World—although some would say that distinction belongs to San Francisco’s Lombard Street—and it goes by the name of Snake Alley.

Located in the historic Mississippi River town of Burlington, Iowa (located about 48 miles northwest of Macomb, Ill.), Snake Alley was built in 1894. Its winding design was an attempt to construct a road down a very steep hillside in order to link the downtown business district to the North Sixth Street neighborhood shopping area. It was hoped that such a street would be safe for horse-drawn carriages.

The man behind the street was Charles Starker, a German-educated architect and landscape engineer, who came up with the street’s curvy design. George Kriechbaum, a prominent local paving contractor, constructed the road, which is made of tooled, curved limestone curbing and locally kilned, blueclay bricks.

Because of the hill’s steepness—it rises nearly 60 feet from Washington Street to Columbia Street—the alley has five half-curves and two quarter-curves spread over a distance of some 275 feet.

Ironically, because of the number of tight hairpin turns on the street, it didn’t prove to be particularly safe for horse carriages, which tipped on the steep curves. But over the years, Snake Alley did evolve into a popular local landmark that today attracts thousands of people eager to navigate its twists and turns.

Snake Alley is open for vehicle traffic between May and October, when the brick pavement isn’t too slick from snow or rain.

Booksigning in Galesburg on April 9

2011-03-01T14:51:00.000-08:00

I just set up a booksigning for my new book, "Illinois Curiosities," at Stone Alley Collectibles and Books, 53 South Seminary Street in Galesburg, IL on Saturday, April 9, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Anyone who is in the area please stop by to say hello.

Also, here's a link to a nice story about the book written by Erin McCarthy for the Galesburg Register-Mail: http://www.galesburg.com/lifestyles/x639358092/Curiosities-attract-attention-to-Knox-County-earn-book-blurbs.

Illinois Curiosities Book Released

2011-02-15T10:16:00.000-08:00

My newest book, "Illinois Curiosities," is now out. Here's a link to a cool story about the book: http://www.mcdonoughvoice.com/news/x1179526575/WIU-author-pens-Illinois-travel-book.

The Site of the Infamous Murder Castle

2010-04-06T06:58:00.000-07:00

One of the most bizarre stories in Chicago history is the tale of America’s first serial killer, Dr. Henry H. Holmes, and his Murder Castle.

In the summer of 1886, Holmes, whose real name was Herman Mudgett, went to work in a drugstore owned by Dr. E.S. Holton, in Englewood, a suburb of Chicago that is now part of the city.

Holmes, who graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School, had already racked up a fairly impressive resume of fraud, forgery and petty theft by this time, including, while still a med student, taking out insurance policies on cadavers he stole from the school. He would disfigure the bodies, claim they were the victims of accidents, and then collect on their insurance.

Unaware of Holmes’ previous activities, Dr. Holton, who was dying of cancer, was easily charmed by the young man. After Dr. Holton died, Holmes took over the drugstore—mysteriously, the widow Holton soon disappeared and was never seen again—claiming he had purchased it from Mrs. Holton who had moved to California.

In addition to being a killer, Holmes was also a bigamist and a philanderer. In 1878, he had married Clara Lovering in New Hampshire but later abandoned her. Nine years later, he married Myrtle Belnap in Minneapolis, despite still being married to his first wife.

That marriage ended in 1889 but a year later he was having an affair with Julia Conner, the wife of one of his employees. By 1893, he had tired of Connor and began a relationship with Minnie Williams. Shortly after, Connor and her daughter disappeared. A year later, he married Georgianna Yoke and shortly after that Williams and her sister, who Holmes had also seduced, disappeared.

But the murders of those women only hinted at the horrors that would be attributed to Holmes. In 1889, he purchased a large lot across the street from the drugstore and started building a three-story, block-long hotel, which the media later dubbed the Murder Castle.

During the hotel’s construction, Holmes repeatedly changed builders so only he completely understood the design of the structure.

And it’s no understatement to say the design was unusual. While the ground floor seemed normal enough—it housed his relocated drugstore and several shops—the upper two floors contained his personal office and a maze of more than 70 rooms with no windows as well as doors that opened into brick walls, hallways built at odd angles, secret passages, trap doors, soundproof rooms, stairs that led nowhere and doors that could only be opened from the outside.

Even more bizarre were the more special design elements he incorporated, such as a hot burning, gas-fueled kiln in the basement and vault rooms with mysterious gas lines controlled from his office.

In 1892, Holmes’ lodging house was completed and he began advertising rooms for rent, specifically targeting out-of-town visitors coming to Chicago for the upcoming World’s Fair.

Additionally, he placed classified ads in small town newspapers in the various parts of the Midwest, offering jobs to young ladies. His ploy was to offer a young woman a position but stress she needed to withdraw all her money from the bank because she would need funds to get started. He would also take out a large life insurance policy on her. Once the young woman had settled into the hotel, she would become his captive and disappear.

No one knows for sure how many people Holmes killed, although he later said 27, and some sources have claimed he murdered as many as 200. At the conclusion of the World’s Fair, Holmes, who was being harassed by his creditors as well as detectives hired by the families of some of the missing people, tried to burn his castle in order to collect $6,000 in insurance money. When that failed, he abandoned the hotel and set out for Texas, where he planned to build a duplicate.

But it wasn’t Holmes murders that brought him to the attention of police. In 1895, he was arrested for trying to defraud an insurance company of $10,000 for the death of an accomplice, Ben Pitezel. The company originally thought the body wasn’t Pitezel, but realized that not only was it Pitezel but he had been murdered by Holmes.

A dogged Philadelphia detective began retracing Holmes’ tracks and discovered that not only had Holmes murdered Pitezel but also the dead man’s three missing children.

Chicago police began searching the abandoned hotel and discovered in the basement a vat of acid with a human skull and parts of eight ribs not quite dissolved, mounds of quicklime, the kiln, a dissection table, surgical tools and more bones.

