Category Archives: US History

Bong!

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On the morning of July 31, as the girls slept a little late, I drove from Duluth to Superior, Wis., via the Richard I. Bong Memorial Bridge. It’s a long, not particularly wide bridge over St. Louis Bay, in service since 1985.

Richard Ira Bong, who grew up on a farm near Superior, is credited with shooting down 40 Japanese aircraft as a fighter pilot with the U. S. Army Air Corps, and likely got other kills that weren’t credited. Driving through Superior a few days earlier, I’d noticed the Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center on the lake, so after crossing his namesake bridge, I made my way to the Bong Center to take a look.

It’s a small military museum with a strong Bong component, but not entirely devoted to him. Walking in, it’s hard to miss the centerpiece P-38 Lightning fighter plane, the very sort that Maj. Bong flew to such lethal effect on the enemy.

This aircraft isn’t the one Bong flew. While he was stateside, it crashed while another pilot was flying it. The Army took delivery of the one on display in July 1945, after Bong had been ordered to quit flying combat missions. The Richard I. Bong American Legion Post of Poplar, Wis., acquired the plane from the Air Force in 1949, and it was on display in that town for some decades.

In the 1990s, the plane was restored to resemble Bong’s P-38J “Marge,” complete with his fiance Marge’s portrait on it.

Bong’s Medal of Honor is on display. His citation says: “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action above and beyond the call of duty in the Southwest Pacific area from 10 October to 15 November 1944.

“Though assigned to duty as gunnery instructor and neither required nor expected to perform combat duty, Maj. Bong voluntarily and at his own urgent request engaged in repeated combat missions, including unusually hazardous sorties over Balikpapan, Borneo, and in the Leyte area of the Philippines. His aggressiveness and daring resulted in his shooting down 8 enemy airplanes during this period.”

As mentioned, the museum isn’t all about Bong. There’s an assortment of artifacts, such as this magnetic mine.

Some home-front ephemera.

A piece of a Messerschmitt 109.

Bong came home for good in 1945, before the war was over, and did some test piloting of jet aircraft for the Army in California. Being a test pilot turned out to be more dangerous for Bong than facing the Japanese in the Pacific.

His plane crashed in an accident on an otherwise famed date: August 6, 1945. He and Marge had only been married a short while (she died in 2003, after playing an important part in establishing the museum).

Voyageurs National Park

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What is it about national parks? The term is a charm, good juju, kotodama, perhaps to misuse all those expressions, that draws people to a place. People like me.

Had Voyageurs National Park, which is way up in northern Minnesota, merely been Voyageurs State Park — with the same lake-based natural sites and the same history stretching back to paleo-Indians — I doubt that I’d have made the effort to visit this time. I even picked it over a national monument about the same distance from Duluth, the similarly themed Grand Portage NM at the state’s northeast tip.
Recently I checked a list of U.S. national parks and discovered that Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis was established earlier this year. I hadn’t heard that. The new designation was evidently something Congress could agree on, so now there are 60 national parks.

Including Gateway, because I’ve been there a few times, that’s a round 20 national parks I’ve visited, also including Voyageurs NP, which we went to on July 30.

Among the 60 U.S. national parks, Voyageurs NP is one of the least visited, in the bottom 15, with 237,250 recreational visitors in 2017. That’s many more than the likes of Gates of the Arctic (the least visited at just over 11,000 visitors last year) or the least-visited non-Alaska park, Isle Royale, at over 28,000. But not very many compared with the swarms at Great Smoky Mountains or the Grand Canyon or Zion, the top three 2017 tourist magnets among national parks.

The park is relatively new as well, something I hadn’t bothered to learn beforehand. Richard Nixon’s signature is on the 1971 bill creating Voyageurs NP, which was formally established in 1975.

Voyageurs NP is one of those parks designated for its natural beauty, but also its human history, with the name honoring the tough and probably randy Frenchmen who passed this way once upon a time, hauling pelts on journeys from the wilds of Canada toward the markets of Europe.

The park is a world of wooded islands and peninsulas but mostly lakes, including the sizable Rainy and Kabetogama lakes. So I figured only reasonable that the thing to do was take a boat tour.

The park itself offers a number of options, including one that’s six hours long, which didn’t interest me greatly, and one in small boats you paddle to evoke the transits of those hearty voyageurs of old, though I bet modern participants smell better than authentic voyageurs. That didn’t really pique my interest either.

So we took a two-and-a-half hour jaunt out on Rainy Lake, at the park’s western edge, accessed by driving a few miles east of the border town of International Falls, Minn. We boarded the good tourist ship Voyageur and off we went.
Along the way, our guide — Ranger Adam — pointed out various aspects of natural and human history in the land we cruised by, such as a number of eagles and eagle nests perched on tall trees, evidence of beavers at work, the sparse ruins of an 1890s settlement called Rainy Lake City, and a former fishing camp that petered out in the 1950s.

We stopped at one small island: Little American Island, which was added to the park only in 1989. Gold mining had occurred there briefly nearly 100 years earlier. These days, short footpaths take visitors to the few relics of the gold mining days.
Ranger Adam went with us to explain things and point stuff out, such as the hole in the ground left over from the gold mine and a few rusty mining machine parts.

“The Little American Mine operated from 1893 to 1898,” says Forgotten Minnesota. “The average value of the gold extracted during that time was $30 per ton, which represented a profit of around $12 per ton.

“The Little American is the only gold mine in Minnesota known to have produced a profit. The impact of the mine was felt primarily in Rainy Lake City. After the mine closed, Rainy Lake City slowly disappeared and was considered a ghost town by 1901.

“Although the mine was productive, a large vein of rich gold was never found to kick off a gold rush to rival those in California. Oddly enough, the influence of the Little American Mine on the mining industry occurred in Canada, where the large veins of gold were finally found.

“Remnants of the mine can still be found under years of overgrown brush and pine trees. Two major excavations from the Little American Mine are still visible on the island: a vertical, cribbed shaft and an entrance to a horizontal shaft. Both are filled with debris and water.”

Little American Island aside, the tour was mostly a relaxing few hours on the water. Though it was fairly warm — maybe 85 F and partly cloudy — as we chugged along the breeze kept things fairly comfortable.

One oddity: out on the lake, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I didn’t really want to have anything to do with it while on the lake, but I was surprised there was service at all. I glanced at the phone and the screen said, Welcome to Canada! Then it offered details about how I needed pay extra to call from within Canada.

I’m pretty sure we hadn’t crossed into Canadian waters, since a NPS tour is probably going to be precise about that kind of thing. But we were close. The nearest cell tower must have been on private land in Canada, so the phone, dense device that it is, figured we were there.

The King William District in July

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Just back from eight days in San Antonio. Most of the time I visited with family or worked, since my kind of work is mobile. Also, temps in the high 90s and sometimes over 100 degrees F. discouraged me from too much wandering around during the day.

Even so, last Sunday toward the late afternoon I drove down to the King William District, which is leafy this time of year and so not quite unbearably hot, and took a few short walks.

“The district encompasses land that was once irrigated farm land belonging to the Mission San Antonio de Valero, commonly known as the Alamo,” the City of San Antonio says. “When the mission was secularized in 1793, the lands were divided among the resident Indian families from the mission or sold at public auction. In the 1860s the area was subdivided into lots and laid out with the present streets.

“In the mid-nineteenth century… a great many Germans, who had immigrated to Texas in the 1840s, began to settle in this area… The area developed into an idyllic neighborhood of large, impressive houses designed in the Greek Revival, Victorian, and Italianate styles.

“The main street into the neighborhood was given the name King William in honor of King Wilhelm I, King of Prussia in the 1870s. During World War I, when America was at war with Germany, the name was changed to Pershing Avenue. A few years after the war ended the King William name was restored.”

