Shawnee National Forest ’20

Posted on October 18, 2020 by admin

During my break from posting, Arlo Stribling was born to my nephew Dees and his wife Eden in Austin. Congratulations to the new parents, here’s hoping the boy is a joy. Best regards to little Arlo, an emissary to a future my generation will not see.

On the afternoon of Friday, October 9, Ann and I went southward for a visit in and around Shawnee National Forest, which stretches in large patches — in typical national forest style — from the Ohio River to the Mississippi, or vice versa, occupying a lot of extreme southern Illinois. We looked around the east part of the forest. The weather turned out to be flawless for such a little trip, warm and partly cloudy.

We spent the first night in Mattoon, Illinois, continuing southward the next morning. The first place we went on Saturday morning wasn’t in southeast Illinois, but further west: Carbondale, visiting Castle Park, or more formally Jeremy Rochman Memorial Park, on the outskirts of town. Afterwards, we looked around Southern Illinois State University, and saw the nearby Buckminster Fuller House. A domed house, of course.

Heading east on Illinois 13, we eventually made our way as far east as that road goes, Old Shawneetown, a husk of a formerly much more populous place on the banks of the Ohio, and home to the Shawneetown State Bank Historic Site. We spent the next two nights in Harrisburg, Illinois, which bills itself as the Gateway to the Shawnee National Forest.

On Sunday, we drove the roads of the southeast part of the forest, climbed a modest flagstone path to a grand vista — the Garden of the Gods — hiked along a small lake surrounded by trees approaching their peak coloration, climbed a bluff via a CCC staircase, and visited a large cave entrance facing the Ohio River at Cave-in-Rock State Park.

Small, winding roads pass through the national forest, rising and falling, flanked alternately by walls of trees and expanses of flat farmland, post-harvest but before a winter freeze. Towns come in the sizes small, smaller and hamlet. In that part of Illinois, sometimes known as Little Egypt, small white churches are a common sight, more Baptist than any other denomination. Not quite as common, but enough in evidence were abandoned structures: farmhouses, gas stations, motels, restaurants and shops. If it were up to the people who put up political signs in that part of the country, the president would be re-elected by a wide margin. A smattering of Confederate battle flags were flying here and there.

Traffic is at a trickle on those roads most of the time. That made for easy, and sometimes picturesque, driving. Car commercial driving, I told Ann.

On Monday, Columbus Day Observed, that lightest, most gossamer of all national holidays, we headed home, with one major short detour into Indiana, to visit the town of New Harmony. The 19th-century utopian colonies there might have failed (two! count ’em, two utopian experiments), but the town has succeeded in being highly pleasant and intriguing everywhere you look in our time. Also, a famed theologian is buried there, in as much as theologians get fame.

As mentioned above, we didn’t spend much time in Mattoon. But early on Saturday I got up and looked around for a few minutes. The town looks frayed, buffeted by the contraction of U.S. manufacturing and the vagaries of the farming industry and the rural economy as a whole.

The town’s relatively greater prosperity in the early 20th century is reflected in its cemetery. A sizable place, the Dodge Grove Cemetery measures about 60 acres and has 20,000 permanent residents, including three Civil War generals and 260 soldiers from that war, one of whom is an unknown Confederate. There’s a story in that last detail, probably lost to time.

Blazes of fall color rise in places.

According to Find a Grave, only one of those Civil War generals counts as a notable burial in Dodge Grove, James Milton True, commander of the 62nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry. I like the other major item on his CV: U.S. consul in Kingston, Ontario in the 1870s.

That hints at some pull with the postwar federal government, probably based on connections he made during the war, or because he became a local politico who could deliver votes. Or both. Seems like a plumb diplomatic assignment in the 19th century: no language skills necessary, close enough to home that you can visit periodically, and no danger of catching malaria or some other dreaded tropical disease.

I didn’t see his grave. I didn’t know he was there till later. I did see the Pythias obelisk.