In August 1895, much of the Murder Castle was mysteriously destroyed by fire. Some believed it was set by a Holmes associate who didn't want the police to discover anything else while others felt it was someone who wanted to rid the neighborhood of such a blemish. A month later, Holmes was convicted in Philadelphia of Pitezel’s murder and sentenced to death by hanging.

Throughout his incarceration, Holmes wrote different confessions, each a blend of rationalization, prevarication and a bit of truth. In one version written shortly before his execution, he wrote, “I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer no more than the poet can help the inspiration to song.”

On May 7, 1896, Holmes was hanged and buried, according to his wishes, in a coffin filled with cement that was covered with even more cement (he was concerned about his body being dug up by grave robbers). He lies in the Holy Cross Cemetery, located south of Philadelphia.

As for the Murder Castle, following the fire the upper floors were removed while the street level shops reopened. In 1937, the aging structure was sold to the U.S. government, which demolished it for a post office, which still stands on the site.

There are no plaques or signs memorializing the heinous crimes once committed on the site. It’s as if it was all just a bad dream.

The former site of Dr. H.H. Holmes notorious Murder Castle is on the corner of South Wallace and 63rd streets in Chicago, which is now the Englewood Post Office.

Beware the Maneaters of Tsavo

2010-04-02T10:47:00.000-07:00

The lions in the Kenyan region of Tsavo are different. For instance, fully grown males don't have full manes of hair like other African lions.

Additionally, for a period of time in 1898, a pair of Tsavo lions acquired a taste for something that most lions tend to shun---human beings.

The tale of the man-eating Tsavo lions began in March of 1898 when Indian workers erected a railway bridge over the Tsavo River, started being attacked by two lions. The British, who controlled Kenya at the time, had brought the workers to Africa to help build the Kenya-Uganda Railway.

During the next nine months, the two big cats killed and ate at least 72 workers—with some claiming nearly double that many were attacked and consumed. Frightened by the seemingly supernatural pair of lions, workers tries to scare them off by surrounding their camp with bonfires and fences made of thorn bushes. Yet despite these efforts, the lions continued their reign of terror.

Lt. Colonel John Henry Patterson, who supervised the construction, set traps and attempted to ambush the lions—even sitting in a tree all night with his rifle—but the killing continued.

Finally, on December 9, 1898, he managed to shoot one of the big cats. In his later published account, which became the basis for the 1996 film, “The Ghost and the Darkness,” Patterson said he initially wounded the lion in the hindquarters but it escaped.

He claimed that as he continued to hunt the animal into the night, it, in turn, began stalking him. He shot it several more times but wasn’t certain it was dead until he found the body the next morning. It had taken five shots to finish the job.

Three weeks after killing the first lion, he managed to track down the other. In his account, Patterson said he shot the beast five times and, despite having a shattered leg, it continued to charge him and chased him up a tree.

After the animal limped off, he came down from the tree only to have the cat charge him again. He fired two more shots, hitting it in the chest and in the head.

The last bullet finally stopped it in its tracks.

Patterson rather melodramatically noted that the beast “died gamely, biting savagely at a branch which had fallen to the ground.”

Patterson, who claimed the lions had killed 135 people, took the remains of the two lions and made them into trophy rugs. In 1924, when he came to lecture at Chicago’s Field Museum, Patterson agreed to sell the hides and skeletons to the museum, which reconstructed them as lifelike models and put them on display.

In recent years, Field Museum biologist Bruce Patterson (no relation to John) and others have studied the lions to discover why the males lack manes and why the two rogue animals started eating humans.

The new research has revealed several things about the two Tsavo lions: they didn’t eat as many people as claimed by John Patterson (somewhere between 35 and 72) and they weren’t oversized, mutant killing machines, as they’ve sometimes been portrayed.

Additionally, it’s thought they may have acquired their taste for people after digging up the bodies of dead or dying slaves dumped by ruthless slave traders on the Tsavo caravan route or because one of them had a severe tooth abscess, which would have made relatively soft humans an easier thing to eat.

As for the lack of a mane, again researchers have several explanations. One is that Tsavo lions live in an extremely dry climate so they’ve evolved to have less hair, which keeps them cooler. Another theory is that their manes are torn off by the many thorn-bushes that proliferate in the region.

But regardless of whether they killed 135 people or 35, the legend of the man-eating cats remains a compelling one that helps to make them one of the most popular attractions in Chicago's Field Museum (1400 South Lake Shore Drive).

The Lord Speaks in Mysterious Ways: Quincy's 'Jesus Tree'

2010-03-27T20:48:00.000-07:00

It takes a bit of faith to see the so-called Jesus Tree, located in the Roman Catholic Calvary Cemetery in Quincy.

Maybe quite a bit of faith.

Sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s, a cemetery worker was strolling through the cemetery grounds when he stopped to look at an ancient birch tree. The tree, estimated to be more than 150 years old, had a protruding knot on one side.

As the worker looked at the tree he saw, for the first time, that the growth and surrounding darkened bark resembled a life-sized, bearded, longhaired man in a long robe, standing with his arms wrapped around a lamb---clearly the image of Jesus Christ, he thought.

At first, he kept his discovery to himself but then decided he had to share it with others. Word quickly spread about the miraculous image of Jesus on the tree and stories soon appeared in the local media.

Within a short time, thousands of visitors were stopping by daily to view what became known as “The Jesus Tree” or “The Good Shepherd Tree.” A nearby guest book recorded more than 30,000 signatures.

The cemetery responded by roping off the area around tree, primarily to keep true believers from striping off pieces of bark to take home as souvenirs.

These days, the number of people wanting to see the Jesus Tree appears to have dwindled. Still, it’s said that the best way to view the image is to stand 15 to 20 feet away from the tree at the northeast corner of the roped off area. From there, you can clearly see the big knot, which, from the right angle and in the right light, does appear to look like a person holding something. If you stare long enough you begin to see eyes and long hair in the bark.

