The Village of Troy: Oswego’s 19th Century industrial suburb

Oswego’s grown a LOT during the past several years, to the point that unincorporated Boulder Hill, once several times larger than the village, can now perhaps be considered a sort of suburb. But the time was, more than a century and a half ago, Oswego actually did have a suburb, and an industrial suburb of sorts at that, bordering the village to the north.

The Fox River Valley’s pioneer millwrights, who provided some of the most vital services early pioneers required, followed closely behind the area’s first settlers. Early millers used their talents to provide food by grinding corn and wheat into flour, and also supplied building materials from their first rudimentary saw mills on the Fox River as well as on its tributary creeks.

The official U.S. Government map drawn from the 1838 survey of the area shows tiny Oswego at the Fox River’s narrows and Levi Gorton’s gristmill–noted as a “flouring mill” in the surveyor’s notes–at the dam just upstream from the village.

In 1836, Merritt Clark arrived in the Oswego area—the tiny village tumbling along the brow of the ridge overlooking the Fox River was then called Hudson—and built what Kendall County’s first historian called a corn mill on the west bank of the river. The mill was located about 3/4 miles north of the village that had been laid out in 1834 by Lewis B. Judson and Levi Arnold. Judson and Arnold called their new community Hudson—probably to remind them of their home area of New York—but it was renamed Oswego in 1837 after Congress awarded the growing town its own post office.

The same year Oswego got its post office, Levi Gorton and William Wormley built a dam across the Fox River to provide water power for Clark’s mill, and Clark reportedly added a chair factory to his corn milling operation. Later that same year, however, Clark apparently sold his business, including the mill and dam, to Levi Gorton and his brother, Darwin. The Gortons, apparently unsatisfied with Clark’s rudimentary mill, started construction that year of a true grist mill on the same site. The new mill was ready for operation the following year.

Then sometime prior to 1840, the Gortons sold their mill and dam to local business and property owner Nathaniel A. Rising. Rising and his partner, John Robinson, added a store to the grist mill at the west end of the dam and continued and apparently increased the business the Gortons had founded.

Nathaniel Rising and Zelolus Bell’s plat of the new town they proposed to call Troy was filed at the Kendall County Courthouse in Oswego in 1848. Located just north of the existing Village of Oswego, the new community was proposed as an industrial suburb. (Little White School Museum collection)

In 1848, apparently looking for even more opportunities, Rising and Zelolus E. Bell, who was then acting on behalf of the estate of the now-deceased Robinson, laid out the Town of Troy on a site located at the east end of the mill dam. The official plat of the new village was recorded on June 24, 1848 at the Kendall County Courthouse, then located in Oswego. County voters had agreed to relocate the county seat from Yorkville to Oswego in 1845.

Rising and Bell located Troy just far enough north of Oswego that the boundaries of the two towns never really touched each other, even after Walter Loucks’ addition to Oswego was platted sometime after 1860.

This 1870 map shows the relative locations of Troy and Oswego, located about 3/4 of a mile apart along the east bank of the Fox River. The map’s interesting not only for its Oswego and Troy illustration but also the limestone quarries in and around Oswego it shows, along with John Steiner’s ill-fated brewery midway between Oswego and Troy. (Little White School Museum collection)

As laid out, Troy was bounded by Summit Street (now Ill. Route 25 and North Madison Street) to the east and the Fox River to the west. As originally numbered, the village consisted of Blocks 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 18, 19, 20, and 21. Blocks 1–4 were apparently never platted, perhaps being saved for future expansion.

Full blocks measured 280.5’ (17 rods) square and were divided into eight lots bisected by two 16.5’ wide alleys running at right angles. As it turned out, only Blocks 9 and 7 were fully lotted, with Block 10 consisting only of Lots 1 and 8; Block 6 remaining totally unlotted; Block 5 containing Lots 1, 2, 3, and 4; Block 21 containing Lots 1 and 2; Block 20 containing only Lots 1, 2, 3,and 4; Block 19 containing Lots 1 and 2 (each as large as two regular lots; and Block 18 containing Lots 1, 2, and 3.

Water Street (now North Adams Street) divided Blocks 5, 6, 7, 9, and 10 from the riverfront Blocks of 18, 19, 20, and 21.

Connecting Summit Street with the Fox River were (from north to south) First Street, Second Street, and Main Street. Third Street connected Summit Street with Water Street but apparently did not go all the way through to the riverbank as did the other streets.

As platted, and just like the lots in the Village of Oswego, each standard lot was 66’ (four rods) wide by 132’ (eight rods) deep.

Exceptions were the riverfront lots, which varied considerably in depth, and Lots 1 and 8 in Block 10. Lot 1 was 132 feet deep but was only 53.5 feet wide at its west end, narrowing to just 40 feet of frontage on Summit Street. Lot 8 was 66 feet wide on Water Street, but narrowed to 55.5 feet on the alley at its east border. Exactly why this was remains one of local history’s mysteries.

Streets platted by Rising and Bell varied in width from 60 to 70 feet. As platted First, Second, and Third streets were 60 feet wide, while Main and Water streets were 70 feet in width.

Besides laying out the village of Troy, Rising and the Robinson estate also added a sawmill at the east end of their dam to compliment the gristmill at the west end of the dam. It was located on Lots 1 and 2 of Block 19 in Troy.

In 1852, Rising sold the mills, dam, store and all other parts of Troy that remained unsold to William O. Parker. Parker had been born in Canada in 1828 and moved to Illinois with his family in 1836. In 1851, Parker moved to Oswego, purchasing the Rising milling operation and the rest of Troy just a year later. And with the sale, the milling operations on both sides of the river became collectively known locally as Parker’s Mills.

Five years later, in February of 1857, an exceptionally severe spring freshet—flood—occurred and destroyed Parker’s east bank sawmill and the dam, and damaged the grist mill on the west bank. Although Parker suffered damages of $3,000, a considerable sum in 1857, especially since a devastating financial depression was about to hit, he rebuilt the sawmill and dam and repaired the gristmill and store. And his businesses continued to thrive, serving the area for decades thereafter.

The Parker Gristmill (left) on the west bank of the Fox River ground farmers’ grain, while the Parker Sawmill and Furniture Factory (foreground, right), located in the old Village of Troy, sawed lumber and made furniture. Both mill sites are now parks in the Oswegoland Park District system. (Little White School Museum collection).

Then in October 1870, the Ottawa, Oswego & Fox River Valley Railroad reached Troy and Oswego, sparking a business boom. According to contemporary maps, the railroad right-of-way passed through Troy along the north-south alley splitting Blocks 7, 9, and 10.

But the arrival of the railroad probably also spelled the eventual doom of Parker’s milling operations. With the railroad providing cheap, all-weather transportation for flour and lumber coming in and farmers’ crops and livestock going out, water-powered mills up and down the Fox River Valley began closing down.

A walnut washstand manufactured at the Parker Furniture Factory in Troy is on exhibit at Oswego’s Little White School Museum. (Little White School Museum collection)

Perhaps not realizing what was about to happen, about 1870, possibly prompted by the arrival of rail transportation to get products to market, Parker added a furniture factory to his sawmill. The factory manufactured a number of items including chairs and other furniture made from the area’s extensive supply of black walnut trees. A solid walnut washstand could be purchased, unfinished, from Parker’s factory for less than $1. An example of one such Parker washstand is on display in the gallery at the Little White School Museum in Oswego.

Another person who profited off the railroad’s arrival was my great-great-grandmother, Mary Ann Minnich. She and her husband had moved into one of the houses in Troy about 1867, and she apparently figured renting sleeping space to railroad workers would be a good money-maker as construction went through Troy and Oswego.

The workers were a fractious lot, however, as the Kendall County Record reported on July 14, 1870 while the line was still under construction: “Some excitement prevailed here last evening among the railroad laborers owing to a report that they would not get full pay for labor performed; a party started for headquarters (Ottawa) in consequence of it; [John W.] Chapman went with them; pretty much all the male population of the “Patch” [Troy] was in town.”

The next week, on July 28, the Record reported: “A number of suits for riot, assault and battery, breaking of the peace &c., has been commenced before both Justice Fowler and Burr by the belligerents of “the Patch,” [Troy] which by agreement were all merged into one and tried Wednesday and Thursday of last week. Smith was the attorney for Gaughan. Hawley and Judge Parks of Aurora for Monaughon & Co. John Monaughon and Michael Ruddy were held to bail to keep the peace and appear at the next session of the circuit court.”

The drama in Troy didn’t end there, either. Far from it, in fact. Just a few weeks later love in Troy was in the news. The Record reported on Sept. 1, 1870: “For once, there is a first class item, an elopement. One evening the latter part of last week, Pat Monaughon, a boy of 19 years of age eloped with Mrs. Dowling and her three children; Mr. Dowling, the lady’s husband, was absent from home; both parties were residents of the Patch [Troy].”

In 1847, Truman Mudget built the first brewery in Kendall County about where the railroad tracks would pass along Adams Street to the west of downtown Oswego. But, as the Rev. E.W. Hicks commented in his 1877 Kendall County history, “the soil was not congenial, and it ran only a few seasons.”

The Fox River Creamery located on Ill. Route 25 just north of North Street and east of North Adams Street. (Aurora Historical Society photo)

But in 1857 local beer enthusiasts decided to try again, building a native limestone brewery along Summit Street on land just north of Oswego’s village limits. This brewery was more successful, but even though the new rail line passed close by, the brewery failed. In 1877, William H. McConnell purchased the defunct brewery, remodeled it, and reopened it as the Fox River Creamery.

“Milk instead of barley, and butter instead of beer,” Hicks, a Baptist minister, wrote approvingly, adding: “And both cows and men are the gainers.”

Although the creamery, which produced cream, butter, and cheese from local farmers’ milk, was not officially part of Troy, lying in that sort of no-man’s-land between Troy and Oswego, it was close enough as made little difference.

Also drawn by the railroad, the Esch Brothers began their Troy ice harvesting and sales business in Troy. They located their huge ice houses just north of Parker’s dam on the east bank of the river, north of Second Street in Troy. The company harvested ice from the mill pond behind Parker’s dam each winter and used the sawdust from the saw mill to insulate the ice in the huge houses. As the Record reported on Nov. 18, 1874: “The ice procurable in the mill pond is to be exported hereafter; an ice house 102 by 60 feet is now being constructed near there, or on The Patch, as the place [Troy] is usually called, by Rabe & Esch, Chicago firm.”

Esch Brothers & Rabe’s 20 huge ice storage houses just above the dam at the old Village of Troy just above Oswego. Note the piles of sawdust used to insulate layers of the 200-pound blocks of ice cut from the river during the winter. (Little White School Museum collection)

On Nov. 28, 1878, the Record’s Oswego correspondent reported that the ice company was expanding its operations: “Troy, our suburb, has been growing much faster than Oswego the past year; ten new buildings 100×50 have been erected there by Esch Brothers, and Co.; they being ice houses; the whole number now being 14.”

Also from May of 1878 through May of 1879, McConnell, using the new railroad, was able to ship 177,000 lbs. of butter and 354,000 lbs. of cheese from the Fox River Creamery, most of it going to Chicago hotels.

In January of 1879, the Kendall County Record reported the Esch Brother were employing 75 men in the ice harvest. It was big business. In August of 1880, Esch Brothers shipped 124 rail cars of ice from the firm’s Troy siding.

1880, in fact, seems to have been the economic high point of Troy. That year, the Esch Brothers added a 35 horsepower steam engine and an endless chain (conveyor system) to move ice from the river to the houses during harvest and from the houses to the rail cars on the firm’s siding for shipment. William Parker and Sons made a number of improvements at their mills as well that year. An addition was built to the furniture factory adjacent to the saw mill and another story was added to the mill itself. And finally, the ice company built their own buildings to house both the men and the horses used in each winter’s ice harvest. As the Record’s Oswego correspondent put it on Dec. 9, 1880: “The boarding house, a two story, and the stable constructed by Esch Bros. & Rabe [in Troy] for the accommodation of the men and horses necessary for the ice harvest are completed and doubtless the operation of cutting and storing the ice will commence immediately.”

A view of Troy, probably in the late 1890s. The photo was likely taken by Irvin Haines from the roof of one of Esch Brothers & Rabe’s ice houses looking south towards Oswego. Water Street–now North Adams Street–is a dirt track that snakes along between fence rows at left. The Parker Sawmill and Furniture Factory is at right, the sawmill parallel to the river and the newer furniture factory perpendicular to the river. The red arrow marks Mrs. Minnich’s house, where she rented sleeping space to railroad and ice company workers. (Little White School Museum collection)

Troy’s reputation as a lively spot continued along with its economic growth. On Aug. 18, 1881, the Record reported from Oswego: “Saturday evening a dispute arose between Henry Sanders, who had been drinking, and Cash Mullenix, and it is alleged that in order to emphasize his points, the former exhibited a pistol which caused his arrest and lodgement in the town house; during the night somebody released him by breaking out a part of a window and cutting open the door of the cell. The authorities seemed to be aware that he had gone to Mrs. Minich’s [sic] house and about 10 o’clock Sunday a posse went there and upon their approach Henry left the house and ran to the river, and a few steps into it where the water was shallow but then surrendered.”

By 1883, the Oswego Ice Company, owned by the Esch Brothers, had 25 ice houses in operation, including six new houses measuring 150’x180’. During the yearly winter ice harvest, the company housed 1,000 tons of ice daily. As part of the growing number of improvements, the company was connected by telephone to the Oswego Depot of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad to coordinate dropping off and picking up cars on the firm’s rail siding.

