Admission is $8 for adults and $5 for veterans and children 5-12.įor a deeper dive into Reagan’s life and other area history, go to the Northwest Territory Historic Center a few blocks from the Reagan home. A one-hour tour includes the home with period furnishings, a visitor center with introductory movie, a garden and the family’s Model T, restored. Visitors in the mood for more history should head to the Ronald Reagan boyhood home in Dixon, where his family lived in the early 1920s. They can come here and see where it came from 181 years ago.” “There’s a dedication to the John Deere brand. Trahan says visitors come from around the world. Run by the Deere Company, the site is free and open from March through December except for holidays. The site also hosts an archaeological exhibit of the first shop, the Deere family home, a gift shop and a patch of prairie. The steel plow allowed farmers to turn up the sticky prairie soil easier than with the wooden and iron plows they had been using.Īt the John Deere Historic Site, you can see a working replica of Deere’s shop and visit with blacksmith Rick Trahan while he pumps double bellows to stoke his metal-shaping fire. The blacksmith honed the self-scouring plow in 1837 at his shop just down river in Grand Detour. Black Hawk and other Native Americans opposed settlers’ takeover of the prairie and thus likely were not fans of John Deere. Deere honed the self-scouring steel plow at his blacksmith shop, a working replica of which can be seen on the site’s grounds. As you gaze up at the imposing figure, you can contemplate Black Hawk’s 15-week standoff against state militia in an effort to regain tribal lands in the 1832 war bearing his name.Ī statue of John Deere sits near the entrance to the John Deere Historic Site in Grand Detour, Illinois. You get to the statue overlooking the Rock River through Lowden State Park near Oregon. Taft intended the reinforced concrete statue to honor all Native Americans, but most visitors know it as Black Hawk. One of those is the 50-foot Lorado Taft sculpture of Chief Black Hawk, a renowned warrior and leader of the Sauk nation in the early 1800s. The Dixon-Oregon-Grand Detour area, 170 miles north of Springfield, is chock-full of historic and natural wonders. Stop to see the stately trees at White Pines Forest State Park and take a riverboat ride to add a nice note of nature. a historic restaurant and a dinner theater in a relaxing setting beneath towering white pines.īlack Hawk, John Deere and Ronald Reagan are an unlikely trio, but you can honor all of them with a trip along the Rock River. White Pines Forest State Park near Oregon, Illinois, offers log cabins.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |