Welcome to Forgotonia

Figurine in window, Main Street, Industry, IL

Originally uploaded by Rural Rose

Another entry for the Mapping Main Street project, www.mappingmainstreet.org.

Semi-creepy statue of elderly couple inside a storefront (that, despite its sign, appeared to be closed) on Main Street in Industry, IL.

Click on the photo if you’d like to see more of my Forgottonia-region pictures on Flickr.

Maid Rite, Macomb, IL

Originally uploaded by Rural Rose

Behold the Adair Cafe and the Adair Pool Hall/Barbershop. I wish I had the money (and a justifiable reason to) buy these little old buildings.

I took this picture on a Saturday last June when Chris and I were out scouting around for some scenic photography shots.

We were on 136 going East out of Macomb, and I actually had my sights set on going to Fulton County, IL, but this little spot in the road caught my eye and I had to stop.

These tiny, empty buildings in the almost-ghost-town of Adair, IL,  stand out on the prairie–such concrete evidence of an earlier, forgotten time.

And now the former pool hall/barber shop (on the right) and a former mechanic’s  garage next door (not shown in this pic) are for sale, according to an item that  ran recently in the McDonough County “Choice” a.k.a. the shopper).

According to that piece, both buildings date to the 1860′s, and the architecture on the old garage is actually somewhat unique; it’s a “Mesker” building, which means it’s a specimen of a now-extinct pre-fab style that you can read more about here.

Also, according to the un-sourced item in the Choice, the old barber-shop-slash-snooker-hall looks like time stopped on the inside; it still houses snooker games-in-progress, the old barber shop chair, and even a can of Brill cream.

Who will buy these buildings?

I fear that they, like so many other little relics that dot the Illinois prairie–including countless one-room school houses, family-owned stores, and farm houses, for example–will either become someone’s junk-filled “out buildings,” or eventually get burned or torn down before they become a liability.

I hope I’m wrong.

(But if I suddenly do come in to some money. . . you think I could get people to come out to an art gallery and coffee shop in the middle’a nowhere? The Forgotonia Cafe? Anyone?)

See? I told you some people in McDonough County have interesting Dubya-related displays.

(Taken in May 09. As in, five months into the Obama Administration.)

Take the whole Forgotonia Road Trip here.

Mind your channel cats and beer cans (at Spring Lake).

(deer stand at Spring Lake)

I Mean, Like They Say, Forgive Us Our Trespasses…),

But If, Hypothetically, I HAD Been There, These Were the Pictures I Would’ve Taken:

Ever since I was a teenager, I have been obsessed with the legend of Vishnu Springs—the site of a once-popular resort that’s now a ghost town, hidden deep in a ravine in McDonough County.

Despite having grown up just a few minutes down the road from the place, I’d never heard of it until my late teens, when my aunt and uncle—who had gone to nearby Western Illinois University at the height of the hippie era—were reminiscing about how they’d hung out at a commune in the woods, a building that had been the Vishnu Springs hotel, when they were students.

The site, they told me, was completely hidden from the road, and it wasn’t really near anything, but was a few miles north of the village of Tennessee, Ill.—just down the road from my hometown of Carthage, and only a few miles west of Macomb and WIU.

You go out in the country, they said, you get to this certain spot, and then you have to crawl back through the brush, walk a long way through the trees and down into a deep ravine.

And then, after you’d hiked back quite a ways, there stood the old hotel— a place where legendary Chicago mobsters may or may not have stayed.

Vishnu had been a resort in the early 1900’s, a place where rich folk came to bathe in the natural spring because they believed it held magical powers.

It was once so popular that the railroad even built a line directly between Vishnu and Chicago, they said. And now there was nothing left but the old hotel buried deep in the woods.

I sat spellbound as they described the place to me. It was like finding out the Titanic itself had been lying at the bottom of our farm pond all these years and no one had ever thought to mention it.

I thought about Tennessee—which I knew to be nothing more than a spot in the road on the way over to Macomb, a smattering of crumbling houses and trailers with seemingly permanent yard sale set-ups in the front yard—and the whole thing sounded as magical as if my home stomping grounds had once been connected to Oz.

Over the years I’ve hoped for the chance to see the place, but the property was privately owned. I knew the general location but wasn’t sure exactly how to find it.

And, if I were not afraid of getting in trouble, I would admit here that finally, a few weeks ago, I got a chance to see it.

But I’m not going to admit that.

I’ll just say that if you ever did happen to get to see it, you’d find the spot to be not much to look at itself.

I mean, it’s really just a dilapidated, unremarkable building.

It’s only if you’d try to imagine the life that had once come through the place that you feel like you’d seen something special.

Then, you’d be angry at the idiots who have felt the need to leave their mark there. Because, unfortunately, as the hotel has sat idle, it’s been a graffiti magnet.

If I had been there, I would tell you that I couldn’t understood how a place of such historical significance could be left in such disrepair—why no one has ever undertaken the project of at the very least getting a historical marker made.

But this week there’s a bit of news in the local media about Vishnu Springs.

Last weekend, the local historical society took a trek to Vishnu, bringing some local news reporters along, and one local paper mentions the possibility that the place could, eventually, come back to life some day.

According to the Macomb Eagle, “…WIU received the 220 acres as a gift from the granddaughter of the early 20th century owner, Ira Post. Brush has been cleared, the hotel has been inspected, trails have been made and plans are being forged to restore the ghost town into a site of natural and archaeological studies.”

While so far the plans to do something with the grounds sound rather nebulous, it’s good to know there are at least people thinking about what can and should be done.

I just hope that while the plans are taking shape, the hotel and grounds can be protected from further damage.

It’s not much to see, but it’s something worth saving.

Because, if I had been there, I would say I could almost hear the train whistle as I walked around the grounds. The bustle of women in big hats and dresses. The bubbling spring. The breath of life once breathed in this rural, remote Forgotonia.