Welcome to Forgotonia

The Western Courier’s Halloween issue reports that more than 50 people have been arrested at the site this year. (And, like I said, I was definitely NOT just out there a few days ago…)

Their piece also revisits some of the long-held legends about the place:

“Perhaps the most gruesome event associated with the springs occurred in 1903, when the town had a horse-drawn carousel for children:

One day, the owner of the attraction was taking a group of children for a ride, watching them carefully. No one is quite certain what happened next. Apparently, he was watching the children so intently he did not notice his own shirt had become ensnared in the carousel gears. The children’s cries of glee turned to screams of horror when the man was pulled into the contraption and crushed to death.

Between 1910 and 1930, little is known about the spring. Some say it was a hideout for gangster Al Capone and other criminals. There are even legends that the men may have hidden money in caves in the area (these caves are also rumored to have been used for making bootleg liquor during that time).”

[And, like I’ve said earlier, not that I’ve been there or anything, but… if I had… it’s so cool to think of what all that once stood in the remote spot!]

According to the Courier article, the old town contained not only the Capitol Hotel, but also

“…a goldfish pond, called Lake Vishnu, a skating rink, racetrack, flower gardens, croquet courts and the merry-go-round…several houses, two stores, a livery stable and a post office.”

[Also, there’s mention of the commune-ish activity that was going on during the time my aunt and uncle, who were Western students—at the height of the hippie era—hung out there:]

“In April 1968, two gentlemen …hoped to open a restaurant [where my mom says she ate her first-ever steamburger] and offered overnight stays for 50 cents. Even though the men had good intent, the town went under and Vishnu Springs was closed again.

Betty Post…decided to open Vishnu in the early 1970s to Western students. During this time, the students held different music festivals to pay rent, had [ahem, cough cough] gardens and raised livestock. This only lasted about 10 years. Some say it ended because Betty Post only rented half of the hotel while the upper part was used for storage. One day when Post went to a flea market, she ended up seeing furniture that was supposed to be stored away in the hotel.”

(When I sent my aunt an article about Vishnu that mentioned this era with the “gardens,” she quipped, “yeah, the kind you could smoke!”)

I mean, like I said, not that I’ve ever been there or anything, (especially not, like, days before this , but…)

Police arrest trespassers at rumored ‘haunted’ site

(from the Peoria Journal-Star)
Tuesday, October 30, 2007

MACOMB – Seventeen people were charged last weekend with misdemeanor trespassing at Vishnu Springs, where many similar incidents have been reported in recent months.

McDonough County Sheriff Rick VanBrooker said that at 3:35 p.m. Saturday, two cars were found parked outside the gate and blocking the entrance and the road that leads to the former hotel and springs.

Police ticketed seven people ranging in age from 18 to 22.

At 10:12 p.m. Sunday, police again found two vehicles parked at the entrance. This time they ticketed 10 people ranging from 18 to 22.

All 17 were issued notices to appear in court.

The former resort area in the northwest part of the county dates to the late 1800s. Its history includes rumors the former hotel is haunted.

The spring water on the property was rumored to have healing and medicinal properties.

Vandals often pry off the boards covering the hotel windows and doors to get inside, and the walls inside are spray-painted with graffiti.

The property was donated to the Western Illinois University Foundation in 2002. WIU officials have said they hope to redevelop the property one day.

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. Please, don’t prosecute me. I mean, like they say, forgive us uur trespasses, right? But if, hypothetically, I HAD been there, these were the pictures I would’ve taken:

(more below, after the photos)

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.