It could look like Jesus. Or just a tree with a big knot on its side.

Where Wyatt Earp was born—or not

2010-03-12T06:59:00.000-08:00

One of Illinois’ most famous native sons is a man not usually associated with the Land of Lincoln. Legendary western lawman Wyatt Earp was born in Monmouth, Ill. on March 19, 1848, the fourth of six children of Nicholas Porter Earp and Virginia Ann Earp.

The place Earp is believed to have been born is a two-story, pioneer Greek-Revival style house at 406 3rd Street (however, a local Monmouth College history professor has argued he was born in a different house).

Regardless of whether he was actually born in that house, which is officially known as the Wyatt Earp Birthplace and Museum, he certainly didn’t initially spend a whole lot of time there or in any other home in Monmouth. Less than two years after his birth, his father announced plans to move to California but made it as far as Pella, Iowa (about 150 miles west of Monmouth).

By 1856, the Earp clan was back in Monmouth, this time residing in a house at either 409 or 411 South B Street (historians aren’t sure about this, either), before returning to Pella in 1859.

The peripatetic Earps apparently finally headed out to California by wagon train in 1864. About five years later, Earp cropped up in Lamar, Missouri, where he took a position as the town constable, his first stint as a lawman (ironically, about two years later he fled amidst charges he had stolen money from the community and was a horse thief).

Earp’s ties to Illinois, however, weren’t completely severed. By 1872, he was living in the Peoria area, apparently operating a brothel with his brother, Morgan.

Both brothers were arrested in February 1872 and charged with “keeping and being found in a house of ill-fame.” The two Earps were picked up again a few months later at the same house of ill repute and then shifted their business to a floating whorehouse on the Illinois River.

In August 1872, authorities also broke up this operation and it is believe that the Earp brothers soon left the area for good.

Of course, after that Earp went on to become one of the West’s most renowned lawmen.

His later exploits as a deputy marshal in the lawless town of Dodge City, Kansas, and his role in the infamous shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona in 1881 made him famous. He died in Los Angeles in 1929 at the age of 80.

As for the Earp Birthplace and Museum, in 2007 its owners, Robert and Melba Matson, who have fought long and hard to persuade the world that their house is the real deal, put the popular attraction up for sale (they’ve retired in Arizona).

So far no one has met the minimum asking price of $100,000 but the owners remain optimistic. In the meantime, the museum is open daily between Memorial Day and Labor Day from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and by appointment. Additionally, the museum hosts an annual Wyatt Earp Day in late July.

Purple Martin's Majesty

2010-03-05T07:44:00.000-08:00

People in Griggsville really love purple martins.

They like the birds so much that more than 5,000 birdhouses line the city streets and in the town center they erected a 562-unit avian high-rise, which serves as home to hundreds of the blue-black birds (members of the swallow family) that are valued for their alleged ability to allegedly consume 2,000 mosquitoes per day.

The town is so enamored with the birds that it has proclaimed itself the Purple Martin Capital of the Nation. The claim even appears on the town’s water tower.

Griggsville’s purple martin-mania can be traced to 1962, when the local Jaycees were trying to combat a persistent mosquito problem—in the summer months Griggsville is a magnet for the bloodsuckers because it’s near both the Illinois and Mississippi rivers—but hesitant to use increasing amounts of chemical pesticides.

A local man, J.L. Wade, suggested that purple martins might be the answer because they eat nothing but tons of flying insects and, at the time, were an endangered species. Also, he knew that the birds don’t build their own nests but like to inhabit manmade structures.

Wade and the Jaycees consulted with ornithologists and developed a two-story, aluminum bird abode, which became known as the M-12K house. The design was so successful that Wade, who previously manufactured TV antennas, began commercially building the structures; his company is now known as Nature House Inc.

Later that year, the Jaycees installed more than two-dozen of the distinctive green and white houses, attached to tall aluminum poles at 100-foot intervals along the community’s main road. However, the service club’s crowning achievement was erecting a tower of martin manors rising 70-feet high and featuring 562 apartments.

The giant avian condo attracted hundreds of the little birds and thrust Griggsville into the forefront as the country’s most purple martin-friendly town.

These days, the town and the purple martins have settled into a comfortable state of co-existence. The birds find convenient, welcoming quarters when they hit town (they winter in Brazil) while the townspeople gain a natural predator that devours pesky flying insects including dragonflies, damselflies, mayflies, stinkbugs, leafhoppers, Japanese beetles, June bugs, butterflies, moths, grasshoppers, cicadas, bees, wasps and flying ants.

The community also sells plenty of t-shirts and other chotchkies labeled with a silhouette of a martin and the words, “America’s Most Wanted Bird.”

Of course, 5,000 birdhouses and a comparable number of birds (and bird guano) beg the question—do those little aluminum abodes come with bathrooms?

Casbah on the Mississippi

2010-03-02T21:38:00.000-08:00

One of the more unusual sights in the historic town of Quincy is a two-story Moroccan-style castle that overlooks the Mississippi River.

Located south of the downtown, the structure known as Villa Kathrine was erected in 1900 by a wealthy local eccentric named George Metz.

Metz’ fortune was inherited; in fact, he never worked a day in his life. His father, William, was a successful local pharmacist. After his mother died in 1897 (his father had passed away four years earlier), Metz embarked on a two-year tour of the Mediterranean and Africa.

When he returned, he began planning a private residence that would incorporate the architectural style and design of the Mediterranean/Northern African buildings he had admired during his travels, Specifically, he wanted to re-create the look of the Villa ben Abhen in Morocco.

IN 1900, Metz purchased a site on a bluff south of State Street (now known as 532 Gardner Expressway) and began working with a local architect, George Behrensmeyer, to design the plans for his dream house, which, it is said, was named after his mother (although, weirdly, her name was spelled Katherine).