Erected by
Palestine Lodge No. 46
Knights of Pythias
In Memory of
Deceased Members
1929

I’ve encountered vestiges of the Knights before, such as in Atlanta, Illinois. I associated them with an earlier time, the sort of organization that George Babbitt might have mentioned in passing as having a chapter in Zenith. But no: the Knights of Pythias are still around, though at much diminished numbers.

Still around, and up with the times. “The Summer 2020 Edition of the Pythian International is now online,” the fraternal org’s web site says. “It includes information on the rescheduled Supreme Convention, Oct. 1-6.”

As I was about to leave, I spotted this stone.
A heartbreaker of a stone. Though I’m sure combat deaths didn’t quite stop exactly at 11 am on the 11th, since even modern armies with good internal communications can’t stop on a dime. Still, the day before the Armistice. Damn.

I don’t know why I’m surprised any more at anything online, but I was surprised to find a local newspaper account of Lawrence Riddle’s last days, though it doesn’t specify how he died (and this too: a niece that he never knew). In the article, the most attention is paid to Riddle’s participation in combat during the days before his death, charging a German machine gun position with four other men. They seized the position and brought back prisoners.

I wonder whether the Germans, eager to surrender at this point in the war, were making it easy for the raiders, or whether the Americans faced bitter-enders who were still playing for keeps. Either way, a clear act of bravery on the part of Riddle and the others.

Thursday Postscripts

Posted on September 24, 2020 by admin

Beverly Shores, Indiana, pop. 600 or so, is completely surrounded by Indiana Dunes NP. One way to get to the town, or the national park for that matter, is to take the South Shore Line from Chicago. If you do so, the place to get off is at Beverly Shores station.
Since its renovation in recent years, the station also includes an art galley. Closed when we got there.
When I’m pretty sure no train is nearby, it’s hard to resist a shot of the rails converging off toward the horizon. The rails go on forever in a silver trail to the setting sun.

Arthur Gerber designed the station in 1929. “Gerber was the staff architect for Samuel Insull, who then owned the line, [and] it is one of several examples of an ‘Insull Spanish’ style used on the rail line,” writes historic preservationist Susie Trexler.

Insull must have been fond of the style. “Say, Gerber, old man, whip up some more Spanish-style stations.”

After all, look at his mansion, which is generally classified as Mediterranean.
Better known as the Cuneo Mansion, for its second owner, but utility magnate Insull had it built. Above are shots I took when we visited. When was that? I couldn’t remember till I checked. Ten years ago.

The fellow interred in the Beyond the Vines columbarium at Bohemian National Cemetery is Benjamin George Maldonado, 34, who died unexpectedly of an undiscovered brain cyst, according to a column in the Tribune by John Kass.

“The priest gave a great eulogy of Ben,” Kass quoted Maldonado’s widow as saying. “His urn had a baseball on top. We all signed the baseball that went into the wall. There were sandwiches and sodas, and we had a picnic. He was so young. A headstone would have been so somber.”

The man who created the columbarium, whom Kass also quotes, was Dennis Mascari. He’s interred there now as well.

My brother Jay is skeptical that the parade pictures posted on Sunday were taken in September 1967, he told me by email. Two reasons: yellow foliage and people wearing a little more than they would on a very warm Texas September day.

As Jay points out, mid-September is far too early for changing leaves. But I color corrected the images. In the original, faded now for more than half a century, it’s hard to tell whether the leaves are green or yellow.

In the color corrected version, some of the leaves look green, some yellow. I don’t know whether that reflects the original color of the leaves, or the color-correction process itself. So I’d say the leaf colors are inconclusive.

The clothes are a more compelling argument. The kid on the top of the station wagon is indeed wearing more than any kid would in high 80s temps, and so is the woman on the flatbed, and maybe the men leaning against that vehicle, who seem to be wearing long-sleeve shirts or jackets. Of course, the members of the band would wear their uniforms no matter how hot it was. I remember some sweaty times in my own band uniform, about 10 years later.

