Wife and I just wrapped up a 4-day roadtrip through Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
We began in Chicago where we rented a car at O'Hare and took I-90 west for 90 minutes. Our first stop was Rockford, IL, which I believe is the largest city in Illinois that isn't Chicago or a suburb of Chicago. Rockford has a reputation as a bombed-out post-industrial town with high crime, but we honestly never saw that side of the city when touring its top tourist attractions. Our first stop was the Anderson Japanese Garden. Like many tourist attractions, it begins with a rich guy who wanted to build something unusual. In this case, a certain Mr. Anderson traveled to Japan and was so enamored of its gardens that he hired a Japanese garden designer to come to Rockford and build a garden there. While I'm told some purists don't like it because it contains a few species not native to Japan (I don't know plants well enough to tell, but on the animal side there were catfish in the koi pond and chipmunks everywhere) but my wife and I found it beautiful and calming. If you've been to the Japanese garden at the Hillwood Estate in Washington DC, the one in Rockford is at least 20x larger. After having lunch at Rockford's hottest restaurant (a New American place in an abandoned 1850's brewery on the river) we went to the Burpee Museum of Natural History, which one prominent Paleontologist described as the best pound-for-pound dinosaur museum in America. They have two specimens they are particularly proud of, a juvenile T-Rex and a teenage Triceratops. They did a spectacular job of incorporating 10-13 year old volunteers into their museum, these middle school kids are all over the place and knowledgeable about everything in there.
After Rockford we took a detour south to search for buffalo. There is a nature preserve down there (the Nachusa Grasslands) where some charity has bought up a bunch of abandoned farms, converted them into native prairie, and released a herd of buffalo there. We did not see any buffalo, sadly, they must have been in a remote part of the preserve. At one point during this unsuccessful buffalo quest we were within a few miles of Ronald Reagan's boyhood home (he was born in Illinois) but I didn't know this until we had already left the area so we didn't see it.
Next stop was Freeport, IL. Basically one thing of note ever has happened in Freeport: the most important of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858. It was here that Stephen A. Douglas stated that he believed a US territory had the right to ban slavery (a controversial view at the time, given the recent Dred Scott decision which seemed to imply otherwise). This position helped Douglas win Illinois in 1858, but cost him the south in 1860. There is a "Debate Square" with a statue of Lincoln and Douglas. Next to it is the famous Union Dairy, an ice cream parlor that recently celebrated its 100th anniversary.
Next stop was the 800-person town of Elizabeth, Illinois. Here we need to discuss a local celebrity named Black Hawk. In the 1830's, a Sauk Indian named Black Hawk led a rebellion against white settlement in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. He was defeated, but not before driving a large number of settlers out of the region. Black Hawk is a big deal in northwestern Illinois. There are tons of statues of him, streets and businesses named for him, etc. He seems to be something of a local hero. When the people of Elizabeth, Illinois heard that Black Hawk was coming to attack their village, they quickly built a fort. This small, hastily-constructed fort held out against Black Hawk and his warriors. Today, the main tourist attraction of Elizabeth is a reconstruction of the fort. You don't see many forts from the Black Hawk war so this was pretty unique.
Now we passed into a region called the Driftless. The glaciers that once covered half of the United States missed the Driftless region, so this area was never eroded by glaciers. This means that unlike the rest of the Midwest, the Driftless is full of hills. The hills once contained rich lead deposits, and many fortunes were made in the 19th century mining lead from this part of the country.
The first Driftless city we visited was Galena, IL. Galena was once a lead boomtown and later became the most important port between St. Paul and St. Louis. It is on the Galena River, a tributary of the Mississippi, about 4 miles from where the Galena flows into the Mississippi. However, due to mining activity and deforestation a lot of silt began getting into the Galena River and plugging it up. By the end of the 19th century, the Galena River was impassable for steamboats and Galena was screwed. They reinvented themselves as a tourist town and today Galena receives 1.4 million tourists each year. It is to Chicago what Winchester, VA is to DC. Galena has many historic old houses you can tour, the foremost of which is the house that Ulysses S. Grant lived in during the 1860's. 90% of the furniture is original to Grant, including his favorite green overstuffed chair, which went with him to the White House.