He shared sketches, notes and drawings he’d made during his journeys with Behrensmeyer, who incorporated many of the concepts into the final plans.

A year later, the structure was completed at a total cost of $7,000. Despite its exotic look, the house was constructed using local materials, including local limestone in the foundation.

From the outside, Villa Kathrine certainly has nothing in common with the other turn-of-century Victorian and Queen Anne mansions in Quincy, which boasts a sizeable inventory of such homes.

On its north end is a tall, rectangular tower topped by a large dome while at the opposite end there is another, similar-sized tower, decorated with diamond lattice work and capped with a small minaret decorated with red and white stripes —said to resemble the Mosque of Thais in Tunisia.

Mediterranean-Arabic furniture, artifacts and antiques, which Metz had purchased during his travels, were used to furnish and decorate the house.

Few photos of the house’s interior exist so it’s not known how it originally was arranged or appeared.

A very private person who never married, Metz, however, was no shut-in. A 1908 Quincy Daily Journal article noted that the Ladies of the Round Table, a Quincy women’s social club, were given a tour of the residence by Metz, who “told them all about the treasures in it that he had gotten in Algiers.”

Metz main companion for many years was a 212-pound bullmastiff, named Bingo. According to reports, Metz bought the dog, said to be the biggest mastiff in the world, in 1900 in Denmark.

When Bingo died in 1906, the enormous canine was said to have been buried in Metz’ rose garden, wearing a diamond-studded collar. In later years, after the house was abandoned, fortune hunters dug up the grounds in the hope of locating the collar.

Historians, however, believe the story of the jeweled collar is apocryphal since there’s no record Metz ever purchased such an item.

In 1912, Quincy grocer Archibald Behrens and his wife persuaded Metz to sell his home to them. At the time, Metz was 63 years old and his family was concerned about him living alone in the two-story house. Behrens and his wife said they loved the house and all of its furnishings and promised to be good stewards.

The Behrens, however, were merely fronting for a local railroad, which wanted to tear down the house and use the site for a railroad yard. In return for their role in the purchase, the railroad promised the contents of the house to the Behrens.

Once Metz vacated the house, however, vandals carted off many of the antiques and furnishings. It’s said that the Behrens ended up with only a single rug.

By 1913, when Metz visited the house with a reporter from St. Louis, he found it in sorry condition with most of its beautiful furnishings gone. He vowed never to return, although he did nearly two decades later, only to be saddened by the sorry state of his dream castle.

After selling the house, Metz moved into the Hotel Newcomb in downtown Quincy and, later, the Lincoln Douglas Hotel. He died of pneumonia in 1937.

Interestingly, the railroad never built its railyard and the house sat vacant for several decades. In 1939, it was partially restored and during the next decade passed through several owners. In 1955, the Quincy Park District obtained the villa and surrounding property, which became a neighborhood park.

Starting in the 1970s, local preservationists began an effort to restore the castle to its original splendor. In recent years, the house has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places and hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised to renovate the structure, which is now home of the Quincy Tourist Information Center, which offers daily self-guided tours of the villa.

The Biggest Man in Fishhook, IL. Ever.

2010-02-04T13:12:00.000-08:00

There was nothing small about Robert Earl Hughes. By the time he was six years old, he weighed an incredible 203 pounds—and, over the years, he just kept getting bigger.

Hughes was born in 1926, the son of Abe and Georgia Hughes, in the tiny farm hamlet of Fishhook, Ill., located about 20 miles northwest of Quincy. Weighing a hefty but not abnormal 11-pounds and 4-ounces at birth, Hughes was a fairly average-size baby until he contracted whooping cough when he was about five months old.

The ailment permanently threw his pituitary gland into hyper-drive and he began rapidly gaining weight. By age 10, he weighed 378 pounds, and three years later he was a whopping 546 pounds.

Friends and family note that Hughes’ weight gain was not because he over-ate—they describe him as having a healthy but not piggish appetite—but because of his out-of-control pituitary.

In spite of the challenges of being so enormous, by all accounts Hughes was a friendly, gentle soul, who tried to live as “normal” a life as possible, including doing chores around the family farm and walking to school each day.

At age 13, however, his schooling came to an end when, while walking to school, he lost his balance and fell into a ditch. It took several adults with ropes to pull him out of the hole.

Realizing he could no longer safely support his own weight, his parents reluctantly decided he shouldn’t return to school. Fortunately, Hughes was a motivated reader and continued his education by devouring any book he could lay his hands on.

Since there was no local library, neighbors often stopped by to loan him books.

At the age of 16, Hughes had grown to more than 600 pounds. Two years later, by which time he had gained another 100 pounds, he had to register for the draft (it was 1944). His parents informed the draft board there was no way they could get him to the registration in Mount Sterling, which was 12 miles away, so the board came to him.

The story about the unusual nature of his predicament titillated the local newspapers, which wrote about Hughes, calling him the largest man to ever register for the draft. The papers told their readers his vitals—he wore size 56 overalls, which his mother had to expand with another 17-inches of material, and how she handmade all his shirts.

The attention brought fame to Hughes, who began making public appearances at local festivals and selling photos of himself. While his mother objected to him being treated like a freak, Hughes apparently enjoyed the attention.

Following her death in 1947, he began regularly appearing in newsreels and making paid public appearances. He endorsed products; one tuxedo shop made a special mondo-sized tux for him, which he wore in print advertisements.

In 1954, he signed with a traveling carnival and spent the next several years touring the country. By late 1956, the five-foot, nine-inch Hughes had reached 1,041 pounds and officially became the heaviest man ever (the previous record holder, seven-footer Miles Darden, weighed 1,020 pounds when he died in 1857).

Two years later, while touring Indiana with the carnival, Hughes developed a skin rash as well as dark blue fingernails. A doctor diagnosed him with measles, which were making his kidney malfunction.