These days there’s a Pershing Ave. in San Antonio, but it’s further north, fittingly not far from Fort Sam Houston. By the mid-20th century, the King William District was run down. By the late 20th century, restoration was under way.

One of my short walks took me along King William St., which is an important street in the district, but hardly the only one. The array of houses made me think of the East End Historic District in Galveston. In King William, there are large and historic houses such as the Villa Finale.
The Steves Homested. One of these days, I’ll take the tour.Edward Steves was a successful businessman in lumber in San Antonio in the 19th century, and Steves & Sons, which makes doors, is still around. I went to high school with a girl who was descended from Steves on her mother’s side.

There are plenty of other large and not-so-large houses on the street, most of which are worth a look.
That last one is the Alfred Giles House. One the architect of that name designed for himself. He’s thought to have done the Steves Homestead, and he certainly designed a lot of buildings in Texas, including some county courthouses (such for Goliad County and Presidio County) and even some in Monterrey, Mexico.

The Hegeler Carus Mansion

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Back to posting on July 8. A good Independence Day to all.

Before we went to Streator to see the Walldog murals, we visited LaSalle, Illinois. Like Streator, LaSalle is in LaSalle County, though it isn’t the county seat either — Ottawa is. Unlike Streator, LaSalle is on an Interstate. On two of them, in fact, at the junction of I-80 and I-39.

Those roads were still far in the future when a German, Edward C. Hegeler, came to LaSalle in the late 1850s. Before long he and his partner Frederick William Matthiessen, another German, were American zinc barons whose fortunes were made during the Civil War.

Why LaSalle? It was near coal deposits and the Illinois & Michigan Canal, besides a rail connection to Chicago. Smelting zinc required a lot of coal in those days. Zinc was to be had in southern Wisconsin. Cheaper to bring the zinc to Illinois than the coal to Wisconsin, I suppose.

As propertied men of the Gilded Age often did, Hegeler had a mansion built for himself and his large brood. In our time, it’s the Hegeler Carus Mansion, completed in 1876 in that Second Empire style we associate with eerie residences because of the drawings of Charles Addams.
William W. Boyington designed the house. He’s better known for the Chicago Water Tower, but he also did the Joliet State Pen and the current Illinois State Capitol.

The Carus in the name is after Hegeler’s son-in-law, Paul Carus, who wasn’t a zinc baron. He was a scholar, eventually running Open Court Publishing Co., which was founded by old man Hegeler, who clearly didn’t have a one-track zinc-oriented mind. Open Court published — publishes, it’s still around — titles in philosophy, science, and religion.

We took the 3 p.m. tour of the Hegeler Carus Mansion on Saturday, partly as something to do during the hotest part of a hot day. The house doesn’t have central AC, but thick walls and wall units and fans made it tolerable inside.

A third-generation member of the Hegeler-Carus clan lived in the house until 2004, when he died aged more than 100. Now a foundation owns the place, and it’s doing the slow work of restoring the mansion. A few rooms are finished, complete with high Victorian furniture and wall and floor decor — there are some elaborately styled floors in this house — and many, many books.

“The elaborate interior decoration of the Hegeler Carus mansion is the work of August Fiedler, a talented German-American who excelled in interior design and furniture making,” says The Story of a House. “Although he designed many interiors in Chicago and elsewhere, most have been lost, leaving the Hegeler Carus as the largest and most intact surviving example of his work.”

Most of the rooms aren’t finished yet. Still, the flavor of the place is distinct. A historic property doesn’t have to be a House Beautiful specimen to be enjoyable.

Murals & Milestones in Streator

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Early in June, when we were visiting Arcola, Illinois, I noticed that the town sported more murals than it did during our 2007 visit. In fact, I didn’t remember any from that time. That’s because in 2012, Walldogs came to town and painted the murals.

I found that out by looking at Arcola’s web site, which mentioned the Walldogs, and then I looked them up. “The Walldogs are a group of highly skilled sign painters and mural artists from all over the globe…” the group’s web site says.

