Free walking tours of historic Utica will be conducted during the LaSalle County Historical Society’s History Fair on Saturday, April 21.
Conducted by Society agrarian historian Gerald Hulslander, the tours will start at the museum’s patio, Canal and Mill Streets, at 9:30 a.m. and 2:15 p.m.
Hulslander, who has conducted historic lantern walks during the Society’s annual Burgoo festival, will feature a number of Utica landmarks in his presentation.
The walk will begin “near a plot of prairie plants much like the millions of acres of prairie
that greeted early settlers in the Midwest,” Hulslander said.
The Aitken one-room school just to the east of the main museum building
came from the Troy Grove area. “The Hickok family participated in the organization of the Aitken school district but is more remembered for son James Butler Hickok, better known as Wild Bill,” he added.
Crossing the footbridge near the school, Hulslander will point out the highway bridge next to the museum. It is the site of another bridge that collapsed on July 4,1909, as a crowd watched a tub race and tumbled the observers into the canal with two fatalities.
Beyond the footbridge stands a two-story brick building from the interurban railroad days. “The cars were powered by direct current generated at a hydroelectric plant at Marseilles. Due to the difficulty of transmitting direct current electricity, it was stored in the brick building, which was basically a large storage battery. Insulators and short pieces of wiring remain to be seen,” Hulslander said.
A few blocks southwest of the battery house and museum Father Marquette is memorialized with a marker in St. Mary's churchyard. It relates his travels in 1673 and recalls the celebration of the first Christian service in the Illinois country.
A short walk to the west footbridge over the canal leads to the Society's barn and blacksmith shop. It is a working blacksmith shop complete with a forge and “smithy” plus artifacts. The adjoining barn has a mortise and tenon framework salvaged from a barn in the Cedar Point area. Barn artifacts include both farm and household items. “Humans, horses, and oxen provided power for the farm tools,” Hulslander said.
Memorials to the 2004 tornado victims are located a long block north of the blacksmith shop on Church Street. The walk ends back at the museum patio.
Contact the museum at 815-667-4861 for further information regarding the History Fair or the Historical Society’s Centennial activities.