“When is it then?” Jay writes. “I don’t know. I know that the Denton HS band was one of many high school bands that participated in the NTSU homecoming — which sources online say was November 11, 1967 — but: (1) I have no recollection of a parade, only of marching in formation on the playing field, and (2) if there was a parade, it seems odd that it’s heading away from NTSU rather than towards it, as it appears to be the case here. Of course, the fact that I don’t remember a parade isn’t dispositive, nor is the direction.”

Ah, well. Guess we’ll never know for sure. The lesson here is to write the date on the back of physical prints. But even that is an increasingly obsolete bit of advice.

Here’s Nathan Myrick, founder of La Crosse, Wisconsin, whose for-certain public domain image I obtained. Founding a town is more than most people get to do.

It occurs to me that I’ve now visited all of the 15 largest municipalities in Wisconsin, and maybe the 20 largest, though I don’t remember visiting New Berlin, but as a Milwaukee suburb, it’s likely that I passed through.

Is that important for some reason? No. But for a state in which I’ve never lived, I’ve been there a lot. As an old Chicago friend of mine once said, one of the amenities of living in the Chicago area is access to Wisconsin. I agree.

Bohemian National Cemetery

Posted on September 21, 2020 by admin

Back in 2004, I met Bob the crematorium operator by chance, and he showed me part of the facility he ran. The interior of this building.That’s the crematorium and columbarium at Bohemian National Cemetery on the Northwest Side of Chicago, one of the resplendent cemeteries in the city. Bob wasn’t around when I returned for a visit on Sunday, September 13, and the building was closed.

As usual even at a beautiful cemetery, few other living people were around. But it was sunny and warm, and I had a good look.

Since the last time I visited, something unique (probably) in any cemetery has been added: Beyond the Vines.

“The 24-foot-long brick monument offering peace to the ashes of Cubs fans is called ‘Beyond the Vines.’ It sits in perpetual sunshine at Bohemian National Cemetery,” reported the Chicago Tribune in 2009, when the cemetery erected the structure.
The front was was in shadow when I saw it.
Still, the purpose of the columbarium is clear.
There are still spaces for anyone who cares for one. This marker for this fellow, name partly obscured, tells a sad story of early death but also the endless optimism of a Cubs fan.
Bohemian National, founded in the late 19th century by the Czech immigrant community in Chicago, has a wide selection of funerary art.

A pharmacist’s stone? Looks like a mortar and pestle.

Civil War and World War(s) veterans are honored with memorials, as you’d expect, but the place also spares a thought for veterans of the war with Spain, erected in 1926. The plaque is in English and Czech.
Deep in the cemetery is Anton Cermak’s mausoleum, but I didn’t see it. A memorial I did see is to the victims of the Eastland disaster.
“The site was chosen because the cemetery on Chicago’s Northwest Side holds the largest number of victims from the disaster — 134,” the Trib says, reporting on the dedication of the memorial in 2015, for the 100th anniversary of the disaster.

Paul & Matilda Wegner Grotto County Park

Posted on September 16, 2020 by admin

Less than 10 miles from Sparta, Wisconsin, along a state highway, is the Paul & Matilda Wegner Grotto County Park, the county being Monroe, whose seat is Sparta. We arrived there early in the afternoon of September 6. Here’s the entrance to the grotto.
It isn’t a grotto in the sense of being a natural or artificial cave, or any other sense that I know of. Call it a sculpture garden? The Wegners didn’t sculpt, except in the sense of creating distinct three-dimensional shapes from raw materials. Anyway, the grounds feature naïve works created by German immigrant farmers, mostly made of concrete and shards of glass and other shiny bits.

Note the texture of one of their works up close. Look but don’t touch, unless you want a wound.
The Kohler Foundation tells the story: “In the summer of 1929 on their farm, [the Wegners] began building fences, and within a year their first sculpture: a twelve-foot concrete facsimile of the celebrated Bremen ocean liner.