On July 8, 1958, Hughes slipped into a coma and died two days later of congestive heart failure.

At the time of his death, his weight was estimated to be 1,069 pounds. While his weight record has since been broken, Hughes still holds the Guinness World Book record for largest chest measurement ever recorded: 124 inches (10-feet, 4-inches).

It’s been erroneously reported that because of his enormous size Hughes was buried in a piano case. The truth is that he was laid to rest in a custom casket of heavy cypress reinforced with steel that was built by the Embalming Burial Case Co. of Burlington, Iowa. The casket measured 85-inches long, 52-inches wide and 34-inches deep. His body was placed in the casket using a forklift.

Hughes was buried in the small cemetery behind a tiny church in the town of Benville, located 10 miles north of Fishhook.

On his hefty tombstone is carved: “Robert Earl Hughes: June 1, 1926-July 10, 1958; World’s Heaviest Man’ Weight 1.041 pounds.”

Abingdon's Big Totem Pole

2010-01-19T14:50:00.000-08:00

Despite the fact that no native Illinois tribes or any other Indians built it, the massive totem pole standing in the small town of Abingdon, known as “Big Daddy,” is pretty impressive.

Billed as the tallest totem pole “east of the Rockies,” the 83-foot wooden monumental sculpture was carved by artist Steve Greenquist in 1969. When the project was conceived, town fathers believed that it would be the tallest totem pole in the world and were confident it would attract tourists to the out-of-the-way community, located 12 miles south of Galesburg.

Unfortunately, just a few years later a Canadian town snatched away the town’s claim to fame. Today, there are least a half-dozen totems taller than the Abingdon pole including a 173-foot one in Alert Bay, British Columbia, a 140-foot pole in Kalama, Washington and a 137.5-foot monument in Kake, Alaska.

Despite that, the Abingdon totem remains a popular roadside attraction. The pole, carved of red cedar, stands in the center of a landscaped median on the town’s Main Street, adjacent to a city park.

At the top are the words, “Abingdon, Illinois,” painted on a representation of wings. Carved into the length of the pole are various images of objects, people and animals, including portraits of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, ears of corn and the state flower (a violet). Near the base, the pole has another wide set of wings in the shape of the state of Illinois covered with a variety of designs.

Greenquist, who was sponsored by the Abingdon Development Council, was only 18 years old and a student at Illinois State University when he conceived and created the work. Since 1998, he has been a high school art teacher in Ankeny, Iowa.

There is, however, a certain ‘fish-out-of-water’ aspect to the pole. Totems are monumental sculptures carved by the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest coastal region (British Columbia, northern Washington, Alaska).

While no one is certain of their purpose, it is generally believed the carvings recounted local legends, familial ties and important tribal events. The native Illini people had no tradition for building totem poles and probably wouldn’t have a clue as to why it’s in Abingdon.

Nor would anyone else.

New blog uncovers Western Illinois’ forgotten history

2009-06-16T14:48:00.001-07:00

The Western Illinois University Archives and Special Collections has started a new blog series called “Forgotten Western,” which spotlights lost or relatively unknown pieces of campus history.

The first entry in the series, “Forgotten Western: The Wishing Well,” focuses on a once popular landmark on the WIU campus during the first half of the 20th century.

According to the blog entry, before WIU opened in 1899, a brickyard existed on part of today’s campus site. Owned by Henry and James Chase, the yard was established to provide bricks for the new McDonough County courthouse in Macomb.

Because making bricks requires not only clay, which is abundant in the Macomb area, but water, a large windmill was erected on the site to pump water from the ground.

After WIU was established, the windmill was torn down and the well was covered. The former site, however, was marked by a hand-pump housed in a fairly elaborate brick monument, which stood on the Western campus for the next half-century.

The blog notes that this little, covered structure “was located on the southwest side of what was then the athletic field, to the northwest of Sherman Hall. As the campus grew, new expansion required new buildings.

“By 1954, construction had begun on a new science building designated Tillman Hall. Plans called for the new building’s southwest corner to sit directly over the well. As construction progressed, it was filled in with gravel and erased forever from Western’s footprint.

“The well is located approximately 11.5 feet north from the southwest corner of Tillman Hall (directly under the lower-right corner of the window located in the center of photo below) along the west wall. Although there are no physical traces evident, we can still identify the spot that was so important to so many who call Western, Alma Mater.”

To find this and future “Forgotten Western” blog entries, go to: www.wiu.edu/libweb/blogs/archives.

‘This is the Place’—where Joseph Smith was killed

2009-03-07T20:58:00.000-08:00

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), there are few places as significant to as the simple, two-story stone jail near the center of Carthage, Illinois.

The Carthage Jail is the “Calvary” of the Mormon faith. It is the place where on June 27, 1844, the church’s founder, Joseph Smith, and his brother Hyrum, were shot and killed by an angry mob.

According to accounts, the Smith brothers had been incarcerated on charges related to the destruction of a local newspaper, the Nauvoo Expositor, which had published negative articles pointing out that Smith practiced plural marriage and accused him of trying to create a Mormon-ruled government in Western Illinois.

At the time, Smith was not only the head of the Mormon religion but mayor of the city of Nauvoo, located about 20 miles northwest of Carthage.

In his role as mayor, Smith joined a majority of the members of the City Council to declare the paper a public nuisance and ordered the Expositor’s printing press to be destroyed and all copies of the paper to be burned, which was done on June 10.

The paper’s owners obtained from the Carthage court an arrest warrant for Smith and the council. However, the municipal court in Nauvoo, which consisted of Smith’s followers, acquitted Smith.

After it was determined that the Nauvoo Court was not the proper authority to consider the charges, the case was reviewed by two other legal examinations, both of which found for Smith.