But in 1891, a disastrous fire struck the ice company, and before the flames were extinguished, 14 giant ice houses were destroyed and their contents ruined. The fire took place in March at the conclusion of the annual ice harvest. The company never recovered, and was–literally–liquidated.

The Parker Gristmill being dismantled about 1927. Its timbers and stonework were used to rebuild the old Seely stone barn at the west end of the Oswego bridge into Turtle Rock Inn for Mr. and Mrs. James Curry. The Currys moved into Turtle Rock in November 1928. (Little White School Museum collection)

By the turn of the century, both the grist and saw mills were no longer in operation. According to some accounts, the saw mill burned prior to 1908. The grist mill was dismantled in the 1920s by local carpenter Irvin Haines, and the wood beams and stone were used to help build Turtle Rock Inn at the west end of the Oswego Bridge.

Another try at establishing an ice company was made shortly after the turn of the century. The Knickerbocker Ice Company, Inc. purchased several lots in Blocks 20, 21, and 6 in early 1909. However, as far as is known, no ice was harvested by the firm as the dam was then in extremely poor shape and the millpond badly silted up. Besides, by that time, the Fox River was badly polluted and manufactured ice was quickly replacing the old “natural” ice. No additional ice houses were built by the Knickerbocker company, and the corporation sold all its land in Troy to Central Trust of New York in 1911.

Over the years, several of Troy’s streets and alleys have been officially been vacated. All of First Street is vacated, as is the portion of Water Street (North Adams) north of Second Street. Main Street from Summit Street to North Adams was vacated, with the vacation recorded on Nov. 4, 1967, as were the alleys in blocks 7 and 9.  Third Street from Summit to Water has also been vacated.

The portions of Second and Main streets from North Adams to the Fox River, however, have never been vacated, nor has the alley between lots 2 and 3 in Block 18.

The site of the Parker saw mill and furniture factory along the east bank of the Fox River in the old Village of Troy, is now named Troy Park and is owned and operated by the Oswegoland Park District. It offers picnicking and fishing from the ruins of the old sawmill mill foundation. Across the river, the site of the old grist mill is now Millstone Park, also owned and maintained by the park district.

And finally, residents living in the old Village of Troy, as well as those in nearby Cedar Glen and a few other surrounding properties, voted to annex to the Village of Oswego in the late 1980s. On Dec. 5, 1988, the Oswego Village Board voted unanimously to annex its old industrial suburb of Troy, ending a long, interesting era in local history.

It’s April: Prairie grasses and wildflowers are on the way

Northern Illinois is beginning, believe it or not, to edge its way into true spring these days, which means the April showers we’ve been experiencing this past week will persuade all those May flowers to begin peaking out of the ground. Of course, the earliest spring flowers, hardy fellows that they are, have already been growing in the increasingly strong sunlight for several weeks now—especially with the unusually warm weather of the past few months.

Goose Lake Prairie south of Morris gives a hint of what Kendall County’s prairies looked like when their spring and early summer flowers bloomed.

Back in the 1820s and 1830s when the first hardy pioneers arrived in the area along both sides of the Fox River, from Waubonsie Creek to the north and south to the AuSable flowing on its way to the Illinois River, they found upland prairies dotted with open groves of hardwoods that sometimes merged with the belts to trees growing along the creeks that drained the area in what would one day become Kendall County.

Timber, scarce as it was, provided building materials for everything from homes, farm buildings, and fences. It was the settlers’ old and familiar friend. What was new to those new prairie farmers and other settlers, and sometimes not a little intimidating, was all that prairie land stretching sometimes to the horizon like an unbroken stretch of ocean—a sea of grass.

Virtually everyone who left an account of their first few years on the Illinois prairie provided a list of superlatives. And it’s fortunate we are that some of those accounts survive to let us glimpse what those early travelers and settlers found and felt.

Harriet Martineau, in an 1833 portrait. Three years later, she left a moving description of the Illinois prairie outside Joliet.

The fascinating English author, abolitionist, and sociologist Harriet Martineau, visited northern Illinois in 1836, and left a vivid record of the beauty of the Illinois prairie she saw near Joliet. She told of the beauty of the American primroses and the “…difficulty in distinguishing distances on the prairie. The feeling is quite bewildering. A man walking near looked like a Goliath a mile off.”

Her dinner one evening consisted of tea, bread, potatoes, and wild strawberries, of which a whole pail-full had been gathered around the house in which she was staying in only an hour’s time. She remarked about the beauty of the blue spiderwort in full bloom, and of prairies being “perfectly level—a treeless expanse with groves like islands in the distance, and a line of wood on the verge.”

As the seasons progressed, the grasses and broad-leafed plants comprising the prairie ecology dried, providing plenty of fuel for autumn and spring prairie fires. In October 1835, Methodist circuit rider Alfred Brunsen wrote of northern Illinois prairie fires, noting that he had traveled by prairie fire light at night: “By the light of this fire we could read fine print for ½ a mile or more. And the light reflected from the cloud of smoke enlightened our road for miles after the blaze of the fire was out of sight.”

George M. Hollenback portrait from the 1914 history of Kendall County.

George Hollenback, one of the first two white children born in Kendall County (his twin sister Amelia was the other), left a description of prairie fires he recalled from his childhood. His memory of them was both exciting and alarming. He recalled seeing, as a child, as many as 50 fires burning at one time within sight of the Hollenback homestead near modern Newark in southern Kendall County, reflecting their light in the clouds on autumn evenings.

“Early settlers protected themselves by ploughing [sic] wide and numerous furrows around their fields and their stockyards,” wrote Hollenback.

Backfires were often started to protect houses and property as well as plowing furrows to create firebreaks. The band of blackened prairie grass burned in the backfire usually stopped the on-rushing prairie fire dead in its tracks.

Prairie fires like this controlled burn at the Nature Conservancy’s Nachusa Grasslands near Franklin Grove cleared out understory shrubs creating the open savanna-type groves the settlers found when they arrived. The fires were both set by natural causes–lightning strikes–or intentionally set by the area’s Native People to modify their environment.

Prairie fires were usually pushed along by the prevailing winds on the Illinois prairies. That meant prairie fires most often came out of the west, and traveled eastward on the front of westerly winds. Old maps of Kendall County show that the timber on the western edge of the Fox River and the creeks in the county was much less dense that on the eastern edge, the trees on the west side thinned by the annual fires driven by those westerlies. There were generally fewer species of trees on those fire-prone western edges, too, with white and burr oaks and other more fire-resistent kinds predominating. (For a more in-depth discussion of the impact prairie fires had in Illinois, click here.)

A number of early Kendall County settlers left accounts of what Kendall County looked like when they arrived, just before settlement changed the prairies forever by converting them into farmland. Mary Elizabeth Jeneson, a member of Oswego’s Nineteenth Century Club, read a paper to the club in 1906, in which she stated: “No words of mine can convey to you the vastness, the grandeur and beauty of the natural prairie in 1850 when I first came to Oswego. The music of the big frogs down in the slough and the drumming of prairie chickens must have been heard to be appreciated. The Fox River was pretty then. Its banks furnished attractions for those who liked a stroll—a sort of Lovers’ Lane, in fact.”

Avery Beebe portrait from the 1914 history of Kendall County.

In 1914, Avery N. Beebe, an early Kendall County resident and elected official, offered his recollections of of how the area appeared to county pioneers: “This little chosen spot of God’s heritage, selected by the sturdy old pioneers of Kendall County, has been richly blessed with all the advantages that kind nature ever bestows: with its clear silvery streams, the Blackberry, the Big Rock, the Little Rock, the Aux Sable, the Waubonsia, the Rob Roy, the Clark, the Hollenback, and the Morgan, that pour their pure crystal liquids into the placid Fox and Illinois Rivers. All of these were densely skirted with abundant timbers for the use of the early settlers to construct the primitive log cabin, supply it with fuel, and establish the forest home in the wilds of the West; as it was then called.”

Change has been ongoing in northern Illinois in general and Kendall County in particular since the first pioneer wagons pulled up along the banks of the Fox River in 1828. During the last 50 years, that change accelerated as the county’s farmland—which itself replaced the stunning prairies described by the pioneers—has disappeared in job lots, with housing developments and shopping centers crowding out more and more open land. But on the positive side of the ledger, organized, serious efforts to preserve the region’s prairie past and the region’s remaining natural areas are continuing to grow.

When trolley cars connected us to the rest of the world…

Several years ago while doing family history research, I made connections with a distant cousin who sent me a compact disc (remember those?) with dozens of photos and documents related to my Minnich ancestors. Among the documents were letters written by my great-great-grandmother, Mary Ann Wolf “Polly” Minnich, to her daughter, who was then living out in Kansas.

Mary Ann Wolf “Polly” Minnich from what was probably her 1846 wedding portrait.

The letters were remarkable for a few reasons, not the least of which was because Mary Ann was illiterate. According to the letters’ content, she dictated them to one of her grandchildren, who wrote and mailed them for her and who would then also read the replies to her. Another interesting point, for me, at least, was that at the time she was corresponding with her daughter, she was living in the ramshackle old house on North Adams Street in Oswego that was the first house my wife and I bought back in 1968.

The previous owners were the first non-family members to have owned it since my great-great grandparents owned it in the 1870s. We lived there for about 10 years, and so I was familiar with its interior layout. My grandmother, who as a child had visited HER grandmother at the house told us about the interior changes that had been made, including turning my great-great grandparents’ tiny first-floor bedroom into the home’s bathroom. Which is why the bathroom had a full-sized window in it above the bathtub that looked out onto North Adams Street and the east bank of the Fox River across the road.

The Minnich House as it looked in 1970 with Mary Ann’s bedroom window facing North Adams Street and the Fox River circled in red.

By the time we moved in back in ’68, trees lined both banks of the river, cutting off the view of Route 31 over on the river’s west side. But back when my great-great-grandparents lived there, the original old-growth trees on both banks had been cut down years before to provide everything from fence rails to firewood to building materials for homes and other buildings the pioneers needed. So someone looking out of the window in our bathroom—formerly my great-great-grandparents’ tiny bedroom—could easily have seen traffic over on Route 31, known back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the West River Road.

Which is a long, but I think necessary set-up for a fascinating comment I found in one of those letters long ago transcribed from my great-great-grandmother’s dictation.

North Adams Street about 1910 with the arrow pointing out my great-great-grandparents’ house, and illustrating the treeless banks of the Fox River during that era. The building at right foreground is the Parker Sawmill and Furniture Factory. (Photo by Irvin Haines in the collections of the Little White School Museum)

By late September 1900 residents living in and around Oswego, including those living along North Adams Street, had some new sights to see and marvel at. As my great-great-grandmother put it in one of those letters to her daughter out in Kansas: “When I can’t sleep at night I can watch the Street cars run out my window over across the river.”

She could see the headlights of streetcars running on the west bank of the Fox River in 1900? Yes, as it turns out, there was, indeed, a trolley car line that ran from Aurora south roughly following the Fox River to Oswego that began service that year.

This contemporary map illustrates the route of the interurban trolley line from downtown Aurora south through Oswego into downtown Yorkville where it terminated at Van Emmon and Bridge streets. (Little White School Museum collection)

Because this kind of trolley line ran between towns and not wholly inside them, the lines were called “interurban” trolleys, and were at the height of their popularity as the 20th Century dawned.

A group of investors first proposed building an interurban trolley line from Aurora south through Montgomery and Oswego to Yorkville in 1897. The proposed line was planned to run mostly on public street and highway rights-of-way using light rails and electrically-powered trolley cars.

First iron bridge across the Fox River at Oswego. A King’s Patent tied-arch (also called a bowstring arch) truss iron bridge, it was built by Oswego Township in the fall of 1867 at a cost of $17,000. The bridge was manufactured by the King Iron Bridge & Manufacturing Company of Cleveland, Ohio. It was replaced in 1900 to carry the tracks of the Elgin, Aurora & Yorkville interurban tracks across the river. (Little White School Museum collection)

An early proposal to build a third-rail electric line was quickly discarded in favor of using overhead electrical lines with the cars picking up the power using car-top trolleys. Cars running on third-rail lines picked up their electrical power from an exposed electrified third rail, something that would obviously be dangerous on a rail line running through towns and the countryside and not in an underground tunnel or on an elevated track safely out of reach of pedestrians, horse-drawn vehicles, and livestock.

In August 1897 representatives of the new Aurora, Yorkville & Morris Electric Railroad company (the line’s name would change several times during the next few years) met with the Kendall County Board to start hammering out a trolley franchise agreement. As proposed, the line would begin in downtown Aurora, then run south on River Street through Montgomery, paralleling the Fox River past the new Riverview amusement park (which was to have its own station) then under construction just south of Montgomery before gently curving west to join the West River Road—now, as noted above, Ill. Route 31—for the run to the Oswego Bridge across the Fox River. There, the line would turn east, cross the river on Washington Street to Oswego’s Main Street, where it would turn south once more, following Main Street and heading towards Yorkville along what is now Ill. Route 71. Near Yorkville, the line would turn once again to follow the tracks of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy’s Fox River Branch Line between the tracks and today’s Van Emmon Road right into downtown Yorkville, where the tracks dead-ended at Van Emmon and Bridge streets.