“The building continued from 1929 until after 1936, primarily during the summer months; however, many pieces, including the walls of the church, were created in Bangor [Wis.] during the winter and then transported to the farm for installation. The extraordinary sculpture environment slowly grew over these years to include a fanciful American flag, a giant reproduction of the Wegners’ 50th anniversary cake, and a glass-encrusted birdhouse.

“Other constructions were religious in nature. The magnificent Prayer Garden, Glass Church, and Peace Monument once served as places for quiet reflection, wedding ceremonies, public preaching, family picnics, and community gatherings. Still surrounding the yard is an ornate fence with a concrete archway, which spells out the word ‘Home’ in crushed black glass.”

Here’s the Bremen, inspired by a postcard picture.
The Glass Church.
People get married there from time to time, according to the plaque (in front of the structure would be my guess), and Paul Wegner’s funeral was held there as well. The back of the Glass Church:
More structures. First is “Jabob’s Well.”

A sign outside the grotto said that a cemetery with glass-and-stone memorials wasn’t far away. So it was: a spare little rural cemetery.

Glass is part of the Wegners’ memorial.
Along with a few others. Guess they liked the style.
What does the Kohler Foundation have to do with the site where old German farmers deciding to create glass-and-stone shapes? Kohler is plumbing money and based in Wisconsin. At some point in its existence, the foundation decided to find and preserve outsider art installations such as the Wegner Grotto which, in fact, was one of its conservation projects.

“Since the late 1970s, the preservation of folk architecture and art environments has been a major thrust of Kohler Foundation,” the foundation explains, including a list of sites on the page. Many but not all are in Wisconsin.

“After a site has been either acquired by or gifted to us, local and expert partners selected by Kohler Foundation employ museum-quality conservation techniques to preserve the site. The site is then gifted to a museum, municipality, university, or other nonprofit institution for the education and enjoyment of the public. We then work with the recipient and local community to ensure the future success of the project.”

La Crosse ’20

Posted on September 8, 2020 by admin

Last year for the Labor Day weekend, we headed east to the shores of Lake Huron. This year, we headed west to La Crosse, Wisconsin, which has its own water feature, the various channels of the Mississippi River.

The trip was structured like our visit to Prairie du Chien in July: Friday night in Madison, a slowish drive on U.S. 14 to La Crosse the next day, where we spent Saturday night, and then a somewhat faster return on Sunday afternoon, mostly on I-90. La Crosse was the destination, but we also stopped at various places along the way there and back.

We visited a major Catholic shrine, looked down on La Crosse from a tall bluff, looked down on the Wisconsin River from another bluff, ate food obtained from drive-thrus more than once, swam in a hotel pool for the first time in ages, stopped at a large farm stand, slept on an island as a thunderstorm moved through the area, walked along the Mississippi, came very close to the border with Minnesota without entering that state, walked around downtown and a university campus, drove along an astonishingly beautiful Wisconsin Rustic Road northeast of La Crosse, spent time in the Bicycling Capital of America, and saw a couple of rural cemeteries, an installation of outsider art and the back lot of fiberglass statue manufacturer.

A good little trip. That’s what we can do these days.

I can report a number of changes in Wisconsin since July. Masks are now more emphasized, especially by businesses at their entrances, some citing local directives. More people seemed to be wearing them. Also, political yard signs have sprouted. It’s my impression that, simply in terms of signs, Trump has a slight edge in rural Wisconsin. But I also have to say there was no shortage of Biden signs in those rural stretches.

We stopped by whim a few places along U.S. 14. Such as at a historic marker just west of Mazomanie. The marker told us that a town had once prospered on the site.

