•July 18, 2018•

By Roger Ruthhart
for Illinois Press Assn.

The Quad-Cities region has provided a footnote to history for virtually every war fought on American soil, including the Battle of Campbell’s Island – the western-most battle of the War of 1812.
According to the records of Indian historian John Hauberg, as the French and Indian War ended, the last of the French soldiers of the northwest spent the winter of 1760-61 near present-day Rock Island, ice bound, on their retreat from Michilimackinac to Fort Chartres, Ill., following the British conquest of Canada.
All Indian villages in the upper Mississippi and Great Lakes were canvassed by British agents to enlist Indians for fighting in the frontier during the Revolutionary War.
The Americans, even before General George Rogers Clark conquered the Illinois country in July 1778, had agents who had succeeded in keeping the Sauk and Meskwaki from joining the British ranks. With the arrival of Gen. Clark, messengers were sent to all of the tribes inviting them to come to Cahokia to join in treaties of peace.
According to the writings of Hauberg, the Sauk held to the middle ground – trading with the British but also with the Spanish at St. Louis and with the Americans in Illinois. Read More

•July 11, 2018•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

Regular readers of this space might recall that I have a love affair with Chicago. I take Amtrak in, revel in the incomparable offerings of symphony and jazz, art and museums, all within walking distance, and follow up with dinner from an endless selection of clever restaurants.
Yet I continue to be haunted by the paradox of mindless street violence playing out daily, almost in the shadow of this oasis of high culture. How can the two worlds exist side by side, I wonder, in a civilized society?
I have written about this before, based on visits I have made to the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Yet I feel compelled to weigh in again, for the violence, now chronicled in leading national and international publications, threatens to mar this great American city.
In recent weeks, there have been incidents of apparently lawless groups of youth brazenly walking off their gang turf and into the vibrant city center, generating high anxiety among the culture seekers.
Violence in Chicago is actually down significantly from what it was in the 1990s. But it wasn’t much reported then, as it is now, and most present mayhem occurs within a few poor, largely minority neighborhoods to the west and south of the city center.
According to the Heartland Alliance, a poverty research group, in 2016 African-American men aged 15-34 represented just 4 percent of Chicago’s population, yet made up over half the city’s murder victims. Read More

•July 4, 2018•

By Greg Olson
Of the Jacksonville Journal-Courier

Col. Ulysses S. Grant passed up a chance to have his soldiers ride in train cars. Instead, he thought it best that they march to war.
So, on July 3, 1861, Grant mounted a horse and led his first Civil War command out of Camp Yates in Springfield, en route to Quincy. The 39-year-old Grant had molded his somewhat unruly troops — members of the 21st Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment — into a disciplined fighting force.
“There was direct railroad communication between Springfield and Quincy, but I thought it would be good preparation for the troops to march,” Grant wrote in his “Memoirs.”
The approximately 1,000 men of the 21st Illinois marched about 8 miles the first day before setting up camp just west of present-day Riddle Hill near what is known today as the Old Jacksonville Road in Sangamon County.
On the Fourth of July, Grant led his men to Island Grove in western Sangamon County, where they stopped for a while at the home of Capt. James N. Brown, a wealthy farmer and Shorthorn cattle raiser. Read More

The Mother Road offers amazing sights as it winds through Illinois

•June 27, 2018•

By The State
Journal-Register staff

Perhaps it is the yearning for yesteryear that endears so many to Route 66.
Who wouldn’t want to jump into a classic car and explore the United States, stopping at shiny new service stations to pump gas into your vehicle, or sip a cold drink from the soda shops that dot the roadway? Such sepia-toned wishes of driving the Mother Road in its heyday could prompt many of us to start packing for a trip.
Ford had been mass-producing vehicles for a little more than a decade when Route 66 was commissioned on Nov. 11, 1926. It was one of the original highways within the U.S. Highway System, its 2,448 miles starting in Chicago before arriving on the West Coast in Los Angeles (and later the Santa Monica Pier).
By 1985, Route 66 had been removed from the federal highway system, as the entire road had been replaced by the Interstate Highway System.
But it’s still possible to get an idea of what the roadway looked like: Just stop in Lexington to take a trip down “Memory Lane,” a 1-mile stretch of the original 1926 alignment of Route 66 pavement. It was turned into an interpretive trail and is open year-round to pedestrians and bicycles. There, people can delight in the restored vintage billboards and signage. Read More

•June 20, 2018•

By Scott Hilyard
Of the Peoria Journal Star

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, formerly named the Northern Regional Research Laboratory, has been headquartered in Peoria for 78 years.
Wait, the what?
Well, it’s best known as The Ag Lab, the federal scientific research operation that is the work home of 80 Ph.D. scientists and 120 support staff. Wrapped in post-9/11 wrought iron security, the building has been a solid, if vaguely mysterious, presence at the corner of Nebraska Avenue and University Street since 1940.
Created under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, The Ag Lab was one of four regional research centers built. The centers cost about $1 million each to build, equip and staff.
Then, the United States was emerging from the Depression and World War II was on the horizon. “All across this country there were large stockpiles of excess agricultural commodities,” former Ag Lab director Paul Sebesta said in 2015. “The chore was to take those excess commodities and create value-added products out of them to support the rural economy. The four centers were located in Peoria, close to the Great Lakes, in Philadelphia, one was located in New Orleans and one was located out on the West Coast, in the Bay Area. Each still exists and all four were constructed exactly the same. Read More