The box truss iron bridge built with trolley company assistance in 1900 to carry interurban cars across the Fox River at Oswego. It replaced the first iron bridge at Oswego built in 1867, and was itself replaced in 1937 to carry increasing motor traffic across the river. (Photo by Dwight Young in the collections of the Little White School Museum)

Among the issues that had to be hammered out was who would pay for improvements the line required, such as either strengthening or rebuilding the Oswego Bridge to carry the heavy trolley cars across the river. In addition, the company pledged “that in every way possible the company would guard against frightening horses” or otherwise interfering with traffic on the roads alongside and on which the trolleys would run. In the end, the trolley company agreed to pay $3,500 towards the cost of a new, stronger box truss iron bridge to replace the existing 1867 tied arch structure at Oswego. The other issues were ironed out as well, including how the trolley line would get across the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy’s Fox River Branch rail line in Oswego.

Interurban trolley car (center of the photo) approaches the west end of the Oswego Bridge about 1903 enroute from Aurora to Yorkville. The tracks crossed the Fox River on the Oswego bridge and then turned south along Main Street.

Residents of the towns the trolley would serve were, in general, enthusiastic about the new, all-weather transportation option. As Kendall County Record Publisher John R. Marshall noted in a Dec. 13, 1899 commentary: “With only four reliable trains a day, it was hard for one to come here and be so late getting into Chicago as is necessary with the regular passenger train. With the electric accommodations, one can go to Aurora and take an early morning train to Chicago.”

After crossing the Oswego Bridge, the interurban line climbed the Washington Street hill and crossed the CB&Q Railroad tracks on a 300-foot timber trestle. (Little White School Museum collection)

Construction began in the spring of 1900 and by June 27, the tracks were completed from Aurora to the west end of the Oswego Bridge.

“Operation of the electric road from the bridge will be commenced this Tuesday afternoon by a free ride of the town and village officials to Aurora and back,” the Record’s Oswego correspondent wrote in that week’s paper. “Yorkville will have to wait about three months longer before enjoying such privilege.”

This 1903 map shows the interurban route through Oswego. Look closely in the lower left at the siding at the Oswego Cemetery. Special funeral cars that carried mourners to this cemetery and farther south, to the Cowdrey Cemetery used this siding and the one at Cowdrey for funerals. (Little White School Museum collection)

Regular service began in early July from Aurora to the terminus at Oswego, and use proved enthusiastic—and frequent. As Marshall wrote on Aug. 1: “That the Aurora and Yorkville electric road will be a great convenience and daily comfort is shown by the way it is used now between Oswego and Aurora. Every day parties drive up from about here [Yorkville] to Oswego and take the car there for Aurora, saving 12 miles’ [round trip] drive.”

Work continued feverishly the rest of the summer and into the fall of 1900 on Oswego Township’s new Oswego Bridge. Construction was also ongoing on an impressive 300-foot trestle at the east end of the bridge designed to carry the electric line up Washington Street over the CB&Q tracks to the Main Street intersection.

By late December, the new bridge and trestle, along with the tracks into Yorkville were finished and regular trolley service had begun, linking downtown Aurora through Montgomery and Oswego with downtown Yorkville. The first car arrived at the Kendall County seat at 10:45 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 22, 1900.

“There were two cars down—one with the Aurora guests, the other empty to return with a number of the distinguished populace of Kendall’s capital,” the Record reported on Dec. 26. Welcoming the new arrivals was Record publisher Marshall, who had also welcomed the first railroad train on the Fox River Branch into Yorkville 30 years before.

At Washington and Main streets, the trolley line turned south to follow Main out of town. This was also the village’s trolley stop, with a waiting room in the building at right just behind the fire hydrant. Note the stack of wooden bread crates. Fresh bread from Aurora bakeries was delivered early every morning. The Little White School Museum has two in its collection, including on on exhibit that was repurposed as the village’s ballot box. (Little White School Museum collection)

The interurban, providing hourly round trip service from Yorkville to Aurora from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. at affordable rates, was part of a vast interurban network that, it was said, allowed passengers to travel via trolley from the Mississippi River, with transfers, all the way to New York City.

Note the two passengers who’ve just stepped off the interurban, likely after a shopping trip to downtown Aurora. (Little White School Museum collection)

In an era of terrible roads, the interurban was a godsend, carrying passengers and perishable freight, including farmers’ milk, to and from Aurora. Everything from fresh bakery bread to college and high school students to office workers to shoppers rode the trolley to and from Aurora daily. For instance, war hero, musician, and star athlete Slade Cutter rode the interurban to Aurora to attend East High School. The line ran right past the family farmhouse (which still stands at the corner of Ill. Route 17 and Orchard Road) during a time Oswego High School only offered a two-year program.

Motor vehicles shared in-town streets with the interurban lines, making driving on them often an adventure. Here, an auto rattles south on still unpaved Main Street about 1910 in Oswego while sharing the road with the trolley tracks. (Little White School Museum collection)

But a little more than a decade after the line opened, it and others throughout the nation were under financial assault from the burgeoning number of automobiles and trucks—and government support for them.

It wasn’t so much the improved vehicles that doomed the trolleys, but the rapidly improving roads they traveled on—and their funding. From the time Illinois was settled until 1913, road maintenance was the responsibility of township property owners. Each voter—meaning men during that era—was required to work on road maintenance or to pay money in lieu of work. But with the advent of affordable, dependable motor cars and trucks, the old system was proving unequal to the task of road maintenance and construction. So in 1913, the Illinois General Assembly passed the Tice Act, removing the work requirement and replacing it with a property tax levy to fund road construction and maintenance.

An interurban car at the terminal in downtown Yorkville. It’s been turned around on the trolley line’s wye track and is ready to head back north through Oswego and Montgomery to Aurora. Note the advertisement for the Kendall County Fair. (Little White School Museum collection)

At the same time, the public was also insisting on more and better roads, and in what proved a momentous policy decision, U.S. politicians decided that tax dollars should only fund construction and maintenance of roads and not the rails used by railroads and trolley companies. Although few realized it at the time, the policy meant the substantial government subsidy favoring road transport would gradually result in curtailing all of the nation’s rail systems.

Interurban trolley ticket for a passenger fare from Aurora to Oswego from 1918. Note the “War Tax” schedule in the upper left. The tax was levied by the Federal government to help pay for World War I. (Little White School Museum collection)

And with that profound change in motion, in 1918, in spite of the nation’s involvement in World War I, Illinois voters approved a $60 million bond issue to build a system of all-weather paved roads to connect with every county in the state, the bonded indebtedness to be paid through gasoline taxes. The measure passed overwhelmingly. Here in Kendall County, the vote was 1,532-90.

A new iron bridge crossed the Fox at Oswego in 1900 to carry interurban trolley cars across the river, along with regular road traffic. Above, a trolley car is captured on its way from Yorkville to Aurora. (Little White School Museum collections)

The interurbans were simply unable to compete with the combination of increasingly inexpensive, efficient, and dependable motor vehicles and publicly financed roads. Starting in the 1920s, one by one, the interurban lines closed down, went bankrupt, or both.

On Aug. 6, 1924, the Record reported that “Through an order from the Illinois Commerce Commission, the interurban line from the [Fox River] park south of Montgomery to Yorkville will be discontinued.” In the event, the line carried on until Feb. 1, 1925, finally succumbing to the advance of transportation technology and the national consensus to subsidize roads but not rails.

Today, there are scant reminders of the trolley era, but look closely between the road and the railroad tracks the next time you drive Van Emmon Road into Yorkville—especially this time of year with trees and shrubs leafless—and you will see some of the last evidence of the old trolley line that was once such an important part of the area’s transportation system.

Oswego’s railroad depot: Its history and how its loss spurred local preservation efforts

Last month, Nancy Harvey Heaton donated a photo of the old Oswego Depot to the Little White School Museum. The framed photo had hung in her parents home starting some 50 years ago when she was a youngster.

Photo of the Oswego Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad depot, apparently taken shortly before it was demolished despite local efforts to preserve it. Donated to the Little White School Museum by Nancy Harvey Heaton.

The image, captured by the LIN DON Studio back about 1971, showed the depot in its waning years. And it prompted me to begin looking into what happened to that once-familiar landmark. I recalled there had been efforts to save the building and turn it into a community museum back in the early ‘70s, but I couldn’t remember when the railroad had actually demolished it. I also recalled the loss of the depot spurred community residents to become aware that, as growth was accelerating, Oswego was losing a lot of its heritage. In fact, the loss of the depot was one of the things that prompted the formation of the grassroots Oswegoland Heritage Association in 1976 to save the iconic Little White School from demolition.

Oddly enough, the depot’s demolition didn’t seem to be a big issue in the local press back then, as another search of the microfilm confirmed. So I decided to do some deep diving to get the depot’s story recorded before any more time was lost.

To do that, I started at the very beginning when the Aurora Branch Railroad from Aurora through Batavia to Turner Junction–later renamed West Chicago–was chartered by the Illinois General Assembly in 1848. At the Junction, the Aurora Branch connected with the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad that ran from Chicago to Galena. In 1852, the two lines merged and were given permission to cross the Fox River and build a line west to Mendota.

Fragment of a $5 scrip note from the Oswego & Indiana Plank Road Company issued by the firm of Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson in 1852. (Little White School Museum collection)

The question was where to cross the Fox. The company favored Oswego because the river is at its narrowest point there, but Oswego officials were opposed.

Even though the railroad’s officials suggested manufacturing and repair shops would likely be located at Oswego, something that would result insignificant economic growth, not to mention the easy access to the nation’s growing rail network for passenger and freight traffic, village officials refused.

Instead, Oswego’s city fathers were enthusiastic supporters of plank roads, the proposed Oswego & Indiana Plank Road in particular. It was planned to run from Oswego east through Will County to the Indiana State Line.

Oswego’s political power structure at the time was heavily invested in transportation by horse. That extensive infrastructure included blacksmiths, harness makers, wagonwrights, wheelwrights, livestock feed suppliers, and horse breeders. The plank road–a road paved with thick wooden planks–would be an all-weather route that would use existing horse-drawn transportation technology. A railroad, being completely different technology would not.

Railroad officials were so sure Oswego would jump at the chance for a rail link in 1850 that they announced that’s where the line would cross the Fox River, as shown on the “Rail Road and County Map of Illinois Showing its Internal Improvements 1854,” published in New York by Ensign, Bridgman & Fanning, New York. The blue highlight marks the planned route. (Library of Congress collection)

An anonymous author, writing under the pen name “Plow Boy” in the Sept. 5, 1855 Kendall County Courier, published in Oswego, explained: “In 1850, a [rail] road was commenced from the Junction to Aurora, thereby connecting with Chicago. A committee of agents of the railroad company waited upon the citizens of Oswego, and solicited their cooperation in extending the road to Oswego. But they were met with insults. They were told that Oswego could do favorably enough without a railroad. That a plank road was the thing that would throw railroads in the shade, and monopolize the whole business of transportation. The consequence was that Oswego was without either railroads or plank roads. Aurora was for many years the terminus of the road, and a central market place for the whole surrounding country. These are facts, which have come under our observation. The leading businessmen of Oswego were at first, generally opposed to the project of railroads. Thus, as the event has proved, cutting their own throats.”

Aurora officials were not at all opposed, however, so even though the river was much wider there the rails crossed at that fast-growing city, the shops and roundhouse were built there, and the line completely bypassed Oswego two miles to the west.

And in the end, of course, the plank road, other than a few miles that briefly linked Plainfield and Joliet, never happened.

The CB&Q’s mainline ended up crossing the Fox River at Aurora and bypassed Oswego two miles to the west. The railroad did establish Oswego Station, with passenger and freight depots to serve the community, but that required a ride in a horse-drawn coach to get to the rail line. This 1870 map shows both the railroad’s mainline and the new Ottawa, Oswego & Fox River Valley Rail Road right-of-way through Oswego. (Little White School Museum collection)

Oswego did get a station on the main line as did the Village of Bristol just down the river. A small town grew up around Bristol Station while passenger and freight depots and two lumberyards were built at Oswego Station. But no town ever grew up there. Instead, regular horsedrawn stage service linked the station with downtown Oswego.

Then in February 1855, the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad and the Mississippi and Rock River Junction Railroad merged, with the new firm renamed the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (CB&Q) Railroad.

After the plank road fiasco, it took a while for Oswego to finally get its direct rail link. Not until after the Civil War was a rail line built through the village, the tracks of the Ottawa, Oswego, & Fox River Valley Rail Road reaching Oswego in 1870. The line was mainly built to connect the coal fields around the Vermillion River with towns from the rail junction at Streator up the Fox River from Ottawa through Yorkville and Oswego to Geneva. But another major reason was to break the CB&Q’s Kendall County freight monopoly. In the end, that didn’t work, something you can read more about here.

But nevertheless, the new rail link was welcomed. And as soon as the line was built, a depot had to be located at each town along the line. And In Oswego the debate about where to locate its depot was spirited.

The 1885 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Oswego shows the location picked for the Oswego Depot (circled in red) on Jackson Street near the intersection with South Adams. (Little White School Museum collection)

As Lorenzo Rank, the Kendall County Record’s correspondent, reported on Oct. 13, 1870: “It was last Thursday that the locomotive first made its appearance in our town; the cows stared at it and so did everybody else. The event transpired without any unusual noise or commotion, there was no gunpowder burned and nobody tore his garments in consequence of it. There is now a three-cornered contest about the location of the depot, one party wants it south of Washington St., another north of it, and still another wants it on the other side of the Waubonsie. The southern location to my mind is the best; the central and the most convenient for the present business community and the one that likely will be adopted; it is proposed that if the latter is chosen, to open from Main street and avenue to it by removing the Sherwood and Cooke buildings, which lots in connection with the alley would make a good thoroughfare to the depot.”

By Nov. 3, the debate was still ongoing. “The location of the depot is now the most exciting topic on the carpet; the uptown men have decidedly the start; they have Chapman on their side, who was very busy yesterday raising money for that purpose,” he reported.