Non-Mormons in Western Illinois, however, continued to push for action against Smith. To resolve the matter, Smith asked Illinois Governor Thomas Ford to intervene. The governor asked Smith and the other council members to turn themselves in to Carthage authorities for a trial.

Governor Ford assured Smith and the others that they would be safe from any violence if they followed his direction.

Smith didn’t believe he would be properly protected—and allegedly considered fleeing West— but in the end he decided to ride into Carthage with his brother and several others from the council to surrender to the authorities.

Upon arriving in Carthage, the group was arrested. Smith and his brother, along with two other council members, were confined to the Carthage Jail, a rough-looking stone structure with two upstairs cells—one with steel bars on the windows and the other less secure with no bars and a door that couldn’t properly latch. The party was placed inside the unprotected cell.

While waiting in the jail, one of Smith’s followers, Cyrus Wheelock, visited and secretly gave Smith a small pistol for his protection. That night, several armed men, faces painted black to obscure their identities, crept into the jail to kill Smith and his men.

Before the vigilantes could come upstairs, they were spotted. Hyrum Smith and another man used their bodies to barricade the door.

The mob rushed the door but the two men held the door shut. A shot was fired through the keyhole, but didn’t strike anyone. A second shot, however, passed through the wooden door and struck Hyrum Smith in the face.

According to later accounts, upon seeing his brother had been killed, Joseph Smith took the pistol he had been given by Wheelock, opened the door slightly and fired several shots at his assailants. Allegedly three men were wounded before the mob rushed into the room and fatally shot Smith.

Following the shooting, several men were arrested and put on trial. All were acquitted of the crime.

In the aftermath of Smith’s murder, the Mormon Church wrestled with the issue of succession, particularly since Smith’s brother had also been killed. Brigham Young was selected Smith’s successor in August of the following year in spite of claims by others that they had been chosen by Smith (or via divine intervention) to lead the sect.

In 1846, continued harassment of the church by Illinois authorities forced Young to lead his followers across country to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, where established a more permanent home for the church.

As for the Carthage Jail, it was converted into a private home, which it remained until 1903, when it was purchased by the Mormon Church. It was restored to its original appearance in 1938.

Representatives of the church offer free tours of the historic building, located at 307 Walnut Street in Carthage, on Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 12:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. (winter), and Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (summer).

Discovering Dickson Mounds

2008-06-15T15:45:00.000-07:00

When most people think about huge ancient monoliths, they picture pyramids in Egypt, temples in Greece or Mayan and Aztec structures in Central and South America. They don’t, however, usually look to America’s Native people for such constructions.

But nearly camouflaged across the wide expanses of the American Midwest and South are thousands of earthen mounds, some quite large, that, in their own way, are as impressive as any stone structure built in Athens or Machu Picchu.

Archaeologists believe that the mounds were built over a long period of time, between about 3,000 B.C. and 1,200 A.D. (scientists aren’t in agreement over when mound building started).

The mounds served as burial places for the Native Americans as well as the foundations for ceremonial temples and homes of prominent individuals and families.

Dickson Mounds, located 5 miles southeast of Lewistown, Illinois, is named after the family that once owned the site. It is recognized as one of the best examples of Native American burial mounds and is the site of the Dickson Mounds Museum, which is devoted to telling the story of the region’s earliest inhabitants.

The first people to arrive in the Dickson Mounds area are believed to have been hunter-gatherer Indians who arrived in the Midwest and Eastern U.S. about 10,000 years ago. About 1,000 B.C., a group that has become known as the Woodland Era Indians began to settle throughout the region.

Scientists believe the Woodland people built the first mounds, which were primarily used for burials. According to historian David K. Turner, the Woodland people had a fairly well developed culture with burial practices that included cremation as well as wrapping bodies to preserve them and burying bodies in a face-up position.

Turner said the Woodland people apparently believed in an afterlife and buried tools and supplies with the deceased. He said the mounds have also yielded digging tools, arrowheads and baskets for carrying the earth used to form them.

About 800 A.D., the Woodland Era ended as Mississippian Native Americans moved into the region. The Mississippian people are thought to be the builders of the largest and most impressive mounds in the Midwest, including Dickson Mound and the giant Cahokia (or Monks) Mound in East St. Louis, Illinois.

The Dickson Mound site was a good location because it overlooked the Illinois River and the wetlands of the Illinois River Valley, meaning it was close to fresh water and food. The Mississippians maintained a village at Dickson Mounds until about 1200 A.D., when they mysteriously abandoned the area.

The modern history of Dickson Mounds began in the 1800s, when pioneer Americans began to settle in Illinois. By then, the mounds had blended into the surrounding countryside, resembling the natural rolling hills found throughout the state.

Following the War of 1812, tracts of land throughout the state were given to war veterans. When those farmers began to prepare their land for planting crops, they found a variety of Indian artifacts.

The first white settlers in the area included the John Eveland family, which bought the land at the foot of the Dickson Mounds bluff, including the site of a prehistoric Indian village.

In 1833, William Dickson purchased the bluff and, in 1866, while clearing trees to plant an orchard, he discovered an ancient Indian burial ground. A few years later, his son, Thomas, destroyed a section of a burial mound while building a house.

In 1927, Thomas Dickson’s son, Dr. Don F. Dickson, began carefully excavating a portion of the mound. Dr. Dickson, who was a chiropractor, recognized the importance of preserving the site so he dug around the buried bodies, leaving them in situ, or in place the way they were found.

His work attracted University of Chicago archaeologists, who excavated in the area and established many of the methods and field techniques now standard in archaeological digs.

On his family property, Dr. Dickson uncovered the remains of nearly 250 Native Americans, which he protected, first, under a tent, then enclosed in a museum building. From the 1930s to 1992, the skeletons and hundreds of artifacts unearthed by Dr. Dickson were displayed to the general public in the private Dickson Mound Museum.

