News Progress

•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By 1985, Route 66 had been removed from the federal highway system, as the entire road had been replaced by the Interstate Highway System.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

•June 13, 2018•

By Emma Baker
Of the Hancock County Journal-Pilot

For the Mormons, Quincy appeared to be a beacon of hope and safety during tumultuous times.

Members of the Mormon faith began arriving in Hancock County about 1839 looking for security after having encountered hostility elsewhere, according to Thomas Gregg, a Hancock County settler who wrote about the Mormon faith in his 1880 book “History of Hancock County, Illinois.”

But in the Quincy area they were welcomed. They established their own town, Nauvoo, about 50 miles north of Quincy. Gregg’s book describes early Nauvoo, before the building of the Mormon Temple, as a picturesque site on the east side of the Mississippi River, about 10 miles north of Keokuk, Iowa.

“The origin, rapid development and prosperity of this religious sect are the most remarkable and instructive historical events of the present century,” Gregg wrote about the Mormons in Nauvoo.

Illinois was a new home where members settled after being driven out of New York, Ohio and Missouri. Unfortunately, the Mormon followers would eventually be driven out of Illinois, too.

The founding of a faith Read More

•June 6, 2018•

By Jeff Johnson
Courtesy of the Chicago Sun-Times

Since June 2017, Muddy Waters’ image has beamed down from a 10-story mural at 17 N. State St. in Chicago. But the king bee of Chicago blues looms even larger over the city with his outsized musical and cultural legacy.

The Mississippi Delta native, born McKinley Morganfield in 1913, followed the Great Migration to Chicago in 1943, where he found stardom with his groundbreaking electric guitar sound and classic bands. He died at age 70 in 1983, but new generations of artists often cite the influence of the six-time Grammy winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, and Waters’ songs such as “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man” and “Rollin’ Stone” are used frequently by filmmakers and advertisers.

International tourists visit Chicago to bathe in Waters’ lore, including a visit to his longtime home at 4339 S. Lake Park. There’s not much to see, though, because the house that Tim Samuelson, Chicago’s cultural historian, has called Chicago’s most historic home has stood vacant and in a state of disrepair for many years. Plans are stalled to convert the Kenwood two-flat into a museum or other attraction. Read More