VILLAGE OF DOVER
Beginning in 1844, nearly 700 settlers were brought into this area by the British Temperance & Emigration Society, organized the previous year in Liverpool, England. By 1850 Dover boasted a hotel, post office, cooper, blacksmith, shoemaker, wagon shop and stores. When the railroad chose Mazomanie for a depot site and made no stop in Dover, Doverites moved their houses into Mazomanie and Dover faded away to become a ghost town.

The site does look fairly undeveloped in our time, except for a small fence.
Behind the fence is something that the living residents of Dover probably never considered moving: a small slip of a cemetery.
In Richland Center, seat of Richland County, we stopped for a few moments to take a look at the A.D. German Warehouse. It is an unusual-looking warehouse. The front:
The back, including a building with a sign that says it is an older A.D. German Warehouse.
Unusual or not, the “new” A.D. German is known for one thing: being designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and apparently his only warehouse.

“The A.D. German Warehouse is an impressive brick structure topped by a magnificent concrete frieze,” says Wright in Wisconsin. “Generally considered to resemble a Mayan temple, this avant-garde warehouse and attached music room was built for A. D. German’s wholesale grocery business.”

A Mayan temple. The thought amuses me no end. It also makes me re-imagine modern warehouse/distribution buildings, those absolutely utilitarian linchpins of the modern economy. What if some of them had splashes of ornament taken from different times and places? Some friezes from the Parthenon. A touch of a Babylon ziggurat. Or some Mayan elements.

But no. That isn’t the sort of society we live in. You want to spend money on what? Just build the damn thing.

Speaking of which: “Construction was stopped with the building unfinished in 1921, after spending $125,000, which exceeded the original cost estimate of $30,000,” Wright in Wisconsin continues. “It is the only remaining commercial structure designed by Wright that still exists from this time period.”

No wonder he didn’t do any other warehouse commissions. Yet I’m glad to say that an effort is under way to restore the thing. Never mind that it’s a Wright. The world is just a little better place for having a Mayan-flavored warehouse somewhere outside the homeland of the Maya.

On the outskirts of Richland Center, there is a field flying more than 300 flags.
It’s part of the American Legion Veterans Memorial Park, Bayard de Hart Post 13. Must be quite a sight when the wind is up. At the base of each flag is a stone plaque with the name and service details of a local veteran, living or dead.

There’s also a tank.
An M60 A3, a sign said, a kind of tank that last saw use in action (for the U.S.) during the first Gulf War.

Greve Cemetery

Posted on August 20, 2020 by admin

Tucked away north of Higgins Road but south of I-90 (the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway) in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, is Greve Cemetery. It’s about a half a mile to the west of Fabbrini Park as the crow flies, which I guess would be a fitting bird to seek out an obscure burying ground.
For a suburban development, the streets of the surrounding neighborhood of Barrington Square are fairly dense, with houses and townhouses of various configurations lining the way. A lot of people were out and about on those streets and yards late in the afternoon when I parked on Abbey Wood Drive to look for the cemetery, but no one else was interested in it.

It wasn’t hard to find.

Greve Cemetery
In 1827 was called “Wild Cat Grove”
Johann Gerhard Greve settled here from
Hanover, Germany, in 1838
Purchased land from government in 1842
Property was first used as a family and
Community cemetery in the 1840s
Sold to Cook County in 1899
Acquired by the village of Hoffman Estates in 1989

Ah, those plucky German settlers. The cemetery is atop a small hill — pretty much the only kind in Illinois — and thick with oaks and other tall trees.
Fenced in completely. I assume because of a history of wanker vandals beginning with the surrounding development in the late 20th century.
Still, most of the stones are visible. Including the Greves.
And the Völkenings, complete with umlaut.

Stones without much left to tell their tales.
A short history of the cemetery is here, and another article about it is here.

