In April 2003, we took a short trip to north-central Illinois. We made a stop at the Black Hawk statue, whose formal name is “The Eternal Indian,” by Lorado Taft in Lowden State Park in Ogle County.

As I wrote then, “the statue, made of concrete, is about 50 feet high and stands on a bluff overlooking the Rock River and some of the town of Oregon. The head and neck represent an Indian, looking pensively off into the distance. His arms are folded in front of his chest, and from there on down the statue is less representational, but is clearly a human form.”

We also took a look at the John Deere Historic Site in Grand Detour, featuring a blacksmith demonstration.

“The re-created smithy was… the exact size of John Deere’s original Grand Detour shop, not including a latter addition, and presumably the original didn’t devote about a fifth of its space to a railed-in section where tourists stood. Otherwise, it was an evocative re-creation. A lot of iron & steel tools and implements on shelves, hanging on pegs, scattered around on various tables and benches. A bellows and a coal-burning furnace, which was glowing. A real anvil and some mean-looking, anvil-beating tools at hand.”