In 1945, Dr. Dickson, who died in 1964, sold the site to the state of Illinois. He and his family were employed by the Illinois Department of Conservation to manage the museum, which they did for the next two decades. In 1972, a new museum structure was built on the site, which was designed to resemble the low, squared shape of the original mounds.

In the early 1990s, Illinois state officials responded to repeated requests from Native American groups to properly respect the Indian remains by agreeing to re-cover the burial site and rebuild the museum so that it did not expose the remains to the public.

The result is that while the remains are no longer available for public viewing, the museum’s nature and scope has changed significantly. The revamped facility opened in 1994 with a new focus on the history of the various people who have lived in the Illinois River Valley region.

The museum contains permanent displays describing the history and development of the region, the native people who once lived there and the area’s rich plant and animal life. It also boasts rotating galleries, a well-stocked gift shop and meeting space.

The 230-acre Dickson Mounds Museum complex encompasses the location of two cemeteries and ten mounds. The Eveland Village Site, near the museum building, includes the remains of three excavated ceremonial Mississippian buildings, which can be viewed in the summer months.

An observation deck on top of the museum building offers a good overview of the surrounding mounds, which really do look like small hills. On a bluff top just above the confluence of the Illinois and Spoon Rivers, which is visible from the deck, visitors can see the Larson Site, believed to have been a Mississippian temple town.

The museum is open daily from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and there is no admission charge. For more information, call 309-547-3721, or go to www.museum.state.il.us/ismsites/dickson/geninfo.html.

Unforgettable Forgotonia

2008-04-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

Main Street of Fandon, Capital of Forgotonia

Nearly-forgotten Gibson Cemetery, southwest of Fandon

In the late 1960s, Western Illinois was feeling pretty ignored.

Passenger train service to Chicago had been cut. A proposal to build a superhighway from Chicago to Kansas City via the area had failed in Congress on two occasions. Carthage College, which had been in the Western Illinois city of the same name since 1870, was abruptly relocated to Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The obvious answer, according to one group of Western Illinois University students, was to declare independence and secede from the state of Illinois.

Thus, Forgotonia (also spelled Forgottonia) was born.

Springfield was no longer the state capital. The capital of Forgotonia was a small settlement south of Colchester called Fandon. The governor was no longer Illinois chief executive Daniel Walker but Western Illinois University senior Neal Gamm.

A few true believers overprinted the name of their new state on U.S. postage stamps and, according to George R. Carlisle, who reflected on the independence movement in a 1998 essay, there were even a few billboards announcing when drivers were entering Forgotonia, including one at Havana.

The new state of Forgotonia encompassed 14 Western Illinois counties including Adams, Brown, Calhoun, Cass, Fulton, Hancock, Henderson, Knox, McDonough, Morgan, Pike, Schuyler, Scott and Warren.

Much like a similar independence movement that began in the 1940s in Northern California and Southern Oregon to create the state of Jefferson, Forgotonia was birthed out of the frustration that rural Western Illinoisans felt regarding the urban-dominated state government.

Perhaps the biggest point of contention was roads. Western Illinois residents wanted modern, four-lane freeways to be able to reach Chicago, Springfield, Peoria—even to get from Galesburg to Macomb—but their requests for state funding to build wider, more direct routes, which could boost local economic development efforts, fell on deaf ears.

As James D. Nowlan noted in a September 1998 article in Illinois Issues magazine, “at the time, travelers couldn’t get to western Illinois from anywhere else. There just weren’t any good roads out there.”

While Forgotonia’s founders clearly had their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks when they proclaimed their intention to carve out America’s 51st state, they succeeded in focusing attention on serious public policy issues.

The state’s political figures began to take notice of the region’s inadequate roads, lack of rail passenger service and other shortcomings when it came to infrastructure.

In 1971, the state of Illinois finally responded by creating the “Illinois Service” initiative, which partnered with the then-newly established federal train system, Amtrak, to provide state-subsidized rail service between Chicago and downstate communities.

As a result, regular passenger service was once again available between the state’s largest city and Forgotonia cities like Kewanee, Galesburg, Macomb and Quincy. In 2006, that service was doubled as Amtrak began offering two daily roundtrip trains on the Chicago-to-Quincy route.

Similarly, Forgotonia’s roads were gradually improved. In addition to more regular resurfacing of existing roads, State Route 67 between Macomb and Monmouth was widened to four lanes in the early 21st century, as was the road between Quincy and Carthage (which will eventually be extended from Carthage to Macomb). There are also plans to build a direct highway between Macomb and Peoria within the next few years.

That is, of course, unless they forget.

The Strange Story of Vishnu Springs

2008-04-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

Ghost towns aren’t supposed to be found in the Midwest.

They’re supposed to be forgotten places, perhaps with a few weather-beaten, wooden shacks and crumbling brick storefronts, tucked in a remote corner of somewhere in the American West.

But hidden in the rolling hills of Western Illinois, about six miles north of the hamlet of Tennessee, is a genuine ghost town known as Vishnu Springs. It was established in the 1880s as a health and vacation spa, then largely abandoned since the early 20th century.

And it’s said to be haunted.

According to a paranormal web site, Shadowlands.com, “Vishnu is an old abandoned township located just west of Colchester. There are feelings of being watched, viewed shadow like beings in darkened corners.”

Additionally, other sources report sightings of a woman dress in black wandering the former Capitol Hotel, the largest and most intact structure still standing.

More serious historians, like retired Western Illinois University English Professor John Hallwas, who has written extensively on the history of Western Illinois, dismiss such talk and are concerned that amateur ghost hunters and curiosity seekers won’t respect the town site.

“The factor that leads to the rise of paranormal stories is usually the fact that people don’t know a lot about a location,” Hallwas told the Macomb Eagle in 2007. “If you were to ask someone who had lived in Vishnu Springs back at the turn of the century or the early 20th century about ghosts out there, they would have thought you were crazy.”