The Old Ontarioville Cemetery

Posted on August 12, 2020 by admin

Ontarioville, Illinois, is the geographic equivalent of a ghost sign on the side of a building. Its history is detailed by Neil Gale of the Digital Research Library of the Illinois History Journal. Enough to note here that it was a 19th-century town, but it didn’t prosper in the 20th century for various reasons, not enough to remain a distinct entity. Now Ontarioville is the name of a neighborhood in northwest suburban Hanover Park.

One bit of residuum from the town is the Old Ontarioville Cemetery, located on an unattended slice of land between the driveway to a water reclamation facility and the parking lot of the Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
It only has a scattering of stones, mostly obscured by grass in August and illegible anyway.
Some have almost completely worn away.
But not the Schick stone.
Or the Harmening stone.
Fred Schick (d. 1933) owned a general store in the community in the early 1900s and was postmaster besides, so it seems likely that Schick Road, a thoroughfare not far to the south, was named for him. He rests in the weedy cemetery with his wife Sophia, who lived to 1952, and his son, who died at 17 in 1920.

Heinrich Harmening (d. 1903), here with wife Dorothea (d. 1924), seems like a somewhat bigger fish in this small pond, apparently owning a prosperous dairy farm and building a large house on what is now U.S. 20 (as pictured in Gale’s article). I must have driven by it many times without noticing, so one fine day I might go looking for it, if it’s still around.

Trinity Lutheran Cemetery, aka Freinenigreit Cemetery

Posted on August 5, 2020 by admin

Tucked between an equipment rental shop and a truck accessories store on Irving Park Road in northwest suburban Roselle is Trinity Lutheran Cemetery. It’s also known as Freinenigreit Cemetery, according to a number of sources, including Find-A-Grave, but not any signs at the cemetery itself (that I noticed).

The alternate name speaks to the German heritage of this part of the Chicago suburbs, and the names of some of the earlier permanent residents reflect that as well: Botterman, Engel, Freitag, Geistfeld, Habermeier, Hattendorf, Reuter and Schmidt.
It’s a small slice of a cemetery, about 300 burials, many of which are recent. Those names tend to be more varied: Abraham, Burkinshaw, Dunbar, Ek, Hernandez, Pastori, Smakal and Tumminaro.

A nice design for a simple stone.
For an infant, born and died in 2004.

This one caught my attention.
I looked up Jake. A bright lad, just a little younger than my oldest child, who died suddenly of an undetected heart condition.

Two Illinois Points of Interest

Posted on July 30, 2020 by admin

For years, I’ve seen the following two points of interest routinely included on road maps of Illinois. At least, on Rand McNally and Michelin: the Norwegian Settlers State Memorial and the Wild Bill Hickok State Memorial.

When it comes to points of interest on commonly available road maps, there must be just a touch of the arbitrary in their selection. Just a touch, because certainly mapmakers have their editorial standards. Still, I see those (typically) red dots and wonder not only what it is, but also why is that on the map and not something else?
Guess being a state memorial or monument helps land a place on maps. (That link is part of a larger list.)

One goal of our recent trip was to avoid large highways, which we mostly did until we headed for home, when we wanted a more speedy return. When heading out, we kept to smaller roads. One of these was Illinois 71, which passes through the unincorporated community of Norway.

Not far from Norway is the the Norwegian Settlers State Memorial. It’s an example of the plaques-on-rocks school of memorial design, along with a wooden structure, and U.S. and Norwegian flags.
“This Memorial commemorates the 1834 settlement at Norway, Illinois — the first permanent Norwegian settlement in the Midwest,” says the State Historic Preservation Office. “A departure point for many Norwegians who settled other parts of the Midwest, Norway became known as the ‘mother settlement.’ The monument, dedicated in 1934, honors the community and its founder, Cleng Peerson (1783-1865).”

Peerson got around. Though he led immigrants to the New World, he didn’t seem to be interested in settling for more than a few years at a time himself. According to Wiki, he even spent time in Bishop Hill among its Swedish settlers. I guess he had no hard feelings against those oppressors of the Norwegian people. He ended up in Texas in the mid-19th century, as a lot of people did.

Why three stones? One from 1934 memorializes the 100th anniversary of the settlement of Norway, Illinois. Another from 1975 memorializes the 150th anniversary of Norwegians first coming to America en masse. The King of Norway came for that occasion. And yet another (also 1975) notes that part of Illinois 71 is the Cleng Peerson Memorial Highway.

That’s not all. The wooden structure — which I assume is an homage to Norwegian design — has text front and back. Three separate plaques on the front, dated 1980, tell the “Norsk Story,” that is, Norwegians coming to America.

Two more plaques on back (from 1982, bicentennial of Peerson’s birth) offer more detail about the memorial, including lines about Lester Severskie (1918-82) who was “dedicated to the preservation of the Norwegian heritage of Norway, Ill.”, a list of the Norwegian heritage organizations in the U.S. as of 1982 (I had no idea there were so many), and a few lines to thank Olav V, members of the Norwegian government, and so on and so forth.

This has to be the wordiest memorial I’ve ever encountered. It’s the memorial equivalent of a logorrheic movie star upon winning an Oscar. I usually enjoy reading obscure plaques, but these tried my patience, especially in the high heat of July. (The rest of my family was sitting in air-conditioned comfort in the car.)

Even so, I’m glad I stopped. Especially because I noticed that behind the memorial is a small cemetery. The Cleng Peerson Memorial Cemetery, according to one source (who spells cemetery wrong), though I didn’t see any signs or plaques at all about it, just the headstones. According to another source, it’s the Nelson Cemetery.

Whatever the name, it must be an active local cemetery. At least one burial was fairly recent.
Peerson himself isn’t there. He’s buried near Clifton, Texas.

In a different context, you might call Peerson an empresario, along the lines of Stephen F. Austin in Texas, except that he was merely a leader of immigrants, not someone who was granted land by an existing government. Except that in the end, he was granted land by Texas, but for services rendered in populating the state with hardy Norwegians, not as an incentive to bring them.

Returning from the Illinois River Valley on Sunday, I made a point of stopping at the Wild Bill Hickok State Memorial in Troy Grove, Illinois. Wild Bill isn’t buried there either. He died in Deadwood, after all, and he rests there in Boot Hill.

Rather, the memorial marks the birthplace of James Butler Hickok, scout, spy, lawman, soldier, marksman, gambler, showman, folk hero, and dime novel and movie and TV character. It’s at the center of an open patch of land where the Hickok family home once stood, and includes one plaque and one bust.
The state of Illinois erected the plaque in 1929, and it wasn’t shy about lionizing Wild Bill. It needed a proofreader, too.
“He contributed largely in making the West a safe place for woman [sic] and children,” the plaque says in part. “His sterling courage was aways [sic] at the service of right and justice.”

The bust is more recent. I had to look it up, because I couldn’t find anything on site — not a word — to say who created it or when.
The state of Illinois says a “log-carved bust” of Hickok was added in 1999, but that’s no wooden bust. It took a little looking, but I found out that “in 2009, an attractive bronze bust of Hickok by artist William Piller was placed in the park. It replaced a carved wooden bust that had been in place 10 years but had severe weather damage,” according to the Danville, Illinois, Commercial-News.

Though it was a hot day, I wasn’t quite done with Troy Grove, pop. 230. A building near the memorial caught my eye. (The rest of my family was sitting in air-conditioned comfort in the car.)
Bank, eh? Well, not any more. Still, it’s a handsome little building. A detail toward the top further got my attention.

A logo marker apparently left by the Bankers Electrical Protection Co. of Minneapolis: a guard dog close to a money bag. The company seems to have specialized in bank vaults and other security features for banks of yore. You know, the sort of banks at risk from unauthorized withdrawals by the likes of the Cream Can Gang.

Besides a few images, I haven’t found out much else about BEPCo. (as it surely would be called now), mostly since I don’t feel like it. Enough to assume that it went out of business or was acquired by another security company long ago. Yet traces remain, in stone no less.

