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I would tell you that it was the coldest day of the year, but that would not do the temperature justice. Besides, this is the Windy City, so the wind chill is far more important – and horrifyingly cold. The day started with negative temperatures at O’Hare, and while the afternoon sun did what it could to warm that so when we departed into the city after 4:00 PM, not even the heart and soul of our solar system can defeat the mighty force of the Chicago Winter.

At least it wasn’t snowing.

Germans like pickles at Christmas. I learned this in Daley Plaza, where the German Christkindlmarket was setup in tents so tiny and unheated that I think the German blood was hardly flowing. So many figurines; so many pickles. No penguins, though. One tent was slightly warmed: we took our food in there, as I found that a jumbo hot dog was just two hot dogs stuck on one bun. Fascinating, these Germans, with their brown mustard and those hot dogs that are like double hot dogs.

So cooooold.

We gathered under the clock at Marshall Field’s; State at Washington. That’s not an activity to reenact a year from now, since Federated, in its infinite retail wisdom, is stripping the Chicago landmark of its name; God forbid the Second City not have a Macy’s. That day it was still Field’s, though, and even in the horrid chill, as the winds whipped around the building and made everyone on the east side of State Street question their sanity, there was a large crowd admiring the Christmas decorations, particularly the window displays, decked out with an animated holiday story. Kids marveled at the moving puppets while their parents worked the camcorder with numb hands, watching for icicles dripping from the lens.

Inside there was WARM. WARM throughout the giant hall that greeted you upon your entrance from State. WARM in the elevator. WARM on the seventh floor where patrons dined on twenty-dollar hamburgers while the Sprinkle Fairy came around to make their hair sparkle, and warmth on the eighth floor where we gawked down at them from, claiming to admire the giant Field’s Christmas tree but in reality more concerned with that man’s toupee. And is that child in the pink pants dead?

The WARM made you happy. We (Emily and Author) just had to dance, briefly, because the WARM compelled us to, even if the lady at makeup counter next to us (who most certainly didn’t notice this time of year) would frown upon such activities. Buy some rouge already, or go back into the cold.

People apparently go ice skating in negative wind chill temperatures; another failure of our public school system, I suppose. Expectations were for small crowds on this rink along the west border of Millennium Park, just off of Lake Michigan, but the Windy City crowds were not discouraged by the chills. Emily’s bum ankle kept us off this death trap, so we watched the others, including the Indian Kristy Yamaguchi, who impressed us with her twirling skills as well as the ability to not fall on her own ass, something not shared by many of her ice mates. We held purses and skate bags as friends passed by, some with cameras held shaky on skates, other with guardrails they would not let go of. All of them cold. None of them with hot chocolate, as we possessed, our second cups of the night. Not nearly enough.

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Chicago at night is magical. Just west of downtown, taking in the skyline is always majestic, but at night, walking from the CTA station over the Eisenhower, it was magnificent, all of the buildings screaming with light, some of them alit in Christmas red and green. The snow here, absent in uber-plowed downtown, reflected those colors, and renewed my love for this city. As fun as it is in the warmth of summer, it may be even better in the damn cold, granted that no more than five square inches of skin is showing at any time.

The Ohio River ends at Cairo, Illinois, where its crystal blue water flows into the Mississippi’s muddy brown in nature’s best large-scale recreation of the interaction of oil and water. From the east, the Ohio creeps along the Kentucky border, hugging the Bluegrass State even after it has ceded way to the Mighty Miss; several miles south of the confluence, the brown, naturally polluted waters of the Mississippi cling to the Missouri side of the river, refusing to be mixed with the bluer liquid of its tributary. Only a bit downstream from Cairo, the true meeting place of the two giant rivers, do the two truly become one, brown and blue mixing together en route to Lake New Orleans.

Cairo once benefited from its position as outlook of this confluence. Its importance during the Civil War could not be overstated, as the railroads brought supplies straight from Chicago, fueling the Union’s incursion into the western states of the Confederacy. Named Fort Defiance, the southern tip of Illinois saw nothing close to a battle, but was still a rather valuable piece of real estate. After the war, Cairo’s success continued, as riverboats passed through the town on the southern tip of the Prairie State, as did the railroad as it headed towards the hub of Chicago. Industry moved to town, eager to exploit the one-two punch of the fertile farmland and numerous methods of transportation.