The Oswego CB&Q Depot as it looked about 1881. The original 1870 depot building is on the left, with the 1871 addition on the right side. Stationmaster Henry Green Smith is standing at left in his shirtsleeves. Smith was appointed stationmaster at Oswego in May 1880. (Little White School Museum collection)

In early December, the question was finally settled. As Rank reported on Dec. 8: “The depot question is settled—the grounds staked out immediately above Washington St.; there seems to be not much else going on now on the road but graveling.”

With its own rail connection, Oswego Station two miles west of town was no longer needed. The old freight depot at Oswego Station was dismantled in April 1871 and the abandoned passenger depot at the station burned to the ground in August 1879.

In July 1871, the original Oswego Depot building was enlarged with an addition shipped in by rail. According to Rank: “The railroad company has lengthened the side track, put in new switches, also additional stringers on the Waubonsie bridge with new and heavy ties, and otherwise much improving the track hereabouts; an additional depot building was also shipped here yesterday.”

In November of that same year, Henry Wollenweber built a livestock loading chute just south of the depot between a new siding and North Adams Street. Soon after, Wollenweber and Rudolph Knapp began a lively livestock business, with cattle and hogs driven to town by area farmers. The stock was kept in pens between North Adams as the Fox River before being driven across the street to the loading chute. Eventually, holding pens were added just north of the loading chute.

In October 1873, a milk and cream shipping platform was added just north of the depot on the same side of the tracks.

The depot started out as a busy place and it’s business continued to grow. On Jan. 13, 1881, Rank reported that: “The total receipts from all sources at the depot during 1880 were $27,000; total number of cars received and forwarded 932; cars of ice shipped 581; 401 cars include stock, grain, coal, lumber, feed, wheat, cotton, granite and tile; there were 5,073 passenger tickets sold; 5,785 cans of milk were shipped, mostly by W.H. McConnell & Co.; M.J. Poage & Co. received 94 cars of coal and 72 of lumber; Wollenweber & Knapp shipped 108 cars of stock; Wm. Parker & Son received 6 cars of wheat and 2,500 pounds of fire and burglar proof safe..”

The Oswego Depot, probably taken in 1890, after the depot was significantly enlarged and remodeled in the summer of 1886. The block signal tower was added in October of 1889, according to the Kendall County Record of Oct. 2, 1889. Station master Henry Green Smith is standing fifth from left. It is believed several of the other persons in the photo are members of Smith’s extended family. (Little White School Museum collection)

In July 1886, Rank reported the original depot was undergoing considerable renovation. On Sept. 1, he wrote that: “The depot has been fixed up very handsomely; the new office probably will be occupied, and the waiting parlor thrown open to the public today. The business of late has been transacted in the freight room.”

This winter view of the depot features Stationmaster Smith seated on the south end of the building, with two young visitors sitting to his left. The livestock loading chute is visible to the left of the stock car on the siding at left and the milk and cream shipping platform is just across the tracks from the livestock siding. The image also offers a good view of the signal tower added in 1889. (Little White School Museum collection)

Three years later, the depot was upgraded with a new safety feature, a block signal that could be operated from inside the building in the bay window facing the tracks. Yorkville’s depot was outfitted with one at the same time. Record Editor J.R. Marshall explained how the system worked: “It is quite an imposing machine. A long wooden box or tube 20 or 30 feet high runs from the office floor above the roof of the station; on this are signal arms, green and red, worked by levers in the office; also lamps which are raised and lowered in the tube by a crank and chain in the office. The signals made above are repeated before the operator in the office, and a mirror, slantwise, at the bottom of the tube, shows that the lamps are burning all right.”

The 1898 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map shows the Wollenweber & Knapp Stockyard on the northwest side of the tracks at the northeast corner of the Adams and Jackson Street intersection and its relation to the Oswego Depot. (Little White School Museum collection)

With so much fascinating stuff happening around the depot, you might think the hubbub created an attractive nuisance—and you’d be right. Especially attracted were what Rank called “the small boys,” who just couldn’t stay away. On Oct. 22, 1890 he wrote: “There is a good deal of complaint just now about the small boy. He is charged with jumping on moving trains and otherwise raising Cain around the depot; with being saucy, using very profane language and not going to school. The small boy seems to have the upper hand of many of the parents.”

The Oswego Stockyard looking north from Jackson Street towards the bridge across Waubonsie Creek. photo was taken from Jackson Street looking north along North Adams Street, and the old feed mill, later a home on the north side of the creek is visible just to the right—upstream—from the bridge. (Little White School Museum collection)

Along with being a transportation center for Oswego, the depot was also an important communications center. The depot’s telegraph station not only sent and received railroad information, but also messages sent and received by the public. And that provided new opportunities for women. In the 1890s, the first female telegraphers were noted at the depot. In addition, women were also acting as station agents. Auroran Jennie Miller filled in frequently for Oswego Station Agent Henry G. Smith as temporary agent and telegrapher.

The Dinky pulls out of the Oswego Depot in 1942 headed southbound to Yorkville, Ottawa, and Streator. The CB&Q’s gas-electric car provided passenger, mail, and freight service on the Fox River Branch Line until it was discontinued in 1952. (Little White School Museum collection)

While freight service, particularly grain and lumber, remained strong for many years, the passenger traffic through the depot began a sharp decline as better roads and more economical and dependable autos and buses were developed. In the 1930s, the CB&Q began running a combination freight, mail, and passenger gas-electric car—nicknamed the Dinky by residents along the line—from Streator to Aurora, providing passenger service for towns and villages along the line. But in February 1952 that service was also dropped and the Oswego Depot began exclusively handling freight. The Dinky’s place was taken by bus service paralleling the rail line.

By the time this northbound CB&Q freight train passed the Oswego Depot in 1965, the depot was only handling a fraction of the business it once did. (Little White School Museum collection)

While there were no more livestock yards at Oswego by the 1950s, the village’s sidings still handled carloads of lumber for the Alexander Lumber Company and grain shipments from the Oswego Grain Elevator.

But that relatively small amount of business didn’t require a dedicated depot at Oswego and in the spring of 1970, the CB&Q closed the depot.

With its closure, some Oswego groups began looking to possibly save the building, in particular, the Oswego Woman’s Civic Club and the Oswego Jaycees expressed interest in turning the building into a community museum. The problem was that the railroad insisted the building had to be moved off railroad property.

By the late 1960s, the Oswego Depot was in poor repair and the railroad was discussing plans to demolish it. (Little White School Museum collection)

The Oswego Ledger reported on June 17, 1971: “The Oswegoland Jaycees, through the auspices of the Burlington Northern Railroad, have been given the ‘Oswego Railroad Station’ for purposes of turning it into an historical museum and landmark for the Village. It would be stocked with many artifacts relating to the history of Oswego in an attempt to retain our heritage for our youth. The railroad has told the Jaycees that the depot has to be moved from its present location or be torn down. The Jaycees are going to undertake this project, including all costs of moving and renovating. They do need, however, a site to which to move the building. The site they wish to use is a parcel of Township property located behind the new post office. Upon completion of the move and remodeling operation, the edifice would be donated to the village through the park board, who has agreed to care for the museum. Area residents will then be free to place any articles of an historical nature on display for the public school children to view.”

Although efforts were ongoing to save the old depot and turn it into a community museum, the railroad surprised the community in the spring of 1972 by contracting to have the building dismantled. This photo was taken by Oswegoan Don Crimmin on April 9, 1972 at the railroad’s contractor worked to dismantle the depot. (Little White School Museum collection)

But as the search for a site went on, the railroad apparently lost patience and in April of 1972 a contractor hired by the CB&Q dismantled the building, removing a tangible reminder of more than 100 years of Oswego’s transportation history and heritage to an end.

Copy of a Paul Randall watercolor of the Oswego Depot framed with scraps of wood and square nails recovered when the building was being dismantled. This originally hung on the wall of my mother’s house.

But, as noted above, the loss of the depot prompted Oswego residents to begin taking the loss of the village’s architectural heritage more seriously. That feeling, plus the new appreciation of local history encouraged by the nationwide celebration of the United States’ 200th birthday in 1976, prompted a group of citizens to establish the non-profit Oswegoland Heritage Association. The Oswego School District had recently announced plans to sell or demolish the landmark Little White School, built at Polk and Jackson streets in 1850 as a Methodist-Episcopal Church. The last classes had been held there in the mid-1960s, after which the building had been allowed to deteriorate. But with the enthusiasm created by the nation’s Bicentennial, an innovative three-way agreement between the new heritage association, the school district, and the Oswegoland Park District was hammered out to save and restore the building and open a local history museum and archives there. The local history museum opened in 1983, the archives and research area followed in the late 1990s, and the building’s restoration was completed in 2002. (Read about the restoration of the Little White School here and here)

So despite its unfortunate loss, the destruction of the Oswego Depot nevertheless led to saving irreplaceable community historical resources for future generations just as explosive population growth was forever changing the Oswego area’s character.

The bygone era when men harvested winter and sold it all summer

One of the things that fascinates me about local history is the number of once-thriving major businesses that not only no longer exist, but of which barely any evidence of their existence remains.

The once-extensive interurban trolley system, the infrastructure for all the horses that once powered America from blacksmiths to wheelwrights, and the network of factories in virtually every small town in Kendall County that processed farmers’ milk and cream into butter and cheese have all completely disappeared from the landscape without leaving a trace.

Looking out my window at the couple inches of snow on the ground here at History Central this morning reminds me of another industry of which no trace remains. The ice harvesting business employed dozens of men every winter and was big business. For decades, thick ice was cut above the dams that dotted the Fox River, stored in giant icehouses, and hauled to market in rail cars. The industry’s rise and fall makes for an interesting bit of local economic history.

In 1870, when the Ottawa, Oswego, and Fox River Railroad finally reached Aurora, running from Streator and Ottawa through Oswego and Yorkville, residents in both Oswego and Yorkville had hopes its economic impact would be significant. And their hopes were realized.

Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad locomotive and passenger cars, about 1870.

As soon as the rail line opened, farmers began shipping livestock and grain from stops along the line north to the Chicago market and south to the Illinois-Mississippi river system. The new line was closer to almost all the Fox Valley’s smaller towns south of Aurora than the main line of the Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroad, which lay two miles west of both Oswego and Yorkville. And farmers living east of the Fox River no longer had to cross the river to get their livestock, grain, and other produce to market.

Not only did the line haul produce and livestock to the Chicago market but it also delivered coal, lumber, and other necessities, reducing the costs of both vital commodities.

Entrepreneurs began eying the two villages for new business opportunities as soon as the first trains rolled. And as luck would have it, the new retail ice business was then just getting off the ground as growing numbers of householders demanded ice for their new kitchen ice boxes. At the same time, Chicago pork and beef packers were trying to expand production outside their normal winter work season.

One of the main uses for ice from Oswego, Yorkville, and other Fox Valley towns was in reefer cars invented by the Swift Company. It took 4,000 lbs. of ice and 700 lbs. of salt to keep a carload of dressed beef and pork cool from Chicago to New York…

For decades, ice had been harvested in New England and sold as far abroad as India. But it was what economic historian William Cronon calls a large-bulk, low-value commodity. With the terrible roads of the era, it was expensive to haul large quantities of ice to market. So in New England ice was harvested on rivers and ponds close to seaports where it could be easily shipped. Out here in the Midwest, ice was harvested on lakes, ponds and rivers near rail lines, but that production quickly proved inadequate, especially for the meat shipping market—it took 4,000 pounds of ice and 700 pounds of salt to keep a reefer railcar of dressed beef cold from Chicago to New York—and ice dealers started looking farther and farther afield.

When the Fox River Branch of the CB&Q was opened, serving as it did towns up and down the river valley, most with dams and mills, ice company owners saw an opportunity. The first to take advantage of the combination of the new rail line and the untapped resource of mill dams in Kendall County was the Caledonia Ice Company of Chicago. Owner Robert Hutchinson began work on a major ice storage facility in Yorkville in the fall of 1872, just two years after the rail line opened. Hutchinson situated the new facility on land along the south bank of the Fox, leased from Jacob and Elias Black, owners of the Paris Paper, Grist & Saw Mills, just upstream from the dam. Workers finished a block of four interconnected ice houses, 20 feet high and the group measuring a total of 100×100 feet, in time for the winter ice harvest. The CB&Q, owners of the Fox River Branch line, built a new siding for the ice company’s use.

Hutchinson’s Yorkville Ice Company sold ice harvested on the Fox River in Chicago.

As the Kendall County Record reported on Oct. 24, 1872: “The [ice] cakes are cut 22 inches square…the ice will be cut by ice plows, of which five will be used, each drawn by a horse. About 30 men will be employed through the winter and four to five in the summer. The company expects to ship three carloads, or 30 tons, to Chicago every night during the summer in cars fitted for the purpose.”

How did the process of harvesting ice from the Fox River work? As the Record explained about the ice harvest in an 1872 story: “It will be taken from the river by a new style of elevator never before used in the West, consisting of a heavy endless chain running over two large iron pulleys weighing 1,100 lbs., and propelled by a steam engine. This chain carries a series of hooks that, as they revolve, grab a cake of ice from the river and carry it up the elevator in grooves that act like a railroad track, to its proper platform, where it is received by a man who pushes it along the track to the door at which it is to be received These tracks on each platform, have “switches” at each door, and by turning the switch the cake is dropped into any door desired. There is no handling of the ice; all is done by machinery, by these tracks, and by the men with pointed poles pushing the ice to its resting place in the house. The cakes are cut 22 inches square and each room is 12 cakes wide so that everything is done systematically. The house will hold 7,000 tons—14 million pounds—and all this can be stored by two men as it comes up the elevator.