“Once a year, hundreds of Walldogs gather in one lucky town or city to paint multiple murals and old-fashioned wall advertisements. This meet – or festival – is usually held during the span of 4 or 5 days ending on a Sunday.”

More about the group was published recently by The Times, the area’s local paper.

While reading about the group, I noticed that the next Walldogs event was going to be in Streator, Illinois at the end of June. I knew right away that I wanted to go to Streator during the event, and that is what we did on Saturday. Since it was nearly 100 degrees F. during the early afternoon, we timed the visit so we didn’t get there until around 5:30 in the afternoon, when things had cooled off to around 90 or so, and it was easier to find shade.

Streator was glad to get the Walldogs, at least to judge by signs like this, placed in the window of a resale shop.

This is a mural to commemorate the event itself. It notes that this year is the 150th anniversary of Streator, the 200th anniversary of Illinois entering the Union, and 25 years of Walldogs events.
We’d been to Streator once before, but only for a short visit in 2005 that absolutely no one but me remembered.

I wrote in a previous BTST: “Illinois 18 took us exclusively through flatlands, once the Illinois River valley was behind us, and on to Streator. Streator’s one of those towns that the Interstate system has completely bypassed. It didn’t seem any worse for it, though, with all the usual features of rural Illinois county seats [sic]: a small downtown, a district of fine-trim houses, a trailer park or two, parks, schools, a police station, firehouse, and library with a historic marker out front dedicated to the discoverer of Pluto.”

I stopped to read the sign, but didn’t even get out of the car. That was all I did in Streator. This time around, I knew that Clyde Tombaugh was going to get his own prominent Walldog mural in Streator, and sure enough, that was one of the first of the spanking-new murals we saw when we got to town.

So new, in fact, that the artists were still working on it.
Just before we left, however, the mural was visible for all to see.

It did me good to know that Streator hasn’t forgotten its favorite astronomical son, a lad from the Midwest who discovered a whole planet. I bet Pluto isn’t anything but a planet to the good people of Streator. Me either.

Murals tend to be stylized, and so Tombaugh’s a stylized astronomer, looking through an eyepiece. Even in the 1920s and ’30s, I don’t think professional astronomers did that very much. After all, Tombaugh discovered Pluto by the tedious task of comparing photographic plates by eye, something that computers certainly do now.

Nearby were other walls with other brand-new murals, such as WWII Canteen.

They too are stylized, but supposedly there’s a story behind the couple on the wall. I didn’t get the details

Here’s Edward Plumb, a film composer who worked for Disney back when Walt himself was in charge, and who happened to be a grandson of the cofounder of Streator, Col. Ralph Plumb.

I noticed that Plumb’s mural is on the side of the boarded up Majestic Theater. No doubt once upon a time, you could hear his scores there as Disney movies played at the Majestic.

On this wall in the afternoon sun are Col. Plumb and Worthy Streator, town founders, along with the miners who came to dig coal in Streator’s early days, and a canary.

Some of the murals were being painted on aluminum panels fixed to temporary wooden scaffolding. The panels, I was told by a fellow who may or may not have been with the event, would be attached to walls later. Walls maybe not otherwise suitable for taking paint directly.

One honored native son was Clarence Mulford, creator of Hopalong Cassidy.

I’d say that Hopalong Cassidy is pretty much the definition of a forgotten figure from fiction. Even when I was growing up, he was little more than a vague Western character with an odd name.

Another forgotten name, though not from fiction: Calbraith Rodgers.
Rodgers had his moment in the public eye in 1911, when he flew the Vin Fiz Flyer, a Wright Brothers machine, coast-to-coast over the course of about three months. Vin Fiz was a soft drink, in case anyone thinks product sponsorship is a new thing.

According to Wiki: “The support team rode on a three-car train called the Vin Fiz Special, and included Charlie Taylor, the Wright brothers’ bicycle shop and aircraft mechanic, who built their first and later engines and knew every detail of Wright airplane construction; Rodgers’ wife Mabel; his mother; reporters; and employees of Armour and Vin Fiz.”

There’s a movie comedy in that story. Or there was, back in the 1960s, when the likes of The Great Race and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines were made.

Rodgers might have reached further heights of aviation fame, but he died in a crash soon after his transcontinental flight. In fact, according to the International Bird Strike Committee, he was the first person to die because his airplane struck a bird: “The first fatal bird strike accident was in 1912 at Long Beach in California, when a gull (Larus sp.) lodged in the flying controls of a Wright Flyer, killing Cal Rodgers.”

A mural honoring Engine No. 34 of the obscure Streator & Clinton RR.

Here are the Howe brothers, Orion and Lyston.
They were drummer boys from Streator with the 55th Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry. Lyston has the distinction of being the youngest known drummer boy in the war, and Orion received the Medal of Honor for his conduct at Vicksburg.

The lads have a memorial in the park, not far from where their mural was painted.
The citation for Orion says: “A drummer boy, 14 years of age, and severely wounded and exposed to a heavy fire from the enemy, he persistently remained upon the field of battle until he had reported to Gen. W. T. Sherman the necessity of supplying cartridges for the use of troops under command of Colonel Malmborg.”

Last Thursday in June Olla Podrida

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A few days ago, when it was cloudy and cool, I happened to be at the Schaumburg Town Center. The place has an underappreciated garden. Underappreciated by me, anyway.Since then, genuine summer has returned in the form of warmer temps. High 90s are forecast for the weekend. It’s been a rainy summer so far, though.

One detail I forgot to mention about the Lincoln Museum. Ann said she was most amused by learning that in his youth, the president was a talented ax-thrower. I was amused too. They took entertainment where they could get it in the 19th century.

One more picture from the Lincoln Museum. Don’t recognize them? On Jeopardy, the clue would be “Maj. Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris.”

The question: Which couple was in the presidential box with the Lincolns at Ford’s Theatre?

Their story is as sad as that of the Lincolns, or even worse. Rathbone later married Harris, but his mental health deteriorated in the following years, and he eventually murdered her. He died in 1911 in an insane asylum.

Saw this not long ago in Chicago, on Irving Park Blvd.
A bust of Jose P. Rizal, ophthalmologist and martyred Philippine nationalist. How many ophthalmologists get to be national heroes as well? I can’t think of any others.

The Old Illinois State Capitol, Springfield

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Before we revisited the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, we revisited the Old State Capitol. At least I revisited it. I’m not sure whether I’d ever taken Ann, or whether her friend had ever been there at any point. Never mind, it was worth a look.
In the background from that vantage is the larger dome of the modern capitol, on which construction started in 1868. Didn’t visit there this time around.

More formally, the old capitol is the Old State Capitol State Historic Site, a Greek Revival structure that served as the state house from 1839 to 1876, so it was the one Lincoln would have hung around. In fact, as a state legislator, Lincoln was among the legislators who facilitated the movement of the capital from Vandalia, which is further south.

“In the Legislature at Vandalia in the session of 1836-7, Sangamon county was represented by two senators and seven members of the lower house,” says ‘The Story of the Sangamon County Court House,’ a 1901 monograph by H.D. Giger. “They were a singular body of men, all tall and angular and their combined height was exactly 54 feet, they are famous in Illinois history as the ‘Long Nine.’

“The capitol of the State at this time was at Vandalia, having been removed there from Kaskaskia, and as the tide of emigration was moving northward it was conceded that the capitol must be nearer the center of population; although Vandalia and Southern Illinois fought hard against it.

“From the beginning of the session the Long Nine set to work log rolling. They asked for no public improvements; they wanted no railroads, canals, no plank roads, but would help out any member that did want them for his district, if he would vote to remove the capital to Springfield.

“There were many applicants, and on the first ballot Springfield had but 35 out of 121 votes… Poor old Peoria, as usual, brought up the rear and Springfield captured the prize on the fourth ballot.”

Abraham Lincoln Online picks up the story: “The capitol building, designed by architect John Rague, was the third to appear on the square, replacing two previous courthouses.” (Rague also did the old Iowa capitol.)

“The [state] outgrew the building during Lincoln’s presidency, and work on a new statehouse began soon after his death. The present building was dismantled in 1966 and rebuilt, which allowed the inclusion of an underground public parking lot and space for offices. The original stone exterior was stored and rebuilt, but the interior was completely reconstructed.”

It’s a well-done reconstruction.

The exhibits include a statue of the Little Giant.
While we were there, a group of historic re-enactors in 19th-century costumes happened to be in the recreated House chamber.
They gave a lively 20-minute or so performance, recalling the lives of black Illinois citizens of the Civil War era.

Another Look at the Rubber Lincolns

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The weekend before last, we popped down to Springfield for a short visit. As in the capital of Illinois, not any of the many others, or the cartoon town. Ann had expressed an interest, mostly in passing, that she’d like to see the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum again. So, like a parent does sometimes, I took that passing whim and ran with it.

The last time we were there was 2010, so I could see Ann’s point. She was only seven years old then and wanted an updated perspective. I also wanted to visit again, just to see if it was any different.

The short answer: not much. Is that part of the museum’s current problems?

Maintaining attendance as the years go by means offering new things from time to time, and I got the distinct impression that most everything was the same as eight years ago — including the short films shown in the museum’s two main auditoriums. I know it costs money to make new films, but that can’t be done in eight years?

Then again, maybe the museum isn’t interested in repeat visitors. School groups come, tourists come. For most people, once is probably it. Or maybe again many years later as a child who visited returns with a child of his or her own. The museum isn’t quite old enough for that yet, but I suppose it will happen.

Actually, I noticed a few small changes. Take a look at the picture of the “rubber” Lincoln family near the museum’s entrance that I took in 2010, with my own family posing.

Now look at this one from 2018, with Ann on the right and a friend of hers on the left.

There are some small differences in the Lincoln family — a different but similar dress for Mary, for instance, and for all I know the life-sized figures might be different ones from the ones standing there eight years ago. But the main difference is behind the Lincolns.

Eight years ago, a life-sized John Wilkes Booth lurked in the background. Now he’s gone. The figure you can see in the back to the left is George McClellan, standing inside the fence with U.S. Grant, who isn’t visible in my picture. (Also obscured, and off the right, are Harriett Tubman and Frederick Douglass.)

Is Booth out for a touchup? Or did the museum get tired of people complaining about his presence? He did murder Lincoln, after all. His figure in such a prominent place is a little like putting a print of the famed photo of Lee Harvey Oswald and his rifle on the wall at the Kennedy Museum.

Never mind all that, I enjoyed the museum the second time around enough to make it worth the trip, though I think it will be my last. I’m sure Ann got her revised impression of the place.

I paid close attention to the rubber figures, which aren’t rubber, of course. As I wrote in 2010, “Though derided as ‘rubber’ Lincolns, they’re actually sculpted foam coated with fiberglass, and then painted, clothed and fitted with a mix of real and synthetic hair.”

The figures are a distinguishing feature of the museum, and on the whole, add to the experience. Here’s the thinkin’, book readin’ young Abe.

The store-keeping Lincoln as a young man in Salem, Illinois. It didn’t work out for him.

Abraham courting Mary. That worked out for him.

The Lincoln-Herndon law office. Perhaps the best tableau in the museum. Clutter is an essential aspect of people’s lives that historical museums often miss. Lincoln had better things to do than tidy his office or discipline his sons. Namely, read.

Can’t very well have a Lincoln museum without Mr. Douglas debating Mr. Lincoln.

Mary Lincoln dressed for her husband’s inauguration.

