From the Indiana border on the east to the Mississippi River and St. Louis on the west, Route 50 in Illinois passes over 164 miles of rich, fertile earth.
There are things that grow in that earth:
And as time passes, things return to that earth:
Route 50 also changes over time:
But some things endure:
And some things are … timeless?
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Map at the top of the page from Google Maps.
Photos by the author.
Imagine you are a white squirrel.
Specifically, imagine you’re an albino squirrel with pure white fur and pink eyes with blue irises. Where would you want to live?
Forget common benefits such as nuts and trees. As a white squirrel, you’re clearly entitled to preferential treatment, and you will certainly want:
If your town meets all eight requirements, then congratulations, you lucky white squirrel! You live in Olney, Illinois.
Olney is a town of about 8,500 human residents on Highway 50 in southeast Illinois. The first Europeans settled in the Olney area in 1841, living in a log cabin that served as a stop on the stagecoach route between St. Louis and Vincennes, Indiana.
The first white squirrels settled in Olney in 1902. Exactly who discovered them is in dispute, but all agree that the First Squirrels were housed in the window of a saloon, apparently as an advertising ploy. Those squirrels, or their descendants, were released in 1910 when the Illinois legislature outlawed the confinement of wildlife. In fact, the exact spot of the historic squirrel release is known — 802 North Silver Street — but, sadly for tourists, the house previously at that address has since been torn down.
To see an Olney white squirrel, it’s best to head for Olney’s City Park. I did, and when I got there a passing power-walker, noting my California license plates, said, “You’re here for the white squirrels, right?” Before long, I saw one. Used to celebrity, the squirrel obligingly posed for the picture at the top of this page.
If you can’t make it to City Park, there’s the rumor of a DVD containing white squirrel photos and a song, “The White Squirrels of Olney,” but it may only be a rumor.
And if you’re determined to see a real white squirrel, you should be aware that there are alleged impostors out there — impostors, at least, from Olney’s point of view. Kenton, TN, Marionville, MO, Brevard, NC, and Exeter, Ontario, all claim to be the true home of white squirrels. Each town lays out its case on the Internet.
Meanwhile, keep your focus on the end of October. That’s when Olney conducts its annual white-squirrel census. Results are awaited with some anxiety, because the color of white squirrels makes them all too visible to predators, which is why Olney’s cats and dogs are not free to roam. Lately, census takers have found about 150 white squirrels. There’s no word on the number of other squirrels in town, or how they feel about Olney’s preferential policies toward their more famous relations.
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Photo by the author.
On September 24, 1960, every licensed driver in Flora, Illinois, received a brand new, white, 1961 Ford to drive for a week.
Ford delivered more than 1,000 white cars to Flora, selected because at the time it was near the center of the United States population. It was a marketing ploy, but the residents of Flora embraced it, and for that week Flora was known as Ford Town, U.S.A. The top photo shows a scene in Flora during Ford week.
At the end of the week, Flora residents had the option of purchasing their Fords for $1,800. Twelve did. The last surviving Ford Town U.S.A. car was driven by its Flora owner, a Mrs. Beard, for nineteen years, until September 1979.
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The photos on this page may have originally appeared in an issue of Time magazine. They are believed to be now in the public domain.
William Jennings Bryan was born in this house in Salem, Illinois, on March 19, 1860.
He ran for president three times, in 1896, 1900, and 1908, losing twice to William McKinley and once to William Howard Taft. Woodrow Wilson appointed him Secretary of State in 1913, but Bryan resigned in 1915 because he opposed U.S. participation in World War I.
Bryan remained active in national matters for the rest of his life, and he helped pass the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1920. This amendment was a comprehensive prohibition of alcoholic beverages, outlawing their production, importation, transportation, and sale. The resulting period, known as Prohibition, lasted until 1933, when the 21st Amendment ended it.
Bryan also rejected the idea of evolution, arguing that it undermined the moral instruction provided by religion. He was a lawyer, and in the 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial,” he prosecuted a substitute biology teacher. The teacher, named Scopes, was accused of teaching that mankind descended from “lower life forms.” This was a violation of a Tennessee law. Clarence Darrow defended the teacher in the trial, but Bryan won the verdict. The play and movie, Inherit the Wind, dramatized the trial.