A visit to Vishnu Springs offers a few clues as to why some believe the site might host otherworldly spirits. For one thing, it’s a creepy place. The abandoned three-story hotel stands in a protected hollow surrounded by tall trees.

Even during the day, long shadows stretch across the hotel’s façade, casting it in a state of perpetual gloom.

The site is not open to the public but the local McDonough County Historical Society conducts occasional tours. During one last year, which was led by Professor Hallwas, the focus was on history not ghost stories. Yet the truth behind Vishnu Springs illustrates that sometimes the two aren’t that far apart.

“The remoteness of the place was a determining factor in it being here,” Hallwas noted. “The remoteness was part of its appeal, but it was also a factor that caused the community not to survive.”

According to Hallwas, Vishnu Springs traces its roots to the mid-1800s, when a man named Ebenezer Hicks began purchasing property around Tennessee. Hicks eventually owned more than 5,000 acres, including a parcel, called Section 7 of the Tennessee Township, which contained a small natural spring.

Sometime in the 1880s, Dr. John Aiken learned of Tennessee Springs, as it was originally called, and became convinced they had medicinal powers. He leased the property from Hicks and began selling bottles of the spring water as a health tonic for everything from bladder inflammation to diseases “peculiar to women.”

It was also about this time that the name was changed to Vishnu Springs. According to the nonprofit Friends of Vishnu Springs, which maintains a web site (www.vishnusprings.org), there are two explanations for the unusual name.

One version is that Dr. Aiken chose the name to honor the Hindu God Vishnu, who is the preserver of living things. Dr. Aiken thought the name reflected the healing nature of the springs.

However, the other take is that Ebenezer Hicks’ son, Darius, who, in 1886, inherited the springs, named it after reading a book that described the discovery of the ancient, lost city of Angkor in the jungles of Cambodia. Angkor’s water comes from the river Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu in the Hindu religion.

Apparently Dr. Aiken’s health elixir did not make him a wealthy man and he moved on. But Darius Hicks thought there was something special about the spring and, in 1889, began developing a resort-health spa on the site.

In 1889-90, the younger Hicks erected a fine three-story hotel at a cost of $2,500. About the same time, Hicks also married Hattie Rush, a widow from Missouri with three children. Hattie Hicks was apparently not a well woman and it is believed she came to the area to take advantage of the springs medicinal qualities.

In addition to building the hotel, Hicks subdivided the land around the springs, plating a town site consisting of about three blocks containing 30 lots, which he began to sell.

Within a few years, Vishnu Springs had been sufficiently built up that it included the hotel, several stores and homes, a livery stable, a racetrack and a photography studio. In 1895, a post office opened inside the hotel. There was even regular wagon service between Colchester and Vishnu, known as the Vishnu Transfer Line.

But a series of misfortunes helped to push Vishnu Springs into decline. The first occurred in the early 1900s, when a horse-drawn merry-go-round was installed to amuse the children of spa guests. The clothing of the man who operated the ride became ensnared in the device’s mechanism and he was crushed to death. Following the accident, the merry-go-round was never used again.

Additionally, in 1886, Hicks’ wife, Hattie, died from Bright’s disease (a kidney ailment). Hicks quickly remarried—but scandalized the community by wedding his own step-daughter, Maud, who was 26 years his junior. By all accounts, the marriage was a happy one but Maud died in 1903 while giving birth to their third child.

Shortly after, Hicks hired Nellie Darrah to watch his children and take care of his house. Apparently, Hicks and Darrah struck up a personal relationship and it’s believed she became pregnant with his child.

In June 1908, after Hicks told Darrah he would not marry her, she apparently sought to terminate the pregnancy. Later newspaper reports noted there were complications from the “criminal surgical procedure” and she was rushed to a hospital in Keokuk, Iowa.

Hicks received a telephone call that apparently notified him of these events. He told his nine-year-old son, Reon, that the boy could have his pocket watch, and then scribbled a suicide note asking that his children by raised by a cousin and stating that he knew he was about to become involved in a scandal but was innocent of the claims.

As the boy was walking to the barn, he heard a gunshot, rushed back into the house and found Hicks on the ground in a pool of his own blood. He died a short time later and was buried in the family plot in Friendship Cemetery in Tennessee.

“Hicks’ departure doomed the town,” Hallwas said. By the 1920s, the community was abandoned. However, in 1935, Macomb resident Ira Post, who had visited the spa as a child, purchased the site and restored the old hotel.

For the next two decades, Post used the property as a retreat for his family and friends. After his death in 1951, the family kept the springs open for three more years before closing it due to vandalism problems.

During the next several decades there were at least two attempts to revive the community. In the 1960s, the Post family leased the hotel and surrounding property to Alfred White and Albert Simmons, who announced plans to re-open the hotel and offer food and live music. The project, however, never came to fruition.

In the early 1970s, the hotel was rented out as a kind of commune for a group of Western Illinois University students and their friends. The group held music festivals, gardened and raised livestock to pay their expenses but after about a decade the effort was abandoned.

In 2003, Olga Kay Kennedy, a WIU graduate and the granddaughter of Ira Post, donated Vishnu Springs and 140 acres around the hotel to Western University with the understanding that it be developed as a wildlife sanctuary. The university, which has closed the site to all visitors, is currently developing a master plan for the site.

In recent years, the relative mystery surrounding the remote springs coupled with the tales of ghostly sightings has made it an irresistible attraction for local teens and WIU college students, particularly around Halloween time. In fact, on Halloween evening in 2007, police reported arresting more than a dozen individuals trying to gain access to the site.

In the end, it’s hard to say if Vishnu Springs truly is haunted—if you believe in such stuff. However, if it is, the ghosts seem to be fairly polite and quiet—no reports of crazy apparitions, strange lights or rattling chain noises—but that’s what probably what you would expect in a proper Midwestern ghost town.