There is another Mary Lincoln figure, dressed in black, sitting alone in a dim room with the sound of rain in the background. She is depicted grieving for their son Tad, who died in 1862. It’s the saddest tableau in the museum, even more than the Ford’s Theatre depiction.

The first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation to the cabinet. (“By the way, gentlemen, one more thing…”) Clearly inspired by the famed Carpenter painting, if not so formally posed.

And, of course, the Lincolns at Ford’s Theatre.

Booth is depicted entering the door behind them, so maybe that’s the only place to find the rubber assassin in the museum these days.

Thursday Stew

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Back again on Tuesday, May 29. Memorial Day is pretty close to Decoration Day this year, but not quite. The next time they will coincide will be 2022.

I finally got around to looking at the professional photographer’s pictures from my nephew’s wedding last month. Quite a selection. She was really busy.

File this book under relics of the midcentury, subfile: things unlikely to inspire a period TV show on cable, unlike Madison Avenue, Pan Am, Camelot, etc.

I found it at my mother’s house and, considering my interest in U.S. presidents and candidates for that office, borrowed it for a bit. It’s a first edition, with Pyramid Publications putting it out in August 1965. In other words, just as soon as possible after Adlai Stevenson died.

I’m sorry to report that, after reading a fair sample of the book, wit is pretty thinly represented. Maybe he had some wit about him in person that didn’t translate into print. More likely, Oscar Wilde, he was not. But I can sense some wisdom in the pages.

What’s the mascot of Eufaula High School in Eufaula, Oklahoma, a town of about 2,800?

The Ironheads. I drove through Eufaula last month and happened to be stopped at a place where I could appreciate the water tower.

Merriam-Webster offers two definitions: 1) a white stork (Mycteria americana) with black wing flight feathers and tail that frequents wooded swamps from the southeastern U.S. to Argentina — called also wood ibis; 2) a stupid person. I bet the school was thinking of the first definition.

Also in Oklahoma, just off of the Will Rogers Turnpike at Big Cabin.
All the usually wordy Roadside America has to say about the statue: “Standing Brave is over 50 feet tall, and guards an Indian tax-free cigarette store.”

The Swamp

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The following is the kind of color I want from history books, not the kind of experience I want for myself:

April 12: Did nothing but send off express to Fort Deynaud at 4 a.m. and mourn my existence the rest of the day. Mosquitoes perfectly awful.
April 13: No peace from mosquitoes… Stayed up all night… Mosquitoes awful. 1,000,000,000 of them.
April 18: Mosquitoes worse than ever. They make life a burden.
April 19: I am perfectly exhausted by the heat and eaten up by the mosquitoes… They are perfectly intolerable.

The time: 1856. The place: Florida, during the Third Seminole War. Pre-DEET Florida. The writer: Alexander Webb, with the U.S. Army at the time. He survived the mosquitoes (not everyone did), was later a hero at Gettysburg and died in 1911.

The diary extract is quoted in The Swamp by Michael Grunwald (2006). Subtitled “The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise,” it’s a history of human interaction with the Everglades, and an interesting book with a large cast: Calusa Indians, Ponce de Leon, Andrew Jackson, the Seminoles, James Gadsden, Osceola, competing Florida Reconstruction governors Gleason and Reed, land speculator Hamilton Disston, John James Audubon, Napoleon Bonaparte Broward and Henry Flagler. That’s just up to the 20th century, when the only organization up to the task of draining much of the Everglades came to the fore: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Of course, draining or otherwise modifying the Everglades is now universally regarded as a mistake, and a remediation as slow as the Everglades is under way.

Early on, Grunwald pointed out that large parts of the ecosystem are actually marshes, with only some counting as swamp, but never mind. The Swamp it is.

Then it occurred to me that “drain the swamp” is an ossified metaphor. No one in the developed world advocates draining real swamps any more. We want more wetlands. As usual, language is a laggard. But that’s not always a bad thing.