Hutchison filled his Yorkville houses that winter with the expected 7,000 tons of ice he planned to market to retail customers in Chicago, along with ice from his other harvesting and storage operations in Naperville and closer in to Chicago.

Icebox’s wooden exterior cabinet, this one of oak, fit right in with furniture of the era. The ability to cool food led to a revolution in public health and private citizens’ economy.

Starting in 1870, the ice business had begun a rapid expansion all over the country, and especially in Chicago. That year, there were seven retail ice dealers in Chicago. By 1875, the number had more than doubled to 15 and rose to 26 by 1885. Some of this expansion was driven by the vast quantities of ice required by the meatpacking industry, but much of it was also due to the introduction of home iceboxes that could keep food from spoiling.

Perfected in England, the home icebox concept was quickly exported to the U.S. Iceboxes of the era were about five feet high and consisted of a wooden cabinet with an insulated double-walled metal lining. Icebox cabinets were generally oak or walnut, with four to five compartments, each with its own door and polished brass hardware. Ice blocks were placed in the top compartment. Grilles allowed the chilled air to sink down through well-ventilated compartments below where food was stored, as warmer air rose to be re-chilled in the ice compartment. Melt water from the ice was either piped outside or dripped into a pan under the unit, which had to be emptied daily.

Primitive by modern standards, iceboxes nevertheless created a food revolution. Their use meant reduced food spoilage and waste, which changed Americans’ shopping habits, saved huge amounts of money, and made life not only easier but healthier for virtually all walks of life.

So it didn’t take long for other Chicago ice merchants to get into the Kendall County ice business. In November 1873, the year after Hutchinson began operations in Yorkville, Esch Brothers & Rabe, another Chicago ice company, announced plans to build an ice harvesting and storage facility, this time at Oswego.

Esch Brothers & Rabe icehouses just above Oswego in the old Village of Troy.

The company was established by brothers William, Frederick, and August Esch and their brother-in-law, Frederick Rabe. While William and August Esch and Rabe continued to live in Chicago, Frederick Esch moved to Oswego to oversee operations on-site.

The company initially built four connected ice houses that first year, each 20 feet high, 20 feet wide and 50 feet long. The houses were situated on a parcel of land they bought in the old village of Troy just north of the William Parker & Sons Furniture Factory and Saw Mill. Within a few years, they expanded the number of houses to 14, and in 1883 the company built six more houses. Eventually, they operated more than 64,000 square feet of ice storage space on the banks of the Fox River north of Oswego. The icehouses were serviced by a new rail siding on the Fox River Branch line.

Esch Brothers & Rabe bought out Hutchinson’s ice company at Yorkville in the late 1870s, and expanded their operations there as well. By 1886, Esch Brothers operated 12 ice houses on Hutchinson’s old site at Yorkville.

Esch Brothers & Rabe’s 20 huge ice storage houses just above the dam at Oswego ready to be filled. Note the piles of sawdust used to insulate layers of the 200-pound blocks of ice cut from the river during the winter. (Little White School Museum collection)

Ice was getting to be a bigger and bigger business as time went on. In 1881, Esch Brothers & Rabe shipped 581 railcars of ice from their siding in Oswego alone. Demand for ice was spiking.

And as demand spiked, so did the number of ice companies. By 1900, 76 ice companies were doing business in Chicago.

With so many new companies, competition was cutthroat, something the established companies dealt with by creating a secret ice cartel in violation of state law. Esch Brothers, along with Griffin & Connolley and other Chicago ice firms formed the Chicago Ice Exchange. Exchange members paid $50 per ice wagon with the promise they would not poach other members’ customers.

The ice harvest in downtown Aurora sometime in the late 19th Century.

Meanwhile, in the Fox Valley things were going great guns. Each January, Esch Brothers & Rabe employed up to 75 men in both Oswego and Yorkville to harvest ice. After scrapers pulled by horses cleared snow off the 15-inch thick ice above the two towns’ dams, horse drawn ice plows cut deep parallel grooves into the ice. Each day, a channel was cleared from the millpond to the shore-based ice house steam elevator. Huge cakes of ice in uniform sizes were floated along the open channel to the ice elevator on shore, where an endless chain propelled by a steam engine raised the ice up out of the water and sent it up an incline to the icehouses where it was planed to a standard thickness. The blocks were stored in layers, each insulated with layers of straw or sawdust. On good days, 1,000 tons of ice were cut and stored.

1885 Sanborn Fire Insurance map showing the plan of Esch Brothers & Rabe’s Oswego icehouses on the east bank of the Fox River just above Oswego during the height of the firm’s operations in Kendall County.

In 1880, Esch Brothers & Rabe had shipped 581 railcar loads of ice from their Oswego siding. By 1884, storage facilities and productivity had both increased, and the company reported shipping 1,089 railcar loads of ice from their busy Oswego siding.

Esch Brothers & Rabe’s steam ice elevator at their Oswego ice harvesting location. (Little White School Museum collection)

Not that there weren’t serious business hazards, of course. In 1887, after the Record reported the largest-ever ice harvest at Yorkville, Esch Brothers & Rabe’s ice houses were destroyed by fire. According to the April 13 Kendall County Record: “There were about a dozen large houses all connected and filled with hundreds of tons of splendid ice…The loss is estimated at about $5,000.” That’s $164,000 in today’s dollars.

In 1890, the ice harvest was poor due to warmer weather, and then in March 1891, 14 of the company’s older icehouses at Oswego burned to the ground. “The scene was grand, yet of a weird appearance, the whole region around being lit up with a red glare, ” the Record’s Oswego correspondent reported.

Self-portrait of Irvin Haines with the remaining icehouses at Oswego after the 1891 fire destroyed 14 of the locations older icehouses. (Little White School Museum collection)

Low water in the Fox hampered the ice harvest in January 1893. Ice was cut at Oswego, but there wasn’t enough water in the river to float the cakes to the elevator on the shore. And then at Yorkville, the dam was damaged by the spring flood in 1901 causing Esch Brothers & Rabe to scramble to get it repaired in time for the winter ice harvest. By November, Record Editor John R. Marshall could report: “Chicago people will get good ice from Yorkville. The water in the Fox River at this point has been very clear and clean this year.”

But in June 1902, the ice houses at Yorkville burned yet again after being struck by lightning. The fire was visible for miles, the Record’s Specie Grove correspondent writing: “Many of our people saw the ice-house fire at Yorkville. Being awakened by the storm, the light through the windows drew their attention to the fire.”

The company immediately rebuilt to carry on the Yorkville operation. In Oswego, however, damage to the dam halted operations there. Then in August of 1904, the rest of the Oswego icehouses burned to the ground, probably from a spark from a passing locomotive. Ironically, eight of the railroad’s freight cars on the ice company siding were also consumed by the fire.

Fire and flood were not the only hazards facing Esch Brothers & Rabe, however. In 1897, a new, much larger “ice trust,” the Knickerbocker Ice Company, was established in Chicago with the goal of eliminating competition so that prices could be raised. Like the Chicago Ice Exchange, the new cartel was also illegal, but it had real money behind it and it quickly gobbled up smaller ice companies. And just as quickly, prices were sharply raised. To persuade smaller companies to join, the trust also tried direct action, such as damaging dams the companies depended upon, including those at Yorkville and Oswego.

In January 1907, Esch Brothers admitted defeat and finally sold out to Knickerbocker.

But by then, the days of natural ice production were nearly over. Not only was the Fox River becoming badly polluted by the turn of the 20th Century that ice harvested on it was nearly unusable, but the development of ice making machines precluded the need for harvesting natural ice. At first, customers were leery of machine-made versus natural ice, but gradually the purity of manufactured ice began making serious inroads in the ice business.

In the 1890s, the “Pure Ice Movement” began agitating to have ice tested for purity. The result was that many ice harvesting operations throughout the nation were closed by public health officials due to polluted streams and lakes on which it was harvested. By 1910, several of Chicago’s 71 ice dealers were advertising manufactured ice.

Strangely, this once-flourishing industry has left virtually no trace of itself behind on the Fox Valley’s landscape. The giant ice houses, workers’ boarding houses, stables, rail sidings, and steam ice elevators are the stuff of a long past generation’s memories, although the old Esch Brothers boarding house still stands on Van Emmon Street in Yorkville.

But while it lasted, it was a rousing, exciting time, when men harvested winter and sold it in summer.

Native American Heritage Month is an annual reminder of who was here first

Having just honored the men and women who have served in the nation’s military forces, it’s time to turn our attention to another group of Americans being honored this month. November is Native American Heritage Month.

Today, most residents only dimly recall the long occupation of the Fox River Valley by Indigenous People. Many of us take for granted that Native People must have lived here sometime in the past, although few give it much thought, even though we’re constantly reminded of that era by the names of places, geographical features, roads, and buildings carrying Indian names throughout the area.

The things that apparently doesn’t register with most of us is that babies have been born, young people have grown and begun their own families, and people have died in the area along the banks of the Fox River for some 12,000 years.

Why did those Native People come here in the first place? And why did they leave?

The region’s first inhabitants arrived following their food as the last Ice Age was ending.

As my co-author Paula Fenza, noted in Indians of Kendall County (Kendall County Historical Society, 1975), the Fox Valley’s first inhabitants probably arrived by following their food supply.

Those Paleo-Indian hunters came during the last Ice Age, following the edge of the glaciers as the ice retreated north. It must have been a spectacular landscape all those thousands of years ago as the families of Stone Age hunters contemplated the great ice sheet that covered the area thousands of feet thick in some areas.

Large game animals such as the giant Ice Age versions of elk, bison, caribou, mammoth, and mastodon favored the grassy taiga and tundra along the glacial edge and were hunted as they grazed in the wake of the melting ice sheets

The Paleo-Indian period here in North America is comparable to the same period in northern Europe when Ice Age hunters roamed the region, just as their counterparts were doing here in North America.

As the ice sheets retreated ever-farther north, the Archaic Period or cultural tradition emerged among Native Americans, which compares with the time between the first domestication of plants in Asia and the rise of the first civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

The next cultural tradition that emerged among the region’s Native People was the Woodland Period spanning the European period from the Greek city states and Alexander the Great‘s empire through the time of the Roman Empire to the decline of Rome as a world power.

Here in Kendall County, people of the Mississippian Cultural Tradition lived in villages along the Fox River and its tributaries, and left behind burial and ceremonial mounds. Their culture was centered around the huge city of Cahokia in southern Illinois.

Here in Kendall County, after some thousands of years of being hunting and fishing grounds for hunting and gathering people, the land was first semi-permanently occupied by members of the Hopewell Culture. They, in turn, were then either pushed out or absorbed by peoples of the Mississippian Cultural Tradition. For reference’s sake, the Mississippian Period took place during Europe’s Renaissance. The Mississippian Culture was, in turn, apparently destroyed by a combination of climate changes and other Native American invaders who probably moved up from the south.

The Historic Period in Illinois began in 1673. That year, the governor of New France, which included Canada and much of the northern U.S., commissioned an expedition to explore the Mississippi River. Rumors collected by French fur traders and Catholic missionaries suggested the Mississippi might run southwesterly. If that was so, the mighty river could well lead to the Pacific Ocean, offering much easier access to the riches of the Orient.

Louis Jolliet, a geographer, accompanied by Jesuit linguist Father Jacques Marquette, led the expedition. The expedition left the French military and trading post at the Straits of Mackinac between Lakes Huron and Michigan in birch bark canoes and paddled down the western shore of Lake Michigan. At Green Bay, they traveled up the Fox River of Wisconsin to the portage over to the Wisconsin River, and then down the broad Wisconsin to the Mississippi. In the end, speculation about the river’s course proved untrue. By the time the expedition reached the mouth of the Arkansas River, Jolliet, who had been making careful observations, confirmed the Mississippi flowed essentially due south into the Gulf of Mexico, and not southwest to the Gulf of California as French officials had hoped.

On the expedition of Jolliet and Marquette to find the mouth of the Mississippi River, Jolliet took frequent measurements in order to create an accurate map of the region.

But while their voyage of exploration was disappointing to French officials, the expedition’s leaders did manage to leave us the first written descriptions of central Illinois.

From those accounts and others, we know that at that time, the Mississippian Tradition had disappeared some hundreds of years before, replaced by a tribal culture. In 1673, Illinois was mostly occupied by the six main tribal groups comprising the Illinois Confederacy. Calling themselves the Illiniwek (which meant “the men”) and called the “Illinois” by the French, the related Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Michigamea, Peoria, Moingwena, and Tamaroa tribes, primarily made their summer homes along the Illinois River. The confederacy’s family groups used modern Kendall County and other areas along the Illinois’ tributaries as hunting grounds and winter quarters.

Although Europeans had yet to reach modern Illinois, their trade policies had already created major impacts in the entire region. Beginning about 1660, the well-organized Iroquois Confederacy, whose home was in upstate New York, had begun a series of raids all the way west into Illinois in a quest to eliminate competition and monopolize the lucrative trade in furs with the Europeans. The military turmoil was severe enough to drive the populous Illinois west of the Mississippi for several years during that period. And in fact, the Illiniwek had probably just returned from their exile when Marquette and Joliet encountered them in 1673.

That, however, was not the end of the Illiniwek’s troubles. In September 1680, the Iroquois attacked again, this time nearly wiping out the Illiniwek in a long series of battles.

