News Progress

•July 31, 2024•

After Sullivan successfully got a shooting sports team, the Moultrie County, Illinois Hunter Safety Facebook page posted start dates for hunter safety courses. The importance behind hunters attending these courses is not only to keep the hunter safe but also to keep the people around them safe. Average hunter safety courses discuss the responsibility and ethics of firing and handling a firearm. The course also goes over safety tips with ammunition and identifies zones of fire from those of populated areas where firing is prohibited. These safety courses also provide education on killing for sport or killing for a food source as well as what is considered game in Illinois. In Illinois it is not banned to hunt for sport, but it is heavily discouraged within these courses. Illinois is one of the states with the most wide range of game for hunters to choose from but identifying the correct species can be difficult. Per IDNR policy, anyone attending under the age of ten must be accompanied to and during the sessions by an adult or  a guardian of 16 or older. Sign-ups for the Fall 2024 course can be found on the Moultrie County, Illinois Hunter Safety Facebook page. 

Big Spring Day

•July 31, 2024•

by Janet Roney

Big Spring Township, Shelby County, Illinois, was soft, tender, and flooded with new life that May day in 1999. There were no hard edges, even on the dissolving lichen covered sandstone tombstones in Spain Cemetery. 

It was like being in a wet-in-wet watercolor as it was painted all around us. Low hanging clouds of Paynes Gray seeped into the Thalo Green tree line on the far south edge of the Little Wabash River bottom, mixing the colors. Low rumbling thunder, dampened by the spongy atmosphere, pulsed softly from just over the horizon to the west. A ray of diffused sunlight penetrated the flowing energy of the approaching storm, warming us in yellow green light as we watched from Spain Cemetery Hill. Read More

A Place for Everything

•July 24, 2024•

by Janet Roney

My German grandmother used to say, “A place for everything and everything in its place.” I try, but I am surprised and pleased when I find something of mine actually in its place. The MCCD was pleased when we found the Kaskaskia-Detroit Road and Hubbard’s Trace branches in their place, too.

In the early spring of 1999, the Moultrie County Corps of Discovery took several hikes in the woods along Jonathan Creek between the Masonic Home and Nelson Ford looking for evidence. On the first hike, we walked south from the IDNR parking cove at the top of the hill east of the Jonathan Creek bottom land (across the road from Reuben Chupp). After entering the IDNR woodland about ¼ mile south of the parking lot, we crossed a ravine and climbed another hill.  Read More

•July 24, 2024•

Windsor School District is welcoming a new principal, Liz King. King grew up in Sigel, graduating high school in Teutopolis she went on to pursue education and received her bachelor’s degree in Communication Education and a master’s degree in Communication Studies from Illinois State University. Read More

2014

The old horseshoe pits in Lovington’s Tom Conn Park held the memories of many residents as they watched or played horseshoes with friends and family. But last year the pits were removed to accommodate the new skate park. Yet, towards the end of the planning for the skate park project, Sara Gale approached the board to reinstall the horseshoe pits in a different location to keep alive the memory of her father Emmett Burcham, who was a champion thrower. Read More