In the middle twentieth century, the community’s fortunes began to change. This was the first free town many former slaves came across in the days of the Underground Railroad, and long after the thirteenth amendment it remained the southernmost city in the great state of Illinois, the Land of Lincoln, and therefore a welcome site to African Americans migrating north out of the harsh reality of Jim Crow. This didn’t mean they were welcome in Cairo, though, a city that more resembled the south than the urbane, northeast Prairie State, and as late as the 1960s it was a town severely divided. Desegregation was forced, and as more African Americans continued to move in, many of the white residents simply fled the city, its economy decreasing anyway thanks to the lessened reliance on riverboat and rail traffic over the previous decades.

This is an odd town. Situated on a peninsula, the Mississippi on the west and the Ohio just a mile or two to the east, the town is a strip, US 51 its stem, with residential neighborhoods branching out towards each of the mighty rivers. Entering the city, you feel as if you’re entering a medieval serfdom, with a double train track and levee wall bordering a tunnel with the word “CAIRO” spelled out in white letters over the red background, warning you of your entry into this southern kingdom. Enter this gate and ye be damned.

It is a ghost town as well, with scores of businesses boarded up, others still open but sitting closed on weekends, no residents sticking around to offer their patronage and certainly no out-of-towners bothering to wade through such a worthless hamlet. US 60 and 62 share their sentiments, crossing over from Missouri at Fort Defiance, only to take a sharp turn right and navigate the Ohio in order to quickly enter Kentucky; the two US highways spend all of 3,500 feet in the Prairie State, none of which approach the city limit of Cairo.

Such ignorance of the city is a shame: it is quite beautiful if one looks past its dead-on impression of a ghetto. Among its attractions are a classic downtown, several antique neighborhoods welcoming you with an ornate metal arch, a classic stone and metal National Guard armory that evokes thoughts of Norman Rockwell, the City Motel which once dotted postcards but now sits closed as a landmark of the city’s depression, and a US Customs House that once served to welcome river vessels to United States soil but now serves as a museum to the area’s rich history – one that may be closing before the end of the year. As mentioned, all of this is arranged as a strip, one that narrows slightly as you approach the confluence of the two great rivers and the twenty-first state in the Union just keeps running out of soil.

One doesn’t wish to stop and take too many pictures, less for fear of crime or one’s personal safety as much as the depression this town will set upon you. So storied in history, so unique and worthy of our attention, the lack of industry (its last major employer closed two years ago) or any attraction that would draw a person to live in such a rundown area has caused the population to shrink dramatically – from 14,000 in the 1940s to 3500 today. In 1990, the mayor told the Cairo High School graduating class to leave town – there was nothing left for them at home.

What is left is a wonderful natural attraction – the merging of two of the most powerful forces of nature in the United States. That park has gone to hell just like the town that sits to the north; a lookout post originally designed to resemble the steamboats that once sailed up and down these two rivers now sits unrecognizable, simply one ugly, metal perch riding on top of another. The state wanted nothing to do with the land, and it took a group of local citizens to lease the park and keep it open for the public – a sign that maybe not all in Cairo is lost, even if things can’t get much bleaker.

The first eight pictures below were taken just north of Thames Thebes, Illinois, the southernmost place where Illinois 3, the Great River Road, runs right along the Mighty Miss. From there, it curves inland, ending at Cairo just a couple miles before the State of Illinois does itself. The final sixteen pictures are from Fort Defiance, where the Mississippi meets the Ohio.

Originally posted March 16, 2005 – With gas prices high, high, high, trips like this won’t be too common, eh?