Jean Baptiste Louis Franquelin’s 1683 map of the Illinois River shows LaSalle’s colony at Fort St. Louis atop Starved Rock, and the numerous tribes the French entrepreneur had persuaded to move to the area for their common defense against Iroquois attacks. On the map, our Fox River is called “Pestekouy,” the Algonquoin peoples’ word for “buffalo.” The village labeled “Maramech” was probably located along the Fox River here in Kendall County. (Map from “The Discovery of the Great West: LaSalle” by Francis Parkman, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1967)

By 1683, the constant Iroquois threat led French adventurer, entrepreneur and explorer Robert Cavalier de la Salle to fortify what we call today Starved Rock—the French called the prominent geographical landmark simply “The Rock”—and gather several thousand Native People to that vicinity for mutual protection. A 1684 map shows the Fox Valley occupied by a number of Indian groups connected by trade and security understandings with LaSalle’s Starved Rock venture.

Some years later, after the area’s game and other resources were exhausted, LaSalle’s principal lieutenant, Henri de Tonti, abandoned Starved Rock, relocating the entire French fur trading and security operation south to Lake Peoria on the Illinois River. Eventually, the French withdrew even farther south to Kaskaskia and Cahokia along the Mississippi River in southern Illinois. With that move went the surviving remnant of the Illiniwek, creating a strategic vacuum in the Fox Valley.

Col. Richard M. Johnson of the Kentucky militia may or may not have killed the Native American military leader Tecumseh during the Battle of the Thames in Canada in 1813 as illustrated here. But Tecumseh’s death persuaded local Native American leaders Waubonsie and Shabbona there was no military solution to White settlment of the Fox Valley. (“The Battle of the Thames,” Library of Congress collection)

The French and the Fox Tribe both tried to control the Fox Valley area in the early 1700s because of it’s proximity to the major fur trade routes of the Chicago Portage and the portage from the Fox River of Wisconsin into the Wisconsin River. Following the French war of extermination waged against the Fox in the 1720s and 1730s, and unsuccessful attempt by the culturally-related Fox, Mascouten, and Kickapoo tribes to occupy the region, the Fox Valley was again said to be, at least in theory, part of the seriously diminished Illiniwek’s domain.

It was a power vacuum in a very rich area that was bound to be filled by other tribes. According to Auguste Chouteau, the U.S. Government’s Indian agent at St. Louis, writing in the early 1800s, in 1745, several related bands of the Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Chippewa met at Green Bay to discuss that power. The three tribal groups, already related through intermarriage, decided to establish a loose confederacy they called the Three Fires, with the goal of moving into northern Illinois to occupy the rich lands formerly controlled exclusively by the Illinois Confederacy.

Within the next few years, the Three Fires Confederacy completed their move south into the Illinois, Fox, and DesPlaines river valleys, using force of arms and superior numbers to assume control of virtually all of northern Illinois.

Here in the Fox Valley, major villages were established up and down the river, especially in the area of Silver Springs State Park at Meramech Hill, along the Fox at Oswego and north into Kane and McHenry counties, as well as in some of the hardwood groves that dotted the region’s prairies.

Ambrotype was made of “Chief Shaubonee” on June 7, 1857 at Morris by image artist H.B. Field

During the French and Indian War of the early 1760s, the Three Fires supported the French. After the British won the war and evicted the French government from North America, the Pottawatomi remained loyal to their French friends. From 1763 to 1765, they participated in the conflict called Pontiac’s Rebellion, the western tribes’ unsuccessful attempt to force the British back across the Appalachian.

By the time of the Revolutionary War, however, the Three Fires had transferred their loyalty to the British, and fought against the Americans. Three Fires villages located up and down the Fox Valley also supported the British during the War of 1812, with many of them taking part in the destruction of Ft. Dearborn—now Chicago—in 1812. That year, according to U.S. Indian Agent Thomas Forsythe, the Three Fires could muster some 600 warriors. Forsythe reported that Chiefs Waubonsee and Main Poche both had villages located on the Fox River. War parties from northern Illinois villages participated in British-instigated raids and battles against the Americans. Locally prominent chiefs Shabbona and Waubonsee were close confidants of the charismatic leader Tecumseh during the war and were on hand when he was killed in Canada during the Battle of the Thames in 1813. The experience had a sobering effect on both men, persuading them that further warfare against the U.S. Government would be destructive for their people.

So, after the treaty ending the War of 1812 solidified the Americans’ hold on the Illinois Country, the Three Fires tried to protect through diplomacy what they had failed to gain through military action. They were, however, unsuccessful in this, and were forced into a number of key land cessions to the U.S. Government during the next two decades.

Villages of Indigenous People in the Fox and Illinois River valleys. The Fox is marked in green, the Illinois in red. This map shows six villages along the Fox River north from it’s mouth on the Illinois River. (“Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History” by Helen Hornbeck Tanner and Miklos Pinther, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1987)

President Thomas Jefferson had established a policy in 1803 to remove Native People to areas west of the Mississippi River in order to open land for settlement. In 1830 the policy became law with passage of the Indian Removal Act, strongly supported by President Andrew Jackson.

In the aftermath of the brief Winnebago War of 1829 and the much more serious—and deadly—Black Hawk War of 1832, Illinois settlers clamored for all Native People, including the Three Fires Confederacy, to be removed from the state. In spite of the Three Fires’ general support for the U.S. during both upheavals, the U.S. Government readily agreed.

Although he supported the U.S. Government during the Winnebago and Black Hawk wars of the 1820s and 1830s, Chief Waubonsee was forced west of the Mississippi with the rest of his people in the late 1830s.

In the fall of 1835, U.S. Government contractors removed a large group of the Three Fires from the Chicago region were removed to land in northwestern Missouri called the Platte Country. Two years later, the rest of the Fox Valley bands were sent west in October, traveling through near continual rain and mud in a Three Fires version of the horrific Cherokee Trail of Tears. The Three Fires people crossed the Mississippi at Quincy and then made the grueling march to the Platte Country, arriving in mid-November.

But due to the continuing arrival of White settlers in the Platte Country, they were almost immediately forced to move farther west to prairie land near Council Bluffs, Iowa, which they strongly disliked due to its lack of timber, not to mention the arrival, yet again, of increasing numbers of white settlers. Late in 1837, they were removed to what was hoped would be their final home on the Marais des Cygnes River in Kansas.

Some Three Fires families had refused to move. And after seeing the lands they were assigned in Iowa, others who had moved drifted back to Illinois. But they, too, were again rounded up and forcibly removed, the last of the Fox Valley’s Indian residents finally—and permanently—taken west in 1838.

That finally brought the Native American presence in the area to a close after 120 centuries of their habitation along the banks of the Fox River.

How the Fox River of Illinois (probably) got its modern name

Thousands of area residents drive their autos, walk, or ride their bicycles over its bridges or along its banks each day, but few give any thought to why the Fox River has the name it does.

Uncovering such historical mysteries is always somewhat fraught because of the mountain of variables. The river could have been given its name because there are lots of foxes in the area. Or perhaps it was called the Fox River because the river curves, narrows and widens like a fox’s tail.

But the river’s name has nothing to do with the furry fellows once sought for their fur and hunted for their love of raiding the target-rich environment of farmers’ chicken coops.

Instead, the river carries the name of one of the Native American tribes that once lived along its northern reaches a century and more before the U.S. government forced their successors to relocate west of the Mississippi River.

No one really knows what the earliest Native Americans called the river, although we can make a pretty good guess. By the time the first French explorers and traders arrived in northern Illinois in the late 1600s, the Native People were calling the stream “Pestekouy,” a word in the Algonquian language lexicon meaning “bison.”

According to historical and archaeological evidence, the Fox Valley was not used as a permanent home by Native Americans for several decades during the 1500s, 1600s, and early 1700s. Instead, it was a prime hunting grounds for the various tribal bands of the Illinois Confederacy. As herds of varying sizes of Eastern American Bison moved across the prairies of what would one day become Kendall County and our other modern governmental subdivisions, they were followed by various Indian bands, including the Illinois, who harvested them for use as a major source of protein-rich food as well as for other animal-based products they needed for survival.

Stampeding bison over a cliff where they fell to their death was one of the two major tactics Native People used to harvest bison.

The Indians conducted large communal bison hunts in the fall using a couple favored methods. Once consisted of contriving to drive a herd over a cliff where the fall would kill dozens of the huge animals. Back in 2005, conclusive evidence of this method of harvesting bison was found at the Lonza-Caterpillar Site along the Illinois River near Peoria.

The other main hunting tactic capitalized on autumn weather when the prairie grass was dry, and communal groups setting the grass afire in a incomplete circle around a bison herd. When the bison attempted to escape through the narrow non-burning opening, they were more easily killed.

Given the Fox Valley’s topography–large expanses of gently rolling prairie broken by occasional hardwood groves and the wooded banks of streams and wetlands–it’s logical to assume bison found the area much to their liking. As did deer, who are creatures of the edges of woodlands.

The Native People, whether intentionally or not, created and maintained ideal habitat for them as well by intentionally burning off the prairies in the autumn, a practice that not only killed saplings springing up on the prairie but also cleared out dead underbrush in the groves. As an added benefit, new growth around the groves’ edges created perfect deer habitat encouraging the growth of another valuable animal hunted for food and the many products that could be made from its bones and skin.

But getting back to the Fox River’s name, the Indians who hunted the area’s bison probably originally named the river after the large herds found along its banks. We know for sure local Native Americans hunted bison—around these parts in particular—because during an archaeological dig in Oswego in 1987, a bison leg bone was recovered from a village cooking fire pit. Kansas State University dated the bone for Oswego’s Little White School Museum, indicating the animal was killed about 1400 A.D., well before any Europeans were present in North America.

When the French arrived in northern Illinois in the 1600s, they immediately understood the importance of the Illinois River valley as a trade highway from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River system. The river’s northern tributary, the DesPlaines, was within easy walking distance of the sluggish Chicago River, which emptied into Lake Michigan. The short distance from the Chicago to the DesPlaines meant a relatively quick trip from Lake Michigan to the Illinois and thence to the French colonies in southern Illinois—providing there was enough water in the upper DesPlaines. During periods of low water, the Chicago to DesPlaines portage could stretch 60 miles all the way downstream to the mouth of the Kankakee where the Illinois River formed from the two daughter streams.

Franquelin’s 1683 map labels our Fox River the Pestekouy, the Algonquian language group name for the American bison.

As the French traveled that route after reaching the Illinois, they were well aware of the towering sandstone bluff that rose from the river near its junction with the Pestekouy. Called simply le Rocher (the Rock) by the French, today’s Starved Rock area provided the location for a series of French forts and trading posts. The first known map that named the Fox River as the Pestekouy was drawn by Jean-Baptiste Louis Franquelin in 1684. As late as 1688, the Venetian Conventual friar Marco Coronelli drew a map (undoubtedly making liberal use of Franquelin’s map) that labeled the river as the “Pestconti,” a clear Italianization of the French spelling.

When French attention drifted away from northern Illinois, the name of Pestekouy was gradually lost. In fact, for several decades when the river was shown on maps at all it was unnamed. Louvigny in 1697 and DeLisle in 1718 both produced maps depicting the area with the Fox River unnamed.

The name may have disappeared because during that period, the river apparently lost its original connection with the bison herds. And that may possibly have been due to their eradication in the area due to over-hunting by French hide hunters. Between late 1702 and 1704, the French killed and skinned 12,000 Illinois bison with the aim of shipping the tanned hides back to France. The scheme failed, but nevertheless seems to have seriously depleted the state’s bison population, possibly leading to the animals’ eventual total disappearance in the first decade of the 19th Century.

A detail clip of Ottens’ 1754 map showing French and British possessions in North America. Ottens’ map names the Fox River “du Rocher,” River of the Rock, probably due to its proximity to the landmark Starved Rock.

With the bison mostly out of the picture, the Fox became known by most French travelers as the River of the Rock, undoubtedly due to the proximity of the stream’s mouth to Starved Rock. A map drawn by Dutch cartographer J. Ottens in 1754 entitled “Map of the English and French possessions in the vast land of North America” shows the Fox River with the name R. du Rocher – “River of the Rock.”

Even by that era, however, the river may have been given its current name by people living, working, and warring in its environs. Vicious warfare between the French and the Fox Indians had been in progress since the late 1600s. In the early 1700s, parts of the tribe were reported living on the upper reaches of the river. Since the Foxes were considered threats to the entire French empire in North America, the unnamed stream on which large bands of them made their homes probably led to the river’s final name.

A clip from Thomas Hutchins’ 1778 map, where he finally gives our river its final, modern name. The name likely arose from the Fox Tribe, bands of which occupied the river’s upper reaches.

By the late 1700s, the name had been finalized. Between 1764 and 1775, Thomas Hutchins, an engineer with the 60th Royal American Regiment, traveled throughout what is now the Midwest on a mapping and reconnaissance mission. In 1778, Hutchins published “A New Map of the Western Parts of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina…,” which included the Illinois River valley and on which Hutchins clearly labeled the Fox River.

Names can tell a lot about an area’s history. Even the history behind a short name like Fox River can trace the comings and goings of Indian tribes, imperial intrigues, intrepid explorations, and bitter warfare. What’s in a name? It’s everything that makes history interesting.

Fishing ‘magic’: How carp became red salmon

Read a story the other day about the problems they’re having out West with invasive species in that region’s rivers. According to the piece, the fish are turning up in rivers where they’re not supposed to be found, and are competing with native species like trout and salmon.

Now I love walleyes. I like catching them, and I like eating them even more. But I can understand why they might be considered invasive and why they might throw a monkeywrench into the ecology of rivers where they’ve never previously been found.