Bryan’s support of prohibition and opposition to evolution may make him seem out of step with more modern thought, but consider some of his other positions: He advocated for an eight-hour work day, the right to strike, and a minimum wage, along with women’s right to vote. He also called for public financing of political campaigns, agricultural subsidies, ending legal gender discrimination, and a guaranteed living wage.
William Jennings Bryan was renowned as an effective speaker, and this skill kept him in the public eye from 1890, when he was elected to the House of Representatives, until his death in 1925. He made his most famous speech in 1896 to the Democratic National Convention, in which he attacked the “Cross of Gold,” decrying the gold standard and advocating for increased use of silver coins. When the Democrats responded by nominating Bryan as their candidate for president, he became the youngest person to ever receive an electoral vote for the office.
He died in his sleep on July 26, 1925, a few days after the conclusion of the Scopes trial. The trial is not considered to have caused his death.
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Photo by the author.
Route 50 passes Carlyle Lake, the largest lake wholly within the state of Illinois, fifty miles east of St. Louis. The much larger Lake Michigan, with banks near Chicago in northern Illinois, touches on parts of other states.
A dam, shown above, created the lake in the 1960s by blocking the Kaskaskia River. It took several years for the river to fill the planned reservoir area and create today’s lake.
Long before the dam was built, an important road passed through the area. That road had once simply been a path through the prairie, blazed by Native Americans, but when settlers arrived, they used the path for delivery of one of their most important needs: salt.
In 1808, surveyors marked the route as a wagon road, to improve the delivery of salt and other supplies. They used horses to lay out part of that road — not men on horses, but horses, by themselves. Surveyors led a female horse a day’s distance away from her newly born colt. When they released her, the mare used her instincts to return to her foal. The surveyors followed the mare, noted her path, and the horse choices became part of the road.
People in the area called the new route the Goshen Road, because at first it ran from a pioneer settlement named Goshen to a salt works near the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. It then followed the old Native American path toward newly settled communities. For a while, it was the most important route in what is now southern Illinois.
When the Goshen Road reached the Kaskaskia River, it couldn’t go around, because the river flows north to south for 325 miles, and wagons couldn’t ford the river after heavy rain. A small suspension bridge built in 1859, over 100 years before the nearby dam, solved the problem.
The nearby town of Carlyle, Illinois, named the bridge the General Dean Suspension Bridge, in honor of a resident who was taken prisoner during the Korean War. Shown in the photo above, the General Dean Bridge provided a major crossing of the Kaskaskia until 1920, when Route 50 bridged the river just downstream.
It may be hard to believe while walking across the short General Dean bridge, but the Kaskaskia is the second largest river system in Illinois, after the Illinois River. It drains over 5,700 square miles, from central Illinois to its mouth where it reaches the Mississippi River.
The Mississippi River forms the border between the states of Illinois, to the east, and Missouri, to the west, and near the junction of the Kaskaskia and the Mississippi, you’ll find the first capitol of Illinois, the town of Kaskaskia. In 1881, a flood diverted the Mississippi into a new channel, putting Kaskaskia the west of the river. So to get there you’ll have to go through Missouri, because the state of Missouri now surrounds the town of Kaskaskia, still part of Illinois.
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Photos by the author.
In the 1990′s, Lambert International Airport in St. Louis, the main airport in this area of the midwest, was experiencing demand that stressed its capacity.
In response, St. Clair County in Illinois built a new airport east of St. Louis, shown in the photo above. It was intended to capture overflow business from Lambert Airport. This idea was fiercely opposed by almost everybody on the Missouri side of the border.
Soon, Lambert Airport began a major expansion, and, at almost the same time, American Airlines bought TWA, which was using Lambert as its hub. American closed the St. Louis hub in favor of Chicago. Suddenly, there was no capacity problem at Lambert, and no need for an overflow airport.
As a result, for years the terminal area at Mid-America looked like the photo below. No passengers, no luggage, no action at the check-in counters. What they did have, though, was piped-in music, playing eerily throughout the empty terminal.
Mid-America turned to providing services to neighboring Scott Air Force Base. From time to time a minor airline has offered a few flights to and from the airport. So far, none have lasted long.
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Photos by the author.