Prairie du Chien: Fort Crawford Military Cemetery, Trail of Presidents &c.

Posted on July 9, 2020 by admin

Not all road trips include visits to cemeteries or presidential sites, but I’m glad when they do. Our recent visit to the Driftless Area included both. On Saturday morning, I got up a little early to put gas in the car by myself. Yuriko knows what this means: I visit a local cemetery, too, if I can. She dozed on in the room while I drove a short distance to the Fort Crawford Military Cemetery, also known as the Fort Crawford Cemetery Soldiers’ Lot.

The entrance to the cemetery is a narrow patch of land in the residential section of mainland Prairie du Chien, with the burial ground at some distance behind an iron fence. Or maybe soldiers are buried in patch of ground, but I didn’t see any indication of it.

“Fort Crawford Cemetery is located on the former site of the Fort Crawford Military Reservation in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin,” says the National Cemetery Administration, which is part of the VA.

“There were two subsequent Fort Crawfords in Prairie du Chien during the 1800s. The original Fort Crawford, built in 1816, was situated adjacent to the Mississippi River. Repeated flooding led to its abandonment in 1826. Rebuilt on higher ground in 1830, the second incarnation of Fort Crawford operated until 1856.

“The first burials here were of the members of the 1st and 5th Infantry regiments stationed at the fort. The soldiers’ lot includes eight above-ground box-tombs that were likely erected by the regiments. The United States received the title for the lot in 1866. There are approximately 64 interments in the 0.59-acre soldiers’ lot…”

It’s sparsely populated.

With some of the inscriptions practically illegible.

Others were legible, but conveyed only anonymity. This looks like a latter-day stone, dedicated to an unknown. There were a sprinkling of these in the cemetery.

As I left, I spotted this near the entrance, attached to a boulder.

Just goes to show you how thorough the Daughters were. A memorial so obscure that no one has called for its removal? Not so.

On St. Feriole Island, I happened across a presidential site of sorts: Trail of Presidents. Trees in honor of presidents, arrayed in two rows to form a path, and originally planted in 2014.
I expected a tree planted for every U.S. president, which would have been the standard approach. But in fact the trees only honor presidents who visited Prairie du Chien either in or out of office, and includes two presidents of other entities besides the United States. I was surprised.

The full and semi-literate text of the sign at Trail of Presidents is here.

The honored U.S. presidents include: Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, James Garfield, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

For instance, President Fillmore has a white oak.
His plaque explains that he passed through Prairie du Chien when he was vice president in 1849. I haven’t ever seen anything about the travels of Vice President Fillmore — and out to the spanking-new state of Wisconsin that year would have been far afield — but I assume there’s some source for this buried in Fillmore’s papers, or maybe local news accounts.

The non-U.S. presidents? One was him again. He was stationed here, after all.

Also, curiously, Vicente Fox also has a tree, a red oak. “Vicente Fox attended Campion High School in Prairie du Chien in the 1960s,” the plaque says. “He then returned to Mexico.”

The last tree has been reserved for the next president to visit, so it isn’t too late for the most recent living officeholders.

One more Prairie du Chien sight I came across was overlooking the Mississippi, but not on St. Feriole Island. Rather, a statue of Marquette stands atop a tall column near the local chamber of commerce, and also not far from the bridge connecting Prairie du Chien with the town of Marquette, Iowa.

Rev. James Marquette, S.J.
Who discovered the
Mississippi River
at
Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin
June 17, 1673
This monument was erected
with
The solicited contributions
of generous citizens
by
The Business Men’s Association
Of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin
A.D. 1910
Fred Herber & Son Architects

Unusual to see him called “James,” which doesn’t sound very French. We’ve seen him honored elsewhere around the Great Lakes; Pere Marquette got around, back when muscle power (yours or an animal’s) was the only way to do it.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Cemeteries