Walleye are great for catching and for eating–as long as they don’t turn up where they’re not supposed to. Our Fox River has a pretty good population of them these days.

The story got me to thinking about invasive species in general as well as about the kinds of fish we like to eat. Or at least the kinds of fish we THINK we’re eating. When it gets right down to it, the only way to be sure the kind of fish you’re eating is to catch it yourself.

Really? Yes, really. I went back and looked up a story I did several years ago based on the December 2011 issue of Consumer Reports, which had an interesting article titled “Mystery Fish: The label said red snapper, the lab said baloney.” Turned out after spending some bucks on DNA testing of samples of fish from several markets and restaurants, CR found out (and I doubt you’ll be completely shocked to hear this) that what you’re told isn’t necessarily the truth when it comes to what kind of fish you’re cooking at home or eating at your favorite restaurant.

The worse case concerned red snapper, CR said. I used to think it tasted pretty good, but after I read that article, I had to wonder what the heck it was I had really been eating. Stated CR: “None of the 22 ‘red snappers’ we bought at 18 markets could be positively identified as such.”

You might think, what with all the “truth in advertising” and federal food safety laws that are supposedly in effect that that problem might perhaps be of relatively recent origin, given the recent political mania to cut funding for government health and safety mandates.

But, the fact is, mislabeling was one of the many problems that led to government regulation of the sales of meat, poultry and fish in the first place. Upton Sinclair started the regulation ball rolling with his 1906 novel, The Jungle, that recounted the horrors of the meatpacking industry and its resistance to changes that would protect the health of consumers, but which would also cut into industry profits. As Sinclair wrote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

The problems wasn’t concentrated in any specific part of the country. And, in fact, we’ve got our own local story of mystery fish that goes all the way back to the 1870s when experts and the groups they formed, apparently with the best of intentions, created a host of problems with invasive wildlife we’re still dealing with today.

One of the most annoying of these groups was the American Acclimatization Society. Under the leadership of New York pharmacist Eugene Schieffelin, the society reportedly decided to introduce every bird mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays to North America. Today we can thank these cranks for the pestiferous starlings and English sparrows that are so destructive.

German carp thrived after being stocked in the Fox River by the U.S. Fish Commission in the 19th Century.

But while annoying, the acclimatizatizers didn’t hold a candle to the destruction to natural habitat and native species caused by the federal government itself. By 1873, the U.S. Fish Commission was seriously considering the importation of European carp to be stocked in our waterways. Later in the decade they’d talked themselves into acting on the idea. Why? Well, because, according to the commission’s report for 1873-1875, it was such a good-tasting fish and because it could survive in water conditions that drove other species out.

After quite a bit of bother and expense, the commission managed to import sufficient carp as breeding stock. The fish were considered so valuable, in fact, that they were placed in the reflecting pool at the Washington Monument for the first few years to acclimatize them and assure they’d breed naturally.

By the 1880s, there were enough that offers to stock them in the nation’s rivers were accepted. The first 40 carp were stocked in the Fox River in Kendall County in 1882, with 20 more stocked in 1883. Upriver, the largest group, 1,000 fingerlings, were stocked at Aurora in 1886, with 500 more at Elgin in 1892.

And with the nation’s rivers in such deplorable shape, stocking carp became a popular activity for both the federal government and their colleagues at the state level. But, as it turned out, people really didn’t much like carp. As the Ottawa Republican reported in January 1895: “The German carp which have lately been propagating profusely in this country and for which extraordinary claims were made as a food fish, has not held out in the practical test…The trouble with them, says an old fisherman, is that they are soft and oily. The fat on them is like the fat of hogs.”

W.E. Meehan, commissioner of fisheries of Pennsylvania was definitely not a carp supporter: “Possibly the carp is fit for food. Personally, I do not like his looks as a fish and I do not like the looks of the people I have seen buying him in the market.”

The Fox River at Oswego offered recreational opportunities to residents and visitors alike during the era before World War II including fishing.

Commercial fishermen, however, were finding carp of value. M.D. Hurley, president of the Illinois Fishermen’s Association, noted in an 1898 letter to the U.S. Fish Commission: “…the wonderful demand for Illinois River carp from Eastern markets where they are sold for Illinois River carp, and not canned for ‘salmon,’ as many people believe.”

In a 1902 statement, S.P. Bartlett, superintendent of the U.S. Fish Commission, and a resident of Quincy in western Illinois, argued (including a bit of honesty at the end): “This cry against the carp is a great big humbug—it is an outrage—they are a good fish if you know how to cook them, but not so good if you don’t know how.” Indeed.

But despite the protestations of Hurley and Bartlett, apparently Illinois River carp were indeed being shipped east as carp, but then were being magically transformed into other species. As the Kendall County Record suggested in a report from Yorkville in October 1907: “For the past three or four years the river in this locality has been seined and thousands of pounds of carp taken out, which are shipped to New York, and there converted into red salmon and some other costly fish dishes.”

In March 1911, A.H. Young of London, Ontario, Canada, explained to a group down in Ottawa exactly what happened after carp from the Fox and Illinois rivers were shipped east by the carload: “Instead of being eaten by New Yorkers, [carp] are shipped right back here to Illinois and you buy them. Don’t believe it? Well, it’s the truth, just the same. They have a system by which all bones are removed and the fish is then properly cured and becomes halibut, smoked white fish, and various other varieties of cured fish. Then you people out here in Illinois and all over the country, for that matter, eat carp and think them fine.”

Though carp are still prominent, fishing for smallmouth bass–and walleyes–on the Fox River of Illinois draws thousands of anglers to the Fox Valley. (Photo courtesy of the Illinois-Wisconsin Fishing Blog)

It gradually became conventional wisdom that carp were harmful because of their bottom feeding habits, which, it was thought, stirred up bottom sediment creating the state’s murky waters. However, it was gradually realized the murky water came first, thanks to erosion and excessive pollution. The carp, it turned out, thrived because of the streams’ poor water quality, not the other way around.

So today, the grand old scam apparently continues, although the days of commercial fishing on the Fox and Illinois rivers seems to be long gone. The action has simply moved elsewhere.

The dream of a navigable Fox River seems (fortunately) now lost in history…

Looking out of the window at our Fox River of Illinois here at History Central, it seems the river’s lower than it’s been in quite a while. In fact, if it gets any lower, the fish are going to have to get out and walk.

It’s been a while since the Fox River’s been this low, a reflection of the drought affecting the region.

Our corner of northern Illinois is currently in drought, labeled “moderate” by the weather people, but looking pretty severe when it comes to river levels—not to mention the conditions of area lawns and farm fields. Out in the country, the drought level in corn and soybean fields seems to have reached “Grim” with no signs of moderating.

But it’s the river that’s looking peaked outside my office window this week.

The Fox rises in southeastern Wisconsin and runs 202 miles almost due south except for a slight bend to the southwest before it reaches its mouth on the Illinois River near towering Starved Rock. It’s a relatively wide river—wider than the sluggish DuPage River a few miles to the east, but narrower than the DesPlaines River just to the east of the DuPage.

Although wide, the Fox has always been a fast-running shallow stream during most of the year. But frequent and rapid fluctuations in the river’s level are common—and nothing new. In fact, our Fox River of Illinois started right out being at least a minor annoyance as soon as some of the first European explorers and fur traders started poking around these parts.

Everyone who first encountered the river and its valley, from the earliest French explorers to the permanent American settlers who began arriving along its banks in the 1820s, seemed to agree both were beautiful. But the river’s frequent depth fluctuations meant it was (and still is) often extremely shallow during certain times of the year. And that made it unsuitable to use for either travel or transporting freight.

For instance, in the fall of 1698, Jesuit Missionary Jean Francois Buisson de St. Cosme was sent by the Bishop of Quebec with an expedition to establish a mission on the lower Mississippi River. His party left the Strait of Mackinac and paddled down the west shore of Lake Michigan. Difficulties with the Fox Tribe meant they couldn’t use the usual route from Green Bay, up the Fox River of Wisconsin to the Wisconsin River and downstream to the Mississippi. So they were on their way south to the Chicago portage when some friendly Native People suggested they might try our Fox River as a cut-off to the Mississippi.

This map nicely depicts the Root River to Fox River portage west of modern Racine, Wisconsin. The clip comes from a map of Illinois drawn by Rene Paul of St. Louis in 1815, and then copied by Lt. James Kearney of the U.S. Topographical Engineers for the governor of the Illinois Territory, Ninian Edwards prior to statehood. I’ve highlighted the Fox River in blue. The portage is marked with the dotted line at upper left. The map is Plate XL of Indian Villages of the Illinois Country, Part I, Atlas by Sara Jones Tucker, Illinois State Museum, 1941.

The route they’d have to take would be up the Root River at modern Racine, Wisconsin to a roughly five-mile overland portage to the Fox River. But when they got to the Root River, they found its water level extremely low. “As there was no water in it [the Root River] we judged that there would not be any in the Peschoui [our Fox River] either,” St. Cosme reported, “And that instead of shortening our journey we should have been obliged to go over forty leagues of portage roads; this compelled us to take the route by way of Chikagou.”

Not only was the Fox quite shallow, but it also had a sharp drop about four miles above its mouth on the Illinois River at modern Dayton that Father Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix described as “a fall.” And that meant a century and a half later when steamboats began plying the Illinois River early in the 1800s, that they were blocked from ascending the Fox any farther than four miles.

It must have been extremely frustrating for those early Fox Valley pioneers, who would have welcomed an easy, inexpensive way to get their livestock and crops to market by shipping them down the river to the Illinois and Mississippi systems. At that time, the St. Louis and New Orleans markets were the most active in what was then the United States’ west and the Chicago market had barely begun.

In fact, early on the river became more a barrier than an asset as people living west of it had to get across the wide stream to drive their livestock or haul their grain to market. As a result, shallow fords like the nice, smooth limestone-floored one here at my hometown of Oswego were prized by both the region’s Native People and the White settlers who displaced them.

Which is not to say the river’s geology wasn’t prized by another group of early settlers—the millwrights. Although wide and shallow, the Fox nevertheless experiences considerable fall from its headwaters north of the modern Illinois-Wisconsin border and its mouth on the Illinois River. And this, along with the rich farmland through which the primordial Fox River Torrent cut the valley and riverbed all those thousands ago, meant the river was an ideal source of waterpower.

In fact, according to John White, writing in the Fox River Area Assessment, published in 2000 by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, “The Fox River probably produced more hydropower than all other streams in Illinois put together, excluding the Rock River. In addition to sawing wood and grinding grain, these mills ran factories. The Fox River valley became more heavily industrialized than any other area of comparable size in Illinois.”

But the idea of making at least part of the Fox navigable persisted. But the problem, even early on, had a number of parts. First was the river’s usually shallow levels and second, even as early as 1840, all those dams White wrote about had been built. Nevertheless, the Oct. 2, 1840 edition of the Illinois Free Trader, Ottawa’s weekly newspaper, reported on one successful—though arduous—attempt to navigate the Fox by steamboat:

Fox River Navigation — Arrival
of the Bark “St. Charles Experiment.”

“On Tuesday evening last Mr. Joseph P. Keiser and lady arrived at our steamboat landing in a beautiful bark, six tons burthen, from St. Charles, Kane county, Illinois. Mr. K. left St. Charles on the 18th inst.. amid the smiling countenances of a large collection of citizens of that place who had assembled to witness his departure on this hazardous and novel enterprise. He descended Fox River without much trouble, notwithstanding the low stage of the water at present and the dam at Green’s mill, &c, might be considered by some as presenting insurmountable barriers.

“The “Experiment,” we believe, is the first craft that has ever descended this beautiful stream this distance, save, perhaps, the frail bark of the Indian in days gone by. The distance from St. Charles to this place is about eighty miles by water, passing through a section of country which, in point of fertility, is not surpassed by any tract of country in the Union, and to the enterprise and exertions of Mr. Keiser belongs the honor of first undertaking and accomplishing the navigation of Fox River, which winds its meandering course through it.

“The object of Mr. K’s enterprise is somewhat of a novelty. His design is to travel by water to the river St. Lawrence, in Lower Canada, by the following route: From St. Charles down Fox River to its mouth at Ottawa; thence down the Illinois to its mouth; thence down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Ohio; thence up the Ohio river to Beaver, Pa.; thence by way of the Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal to Akron, O.; thence on the Ohio Canal to Cleveland; thence on lake Erie to Buffalo, N.Y.; thence on the Welland Canal to Lake Ontario; and thence to the river St. Lawrence.

“This route will doubtless prove arduous to our friend, but he is in fine spirits and considers his worst difficulties ended by having successfully descended Fox River at the present stage of the water. He has our best wishes for a safe and pleasant journey, hoping that he may be able to inform us of his safe arrival at his distant destination.”

But after Mr. and Mrs. Keiser steamed off into historical obscurity, it seems no more attempts were made to navigate the Fox by steamboat.

The mill dam at Oswego was representative of the dams Joseph Keiser had to ease his small steamboat across during his 1840 voyage down the Fox River from St. Charles to Ottawa. (Little White School Museum collection)

Nevertheless, interest in the idea of navigating the Fox remained in the back of a lot of minds. When the Illinois and Michigan Canal linked Lake Michigan with the Illinois River at Peru in 1848, it again prompted interest in Fox River navigation.

But it wasn’t until 1867 that the area’s local Congressman, B.C. Cook, officially urged the Federal Government to make funding available to see what might be possible concerning Fox River navigation. On May 16, 1867, the Kendall County Record reported that “From Hon. B.C. Cook we learn that he has obtained an order from the authorities at Washington for the survey of Fox River, with the intention of making it navigable as high up as Yorkville or Oswego.”

The idea, as the Record reported, was to build dams with locks to permit river traffic to ascend the Fox. “The thing is done on the St. Joseph River in Michigan and on many other streams and it affords cheaper transportation than by railroad,” Record Editor J.R. Marshall contended.

The Sept. 26 Record noted that U.S. Government surveyors and engineers were wrapping up their work on the project and that the communities up and down the river had high hopes of what might be coming.

But even the raw survey, without any of the engineers’ conclusions, pointed to some substantial issues with the idea, not the least of which was the amount of fall in the seemingly placid river. As the Rev. E.W. Hicks reported in his 1877 Kendall County history: “It was found that Oswego was one hundred and forty-five feet higher than Ottawa, and that Fox river fell fifty-eight feet in the sixteen miles between Oswego and Millington.” Clearly, some interesting engineering—unnecessary on Michigan’s St. Joseph River—would be required to create a navigable channel from Ottawa to Oswego without flooding a good portion of the local countryside.

The engineering challenges of raising river traffic nearly 150 feet by means of dams and locks from Ottawa to Oswego were serious, but were then negated when the Ottawa, Oswego, and Fox River Valley Rail Road finally got serious backing. The line ran from the Vermilion coal fields near Streator to Ottawa and then right up the Fox River Valley to Geneva. Rail traffic between Ottawa and Oswego opened in 1870.

In any case, by that time, serious consideration was also being given to building the Ottawa, Oswego, and Fox River Valley Rail Road to link the coalfields southeast of Streator with Ottawa and then up the river valley all the way to Geneva. And while water transport was, indeed, cheaper than even rail transport, the cost of the dams, locks, and other improvements to make the Fox navigable even as far as Yorkville—not to mention the maintenance costs going forward—would have been prohibitive. Plus, given northern Illinois’s frigid winters, the river, even if it could somehow be made navigable, would only be available for freight about nine months of the year.

So the idea of a navigable Fox was quickly overtaken by the new rail line, which opened in 1870, shipping in the coal and other products Fox Valley residents needed while hauling to market the grain and livestock the region’s farmers were producing.

The Fox River Improvement Plan called for building up to 40 dams and coin-operated locks to permit motorboating from Ottawa all the way to the Chain-O-Lakes in northern Illinois. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and just one of the dams, at Montgomery, was built with the accompanying dredging and channelizing of the river for a quarter mile below the dam–but no coin-operated lock. This map was published in the Oswego Ledger Jan. 15, 1959.

The idea of a navigable Fox lay dormant for a century before it was revived in the late 1950s, with the idea being to create a recreational power boat trail from Ottawa to the Chain-O-Lakes in northern Illinois using dams with coin-operated locks. According to a report in the Jan. 15, 1959 Oswego Ledger, the proposal was to build 30 to 40 dams and locks on the Fox River to allow motorboats to travel up and down the river. In their initial proposal, state officials were planning seven new dams from South Elgin to Sheridan, including at Geneva, Montgomery, Oswego, two between Yorkville and Sheridan, and one at Sheridan.

The dam at Montgomery and that odd dead-end channel along the east bank of the river separating Ashland Avenue Island from Route 25 where the coin-operated lock was supposed to be; the Oswegoland Park District’s Saw-Wee-Kee Park, deeded to it by the state as the proposed location of one of the dams; and the quarter-mile dredged and channelized section of the river below the dam are all that remain of that proposal, eventually shelved for both financial and environmental concerns, as well as, apparently, a sudden attack of common sense.

Today, the Fox remains a priceless natural asset, prized by canoeists and anglers, and still greatly valued for its beauty, while proposals to make it a working river lie buried in the region’s history.

Despite our best efforts to erase it, evidence of the past lingers…

Exactly 190 years ago this year, the weather in the northern United States, especially in what was then called the Old Northwest Territory (the region north and west of the Ohio River), for once, proved congenial.

The two years previous to the spring of 1833 had been not only long and hard, but had been deadly, too. The winter of 1830-31 was dubbed “The Winter of the Deep Snow” by early settlers, while 1832 brought the Black Hawk War, the last Indian war fought in Illinois.

But then came the spring of 1833. Wrote the Rev. E.W. Hicks, Kendall County’s first historian:

“The year 1833 opened out splendidly, as if to make amends for the hardships of the year before. The snow went away in February, and early in March the sheltered valleys and nooks by the groves were beautifully green, and by the end of the month, stock could live on the prairies anywhere. It was an exceedingly favoring Providence for the few pioneers who remained on their claims; for had the spring been cold and backward, much more suffering must have followed. The tide of emigration set in early, and in one summer more than trebled the population of the county.”

Despite promises made by the U.S. Government in treaties, such as the 1829 Treaty of Prairie du Chien illustrated above, settlers flooded into lands east of the Mississippi River reserved for the use of Native Americans.

But all those early settlers were violating the law, in the form of solemn land cession treaties concluded between the U.S. Government and the region’s Native People. Those treaties had assured the indigenous people they’d have the use of the land they’d ceded to the U.S. Government until it was surveyed and put up for sale.

Nevertheless, settlers had begun moving into northern Illinois in substantial numbers in the late 1820s, creating tensions with the resident Native People. A series of near-wars between White settlers and indigenous residents was the result, finally culminating in the Black Hawk War of 1832. The result of these tensions were the various Indian Removal Acts passed by the U.S. Congress mandating the removal of all Native People west of the Mississippi. Removals of Illinois’ Native People were largely completed by 1838.

According to Michigan Territory Gov. Lewis Cass, the indigenous population of Illinois in 1830 was jus 5,900 souls, while that of Indiana was 4,050, and that of his own Michigan Territory was 29,060.

The ancestors of area’s original residents had arrived some thousands of years before, following the herds of giant Ice Age mammals that lived along the retreating edges of the stupendous glaciers. Those glaciers had advanced several times from the north, sometimes covering the area now occupied by Kendall County with several thousand feet of ice, then retreating only to advance once again.

But as the climate finally began warming somewhere around 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, the ice slowly retreated for the last time leaving a bleak steppe behind. Bleak it may have been, but it was the perfect landscape for the Ice Age mammals that thrived on it, from giant bison to wooly mammoths and their mastodon cousins, and the predators whose food source they were. And that included the bands of human hunter-gatherers that followed the game.

Gradually, the hunter-gatherer tradition gave way to more sedentary lifestyles as the Native People began adapting wild foods by cross-breeding and selective growing to create more nutritious foods that began greatly complementing their diets.

Eventually, some group of native agronomists in South or Central America either brilliantly or luckily hit upon the possibilities selectively breeding maze, eventually coming up with the ancestors of the corn Illinois farmers are so famous for growing today. Two varieties of this early maze worked their way north, called by later-arriving European colonists flint corn and dent corn, proving so productive and nutritious that complicated and culturally diverse civilizations grew up around their cultivation.

The culmination of this rich cultural tradition was the Mississippian Culture whose capital grew up on the floodplain of the Mississippi River just across from modern St. Louis. The Mississippians were cultural inheritors of the earlier Hopewell Culture that was centered in the Ohio River Valley. Both cultures, besides heavily relying on maze agriculture, also built significant numbers of mounds, apparently as part of their religious traditions. While the Hopewell people built not only smaller burial mounds, they also built larger effigy mounds in the shape of animals, the Mississippians tended to concentrate on geometric mounds. They left behind their most spectacular engineering achievement, Monks Mound, across from St. Louis. The largest earthen construction in North America, the towering geometric mound is 100 feet high and measures about 15 acres on the base.

An artist’s rendering, based on archaeological evidence, of the Mississippian people’s capital at Cahokia, just across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis. The population of the metropolitan area was probably between 10,000 and 30,000 people.

From their capital at the city eventually called Cahokia in the Mississippi floodplain, the Missippian culture spread up every tributary of the huge river, including the Illinois River and its tributary, our own Fox River. These early people not only left behind their finely-worked stone tools, but also their pottery and, even more noticeable, the mounds they build overlooking the river valleys they called home.

The region’s earliest settlers didn’t know what to make of the mounds those early people left behind. The innate racism of the early 19^th Century settlement era argued against such amazing constructions being achieved by the region’s Native People, so all sorts of hypotheses were advanced to account for them, from some mysterious long-exterminated race to the lost Tribe of Israel.

While those early White settlers didn’t know who’d built the mounds, they did know the shear number of mounds were often in the way of progress, from building roads to building farmsteads. And if they weren’t subject to being used for road fill or other purposes, all those mounds offered inviting targets for curio hunters.

According to the Rev. E.W. Hicks writing in his 1877 history of Kendall County: “The mounds in this part of the State are generally small, but quite numerous. Between one and two dozen are clearly marked on the bluffs along Fox river, in this county, and doubtless many others have been wholly or partially obliterated. One of the finest is on the county line at Millington, on Joseph Jackson’s land. It was dug into by a committee of citizens about forty years ago, and found to be a great burial heap. Numbers of human teeth were taken out, but some fragments of bones found were replaced and again covered. It is probable that these were remains of Indians subsequently buried there. Three rows of five mounds each are found on the northern bluff of the river: one on Mrs. Duryea’s land, near Bristol; another on Truman Hathaway’s; and a third on D. R. Ballou’s, above the woolen factory at Millington. In Mrs. Duryea’s mounds were also found in 1837 some teeth and a decayed skull. Others partially effaced are at the mouths of the Rob Roy and Rock creeks, and are only a few feet above the level of the river, proving that since they were built the river has flowed in its present channel. The Rob Roy mound a short time ago was partly uncovered by water, and George Steward, of Plano, our indefatigable archaeologist, picked up there, three hundred and twenty fragments of ancient pottery, and others may be found by any one curious enough to look for them.”

Elmer Baldwin, in his excellent 1877 history of LaSalle County wrote of the people who he believed built the mounds: “Their works remaining are their only history. They exist at Ottawa, LaSalle, Peru, and other points along the Illinois and Fox [rivers], and always on a commanding and sightly location, in fancy giving the spirits of the dead a view of the scenery they doubtless loved so well when living.”

Joslyn and Joslyn, on the other hand, recorded in their 1908 Kane County history the typically racist interpretation of the day, of the region’s indigenous people: “So the land which the red man failed to use was taken from him and given to those who would utilize it. But they left the graves of their ancestors behind, and several mounds in Aurora and vicinity are known as Indian burying grounds. Bones and arrow heads are all that remain as evidence that the country was once inhabited by another race.”

We can take at least a little comfort that all of our ancestors weren’t entirely insensitive to disturbing the dead, even if they were Native American dead. In the May 27, 1880 Kendall County Record, the paper’s Oswego correspondent, reported that a proposal was at hand by the residents of Millington to spend an afternoon picnicking in a grove near the village that contained several Indian burial mounds. The writer suggested it was wrong to desecrate the graves, even though the ancient Indians in question had not been Christian. “The cemeteries of the present day may in time become subject to investigation—they are so already to a small extent—the silver plate of coffins and jewelry on corpses may prove more desirable relics than the arrow heads and other trinkets of the Aborigines. The setting of precedents should be discouraged.”

And finally, on April 7, 1897, the Record reported from Millington: “The oldest landmark and relic of the red men in this vicinity, the Indian mound on Mr. Lewis Jones’s lot, and probably the largest of its kind in Kendall or LaSalle counties, is now no more, for the work of leveling it commenced Saturday and is now about finished. A great many people said it seemed too bad to destroy it, but it is located near the front of the lot and near where a house ought to be placed if the owner saw fit to build one. Mr. Jones’s family are known to be hustlers, but they did not care to have a hump on their front yard so, for reasons mentioned above, the historic pile has been leveled. As is generally known, the mound was an Indian burying place and was opened a number of years ago by relic hunters We do not remember just what relics were found or how many, but not all of them were unearthed at that time, for a few were discovered the other day, which proves that the redman’s remains have not yet all crumbled into dust. Monday, a part of the frontal bone of a skull was found and one of the bones of the lower limbs. They are of a dark brown color and have much the appearance of decayed wood, but the shape and porous structure proves them to be human bones. Quite a number of arrow heads of various sizes and shapes were also found.”

Some of those once-numerous mounds, so laboriously built by long-vanished Native People, still exist up and down the Fox Valley. Mound groups in both St. Charles and Aurora are still visible by the sharp-eyed investigator. And, of course, the World Heritage Site at Cahokia still maintains its wonderful collection of mounds and its truly amazing cultural interpretive center that is well worth a trip to see.

The main entrance drive to the Oswego Township Cemetery goes up the rise to the small mound around which the cemetery was developed in the 1870s. (Homer Durand photo, 1958)

And while we don’t have any bonafide mounds left here in my hometown of Oswego, we do have a possibility of sorts. My good friend, the late Dick Young, was always convinced the rise around which the Oswego Township Cemeterey on South Main Street was developed might well be a remnant mound. As Dick noted, it’s in the right place, on the brow of the river valley overlooking the river, and it’s the only mound along that stretch of land, making it certainly look artificial.

If it is a remnant mound, it seems somehow fitting that our ancestors ended up using it for their own funerary traditions in conjunction with the people who lived here many hundreds of years before.

William Keating was the Geologist and Historiographer for Major Stephen Long’s expedition that crossed the Fox River valley in 1823. The explorers set out from Chicago on June 11. The next day, Keating reported: “On the west side we reached a beautiful but small prairie, situated on a high bank, which approaches within two hundred and fifty yards of the edge of the water; and upon this prairie we discovered a number of mounds, which appeared to have heen arranged with a certain degree of regularity. Of these mounds we counted twenty~seven ….”