There’s this bumper that WGN Radio plays during Cubs’ games. Bumpers are those little snippets of music that you hear between commercials and the play-by-play; a transition between the signal and the noise, if you will. WGN selects a diverse catalog to usher us back into the game, but my favorite has to be the beginning of Coldplay’s “In My Place.” It’s so serene and laid-back, much like the baseball broadcast, and it glides you smoothly from Andy Mazer’s dry Jiffy Lube spot into the welcome arms of Wrigley Field crowd noise and Pat Hughes’ powerful descriptions, sucking you from your car into the Temple of the National Passtime that sits at the bottom of the funnel that is Central Illinois. No worries, no pressure, just a warm summer afternoon watching baseball; you can’t see the field, but you can feel the wind blowing in off of the Lake.

The wind must be coming from the corn, because that’s all you can see. Anything else out there would be blocked from view, dwarfed by the fields. It’s a Midwest cliche to be certain: flat fields of maize surround you on every side like a kid stuck in a bad horror film, running panicked from an unseen enemy, screaming out for Champaign or Peoria to save you from the horror of it all. But the fields just won’t stop. Route 66 ducks in and out of small villages, a road practiced at barely missing the silos and grain stores that welcome you to the municipality. Traveling the Mother Road,

One of eight million grain silos in Central Illinois. This one’s in Odell, in case you plan to visit.

Gremlins ipod you lose count of the silos far before you forget the number of slashes dotting the center of the road. If ever there’s a lapse in U.S. history education, then two hundred years from now kids will glance at the state motto and believe “Lincoln” to be slang for “cornfields.”

Not that this is exclusive to the Prairie State, nor is this area the king of the endless horizon. It’s a song sung throughout most states that house Big 10 and Big 12 land grant schools, and if Illinois were to go to war with Iowa, Nebraska or Kansas over which state is the most droll and unexciting to traverse, I dare not bet one penny on my home to score a single victory. Still, the lack of significant landmarks is expected of the other areas of the Midwest, while in Illinois it all seems to be leading somewhere — or, on the opposite occasion, away from something (which is far more depressing, I assure you.) It’s as if this is not right, these never-ending fields, but that there’s something larger looming overhead, and all this around you is a stranger in someone else’s home. We’ve got something the other states of the Midwest could never imagine, a twelve-ton orange and blue elephant in the room (with his eye just barely obscured by the corn) that no one dares take his or her eyes off of.

We have Chicago.

It’s around Joliet that the dichotomy of Illinois begins to be revealed. Traveling north out of St. Louis, the metropolitan area stops rather suddenly, ending just twenty miles northeast of the Arch, around Troy. Until you reach the split of Interstates 55 and 70, it’s billboard after billboard, Hustler Club here, Laura Buick there, and eighty Cracker Barrels and Stake ‘n Shakes (bean crock) on the side of the road to reassure you that civilization is still all around. Then, I-70 heads east towards Effingham, and WHAM – it’s back to the damned fields. A half-hour prior, you ask yourself, weren’t you cruising past the headquarters of Anheuser-Busch, past not one but TWO Busch Stadiums, and past a giant, six hundred and thirty foot arch? Now, it’s back to corn? That fast?

This does not speak well of the St. Louis area, at least on the Illinois side of the Mighty Miss.

I-55 curves northeast, joining with Route 66 as they angle towards The Destination. From here on in Illinois there is only One Destination, with only minor distractions. Roads are funny things like that, particularly interstates, as they act like travel agents and annoying Orbitz pop-up ads, reminding you that, perhaps, your desired place of arrival isn’t the bee’s knees as much as you want everyone to think. A day in Springfield at the Old Capital, rubbing noses at Lincoln’s Tomb, and general Walking Where He Walked is fab if you’re into that kind of stuff, but there’s that damned big green sign hanging over the highway reminding you that if you keep going you’ll end up in CHICAGO. It’s just three more hours! Who wants to see Adlai Stevenson’s grave in Bloomington? That fool lost two straight elections to a silly little soldier, and besides, it’s not CHICAGO. It’s just two more hours!