Following Galena, we crossed the Mississippi River into Iowa, and specifically Dubuque, Iowa. Dubuque and Galena were a study in contrasts. Both are in the Driftless region, both were once lead mining boom towns, and both were once major river ports. The difference is that Galena developed a tourist industry and Dubuque mostly hasn't. It looks a lot rougher, a lot poorer. We were lucky to be in town during a "night market" (a farmer's market that takes place in the evening), which was held in an abandoned industrial part of town. Dubuque looked very lively during the night market, but I imagine that ex-industrial part looks pretty sad most other nights. If Galena is Winchester, VA, then Dubuque is Martinsburg, WV. There are four main attractions in Dubuque. The first is the Julien Dubuque monument, a stone tower built on the burial site of Julien Dubuque, the French-Canadian founder of the city. Julien Dubuque was on very good terms with the local Indians (married the chief's daughter) and the Indians gave him the right to mine lead on their territory. The monument is on a cliff overlooking the Mississippi River and the view is stunning. Second, there is a tall brick tower that was used to manufacture lead shot during the Civil War. Molten lead was put into the top of the tower, as it fell down it turned into a sphere, and it fell into a vat of water to cool it off. Third, there is the Fenelon Place Elevator, the shortest railroad in the world. It is a funicular that goes up one specific hill. It was built by a rich guy who worked at the bottom of the hill and lived at its top, but is now public transit. Fourth, there is the National Mississippi River Aquarium, an aquarium devoted to species of fish, amphibian, reptile, and bird that live on the Mississippi River.
Dubuque was the westernmost point of our trip. We now turned east through southern Wisconsin. We passed through the very charming town of Platteville, WI, which has the world's largest M. It is a big white "M" carved into a hillside. We went into the local Culver's (a Wisconsin-based fast food chain famous for frozen custard) and asked about the M. We were told that the "M" stands for mining, the historic local industry, and is maintained by students from UW-Platteville.
Our real destination was Iowa County, Wisconsin, a rural county home to two architectural gems. The first is the House on the Rock. Again, crazy rich guy decided to build something weird which was turned into a tourist attraction. It is a house perched precariously on a cliff in the Driftless, with an "Infinity Room" that is cantilevered over a cliff. The house is extremely weird on the inside, decorated with an eclectic mix of Buddhist and Catholic statues. But the really weird stuff is in the buildings next to the house, housing the founders collection of bizarre art. There is a 4-story tall statue of a whale fighting a kraken, a large collection of automatons who can play musical instruments, and the world's largest carousel, which you cannot ride because it is worth $4 million. I cannot truly describe House on the Rock, it must be seen for itself.
Right next to House on the Rock is Taliesin, the house that Frank Lloyd Wright lived in for most of his life. FLW was from this part of Wisconsin. He moved to Chicago to make it big as an architect, but when he decided to leave his wife and 6 kids for a married woman he became a pariah in Chicago and decided to move back home to Wisconsin. There is a 2-hour tour available and many of the guests try to show that they know more about Frank Lloyd Wright than the tour guide, some more successfully than others (the tour guides are always very knowledgeable). This behavior seems to be consistent among all the Frank Lloyd Wright homes I've toured.
Our final stop was the city of New Glarus in Green County, Wisconsin. New Glarus was settled by Swiss immigrants in 1845. The founders of New Glarus were all textile workers who lost their jobs when Switzerland adopted automatic looms. These founders traveled all the way to America to take up a profession that neither they nor their families had practiced: farming. After several fits and starts, they became successful dairy farmers and, it is claimed, introduced commercial Swiss cheese manufacturing to Wisconsin. The town is Swiss themed. The hotel calls itself a Chalet, there are Swiss flags everywhere, and William Tell is on the city's crest and signs. City buildings often have signs in Swiss German, such as the fire station being called the "Feuerwehr Haus". We had fondue at a Swiss restaurant while watching a live Swiss folk band play. New Glarus has a fantastic local history museum that focuses on the initial immigrants from Switzerland and contains preserved buildings from the city's past, including an 1840's log cabin.
