I was in Valparaiso, and they had a nice public park with a big stage that seemed to be ready for a concert in the near future. But by the main street under a shelter was a statue that I just HAD to have my picture made beside! This is Orville Redenbacher, the popcorn guy, who was raised here.
The last mile of the Lincoln Highway in Indiana is what the founders of the road called the Ideal Section. It was four-laned with lights for night driving and a greenspace area on one side of the road for hiking. They hoped communities around the country would build similar stretches. This stretch of the highway in Dyer, Indiana, is pretty busy, but I did walk down the shoulder to look at the Henry Ostermann Monument. He was the Field Secretary of the early Lincoln Highway Association, and he was actually killed in an accident along the road. This is a tribute to him. When I got there, I wasn't actually sure if I had found it; it had been stripped of all of its markers. I don't know if it's vandalism, or if somebody is trying to restore it. But I'm pretty sure I was in the right place. Some of you Lincoln Highway enthusiasts can tell me if I just didn't find the right place or not.
In Chicago Heights, Illinois, is where the Lincoln Highway (east-west) met the Dixie Highway (north-south). Us Southerners see signs for the Dixie Highway on US 1 and US 41 in our neck of the woods. At the place where these two great roads crossed, a statue of Lincoln with two little girls is found, as well as a Lincoln Highway fountain.
DeKalb, Illinois, had a great little park with an art-deco-looking Lincoln Highway marker and a cool information gazebo.
West of there, in a little place called Malta, was the first "seedling mile" of the Lincoln Highway. The founders, who included not only automobile and parts manufacturers but also those who promoted highway-building materials, built these one-mile stretches throughout the Midwest and West where there weren't many paved roads at all. This was to show how great concrete was for driving and encourage road building by governments.
This restored service station, at a place where the LH turns right in Rochelle, is a Lincoln Highway information center.
Franklin Grove, Illinois, is the home of the Lincoln Highway Association's National Headquarters. It's in a building built by a relative of Abraham Lincoln, and it has all kinds of LH merchandise. I was too late; it was closed for the day.
Dixon, Illinois, is the hometown of President Ronald Reagan. I visited his boyhood home, where there's a cute park with a statue of him looking very presidential, but friendly. Then I took Reagan Way a few blocks to the banks of the Rock River, where he was a young lifeguard. There, a statue has been erected that has a young Reagan on a horse.
About five miles northeast of Dixon is a place called Grand Detour. This is where John Deere developed the steel plow. Apparently, the soil in this part of the world kept wearing out cast-iron plows, and Deere was a blacksmith. The eventual headquarters of the farm machinery company was placed in Moline, Illinois, a transportation hub on the Mississippi River not too far away.
In a park in Sterling is a statue of Lincoln as he would have appeared in the Lincoln-Douglas debates. A friend of his asked him and John C. Fremont, two of the earliest Republicans, to come speak in his town in 1856.
As the day was ending, I crossed the Mississippi River into Clinton, Iowa. This is my first look at this great river, but I think it's a lot wider the farther south you go. There was a big windmill beside the bridge on the Illinois side, where a town called Fulton is located. Seems the place was settled by the Dutch.
Looking forward to Iowa!!!