Those smaller, minor distractions — your run of the mill state capitals, Universities of Urbana-Champaigns and Peoria, where everything is test-played — they betray themselves as the second-rate, bush league, wanna-be attractions they are by making no effort to mask their location. Travel ten minutes – nay, five – outside the city limits of any of these grand municipalities and you find yourself once again consumed by the cornfields of giant magnitude. You thought you escaped. No. These cities are but an oasis in the corn, with the draw of something greater hanging over them, reminding them that they are but cute, if rather pointless, diversions from The Destination. Assembly Hall is a sight to behold but it’s not CHICAGO. It’s just one more hour!

I pause here, reader, to plead my case. You may think I exaggerate. I exaggerate not. Large over Central Illinois looms the shadow of The Destination, because why would anyone not want to partake in it? It is one thing to sit in Mound City, five hours south and in a completely different state – one obsessed with showing – and realize that to head north would take the better part of an afternoon, and leave little time for play, much more the return trip. As you move closer, though, the draw is irresistible, and you find yourself consumed with the idea. First it dances innocently across your mind. What of an afternoon trip to Michigan Avenue? It seems hardly doable until that big green sign reminds you that you’re just ninety minutes from CHICAGO, and all of a sudden you find yourself on the second floor of the Apple Store wondering how in Illinois you ended up here.

But I digress far, far — back to Joliet. It’s one of the final stop on the Illinois 1917 State Bond Issue Route 4 Tour (also making appearances in Edwardsville, Litchfield, Springfield, Lincoln, Bloomington and Pontiac) and it STINKS. Or at least the west side – they have little rap but much oil, as refineries a’plenty dot the roadsides. Jake and Elwood drove through here, and now you do to, and emerge on the north side waiting for the corn to return but it does NOT. Every field you saw before is replaced with industry, six billboards, and an Italian restaurant named after an obviously portly fellow. This continues for, oh, twenty miles until you realize suddenly with a jolt to your brain and mind that

YOU ARE THERE. Or, now, HERE.

CHICAGO.

Like her fellow tour stops, Joliet does not begin slowly but with a BANG as you move from fields and two-lane highways to three lanes and buildings and construction and BOOM you’re in the city and then BOOM you’re not. No gradual build, just corn then city then corn. You’re driving north on I-55, with Route 66 off to the east, taking a holiday on state route 53, and you curve north. A few miles later it’s bridge, I-80, mall, and all of a sudden you realize that you’re at one of those oases again, a brief respite from the corn. The fields don’t begin again, though, and it’s jarring as the city landscapes just continue until you swear you can see the Sears Tower and John Hancock buildings towering in the distance, and you realize oh yeah THAT’S what that shadow was that hovered over me as I snacked at the Cozy Dog in Springfield.

You feel the shadow in you as you drive through Central Illinois, even if you manage to avoid The Destination. It helps to listen to Radio 720 WGN – they don’t much like those national syndicated programs, nope. Cubs Baseball is the biggest culprit, drawing you not only to CHICAGO but also to 1060 West Addison in a fruitless search for tickets. Instead, you let the announcers manipulate you, drawing up that yearning to head north and partake in everything Second City, even if you’re only shuttling between Springfield and Decatur.

It’s just two-and-half more hours!

Heading south is depressing, as you watch the shadow grow dimmer and dimmer as you go along. The scenery changes little: corn here, other fields there, a stray U.S. highway on the left and the 1987 state champs of somethingorother on the right. It’s all very nice and homey, and you could live here, even if IGA has to stand in for Jewel or Schnucks. You’re just passing through, though, and the map you glance over while standing in line to pay for your fuel-up grabs your eyes and darts them in its own cruel directions. Up 51, over 74, up 57 – boom. There. You’re heading the opposite way, though, and it stings your heart. You didn’t make it There and you can’t believe you passed up the opportunity. Or perhaps you did, and it hurts more; the memory of There is fresh in your mind, and as you glance around this meager gas station on a slowly traveled street corner in a Central Illinois town, you notice how sunny it is outside the windows, and you realize that you can no longer see the shadow.

I have done a great disservice to Central Illinois here. There are great cities and much to see, and if I could live my life in Central Illinois I would most likely die a happy man. Some of that, though, would come from the fact that It’s just two more hours! Some would also come, I must confess, from the fact that traveling through the Land of Lincoln on a sunny weekday afternoon, WGN fading commercials into serene Coldplay bumpers, is a pretty good substitute for There.

Peter is not a resident of Central Illinois, because he lives south of Staunton. Therefore, he can’t see a shadow, and predicts six more weeks of Spring Training. Peter did, however, go to Bloomington a fortnight before he wrote this, but not Chicago, and the pain lingers still.

Originally posted 22 July 04 – Pictures taken over the previous three days.

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Lost in the rural emptiness of western Randolph County, Illinois (just south of Metro East St. Louis) are quite a few hidden gems. Amidst the farms and taverns and lonely, viewless drives one can find the sites of two French forts, a system of gorgeous natural bluffs along the Mississippi River, a beautifully restored circa 1800 French mansion, and the first capital of Illinois, now reduced by Mother Nature and her unforgiving river systems to a virtual ghost town. Here, part two of three in a brief series on these landmarks: Fort de Chartres.

In the late 1600s, the French moved down the Mississippi River system from French Canada to increase their fur trapping business; most colonists were not interested in settling down in the New World like their British counterparts, but instead planned to become rich off the abundant furs that could be captured in the Americans and return to Europe rolling in the bling bling. With the English in the east moving into what would become the pre-French and Indian War Colonies, French settlers claimed the eventual Northwest Territories and the Mississippi down to the port of New Orleans at the mouth of that mighty river.

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Last week I briefly covered the history of the lost city of Kaskaskia (2000 population: nine,) the oldest city in Illinois, founded in 1703. The first capital of Illinois and hub of area trading under both the French and British, it was protected under the former landlord not only by Fort Kaskaskia to the immediate east, but by Fort de Chartres eighteen miles up the Mississippi River. That fort has been reconstructed, and now stands as one of Illinois’ most attractive historical landmarks.

The French threw up the original log fences of the fort in the 1720s to protect the local fur traders from the Fox Indians, who for some reason did not want to recognize the exclusive trade charter granted the colonists by French King Louis XV. The Mississippi laughed at the French effort to protect their people, and promptly ate the original Fort with one surge of her muddy waters. Oddly not wanting to surrender, the French rebuilt the Fort a bit more inland, but abandoned her a decade later as the primary garrison in the area moved to Fort Kaskaskia.

Several decades later, the French felt a need to build a stronger fort to protect that area of the Mississippi and returned to the site near Prairie du Rocher. This time they abandoned the lumberyard and quarried limestone from the beautiful bluffs that lined the east border of Rocher, creating a strong, river-proof (ha!) fortress four miles west of town. They would only occupy the area for another ten years, though, thanks to the French and Indian War. The British occupied the Fort in 1765 and watched as the Mississippi wore down the south wall of the complex, reminding her new tenants that they most certainly were, like the French before them, her bitch. “Nuts to this,” said the British. “We’ll plant our troops at Kaskaskia instead.”

So the Fort was slowly worn down by the Mississippi and her sporadic flooding, and by 1900 only the powder magazine remained.

The modern history of Fort de Chartres (pronounced “Fort dee Chart-ers” by locals, since they are but dumb rednecks) is as almost as fascinating as its tenure under the French. After the State of Illinois purchased the land and restored the walls of the fort during the Great Depression (it was one of many WPA projects in the area,) it became a popular tourist attraction, and massively attended Rendezvous celebration sprung up at the beginning of every June. Then the Flood of 1993 came, and the Mississippi River eyed the fort with the same evil view she took upon the city of Kaskaskia a century before.

In the summer of 1993, there was rarely a levee in the St. Louis area that was not topped. Valmeyer to the north of Fort de Chartres fell, and flood water streamed south on a collision course with the small French village while more of the river lapped at her western levee walls. The Army Corps of Engineers came up with a brilliant plan: dynamite the Rocher levee, and the southbound water will meet the river water and rejoin it, saving the town. This worked perfectly, and Rocher was spared.

To the west, Fort de Chartres was not as lucky, as fifteen feet of water put most of her structure in the eyesight of the fish. The fort survived, though, and today it’s hard to believe how much of the building was undersea during the flood.

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Next week: Fort Kaskaskia. Which is a field. Nothing more. So we’ll do some French guy’s home as well.

Usually for one to cross from Illinois into Missouri, or vice versa, one must traverse the Mighty Mississippi. There are various ways to do this, of course, including (but not limited to, especially if one possesses the powers of the supernatural) bridges, ferries, boats and by air. If one can find the right bridge, this privileged individual can walk or cycle; the Eads Bridge in downtown St. Louis and the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge (Old US 66) in northern St. Louis City allows this, and many take advantage. No matter the mode of transportation, you must in some way conquer the Mississippi River.

In St. Mary, Missouri, though, one passes between the two states without paying the Miss any mind at all.

The first state capitol of Illinois was in the Village of Kaskaskia, one of the oldest communities in the state. Founded by the French in 1703, she saw numerous French traders sail down from Quebec and the rest of French Canada to settle at the confluence of the Mississippi and Kaskaskia Rivers to trap furs to be sent down to New Orleans. As French influence shifted to British, Kaskaskia’s importance did not lessen; she remained the economic hub of the region, protected by the British Fort Gage, just to the west of the old French Fort Kaskaskia. The area was captured during the Revolutionary War by George Rogers Clark, and the inhabitants of the city celebrated their land’s independence from England by ringing the Liberty Bell of the West; a gift from King Louis XV of France, the 650-pound bell was given to the Catholic Church of Kaskaskia in 1843, complete with the inscription, “For the church of Illinois – by the gift of the King.”

Illinois entered the union in 1818, and her first capital was, of course, Kaskaskia. As settlers moved upstate, however, legislators decided a more centrally located capital would be necessary, so the statehouse was relocated to Vandalia. Just in time.

In 1844, the Mississippi, possibly because of an old Indian curse, or maybe just angry to have Illinois’ capital robbed from her banks, became angry and flooded the community, driving away many residents. 1881 saw a complete break from her path, as the river moved east, eating through the first two miles of the inferior tributary Kaskaskia, leaving only a minor, incomplete channel to the west.

Kaskaskia, Illinois was now in Missouri.

The courts, as recently as 1970, decided that the land would remain Land of Lincoln, meaning that there is technically Illinois soil west of the Mississippi. There is a small channel dividing the small town of St. Mary’s from Kaskaskia Island, so once again we do have to use a bridge to jump from the Show Me State to the Prairie State. In addition, don’t try to get there from mainland Illinois: the only bridge is on the Missouri side, since no major Illinois roads pass close enough to the Miss, and building a massive bridge across that river just for Kaskaskia would be silly; the small, narrow, poorly guardrailed stretch of pavement on the west side of the island is sufficient enough for local traffic and the small amount of tourism the community deals in.

Little but farmland remains on Kaskaskia. The 2000 census saw a 71% drop in population, down from 32 to 9. Technically, only one village in Illinois, Ohlman, has a lower population (that city came in with a big fat zero; that’s hard to beat.) (Olhman Footnote) There are a few more families on the island, outside of the incorporated town, but the flat land reveals little civilization, just several groups of homes no larger than a city block, one of which houses the old Catholic Church and the Liberty Bell of the West, no longer able to be rung thanks to a large crack down its side. Floods continue to threaten the island, pummeling her horribly in 1973 and 1993, both years cutting off access to the land by covering the roads that lead to her western bridge to the mainland.

Looking out over the fields of Kaskaskia seems eerie. Not that this was ever a community so bustling as to rival modern day metropolitan areas, but it was the preeminent civilization along the Mississippi River two decades into the nineteenth century. Now, only a handful of homes and their accompanying farmland remains.

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You can see the rolling hills and trees of Illinois to the east, but you must go west to return there. You’re a prisoner of Missouri.

(Upon further research, Olhman has successfully appealed their 2000 Census result, and now has 148 people. So Kaskaskia wins our prize for lowest. populated. city. ever. Go back up.)

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Next week: Fort de Chartres.

As the Cardinals look for another win against the Reds tonight, I figured I would repost the pictures from my trip to Cincinnati in late April.