Day 28, September 28—Destination Fithian

Tuesday dawned a bit hazy and with a few clouds. The thermometer read 44 degrees at 5:30 a.m. For the first time on the walk, I wore blue jeans instead of shorts, and when I reached Ogden, the temperature had climbed only to 61 degrees, so that was a good choice.

I left St. Joseph at about 7:30 or so. I skipped the overpass that lifts traffic over the north-south rail line just east of town, then found a place to park along the road and began walking. At a place where I parked farther east, I was just getting the bicycle off the pickup when I spotted a military license plate on a passing vehicle. Just as I was putting the bike back on the front of the pickup about an hour later, the same man drove back in the opposite direction.

He was wearing a “proud veteran” cap, and I shook his hand and thanked him for his service to our country. We had a good talk for about 15 minutes, and found that we were in agreement as to how we feel about supporting our troops and veterans. I gave him one of my flyers, and we shook hands one last time before he headed back home.

Ogden

In Ogden, I parked in front of the library, which was actually open for the morning. I saw a lady on the porch of a house across the street, where they had a nice American Flag display, and I thanked her for flying the flag. Something about her seemed familiar, and I asked, “Do I know you?” She turned out to be a former professional colleague with whom I had worked in publishing for a number of years. She invited me in for a cup of coffee.

I had met her husband, but I had never met her brother, who had been visiting them for a few days. Because she worked on the library committee, she and her husband Mike were able to tell me quite a bit about it. She said she worked on the committee long enough to get her name on the plaque, and later quit, but I happen to know she also has a full-time job and kids, so she has plenty to do.

The median age in Ogden is 33, which is about twice that of the residents of Honduras. The town is in Ogden Township, Champaign County. The population is about 740, according to pre-Census estimates.

Ogden has its own library, called the Ogden Rose Public Library. They have just under 10,000 volumes, and they circulate just under 2000 books per year. Not bad for this little community. The library and village hall were rebuilt in 1998.

Ogden’s Rose Library, Collocated with Village Hall

To the northeast is the town park, and it has a very tasteful veterans memorial, and an American Flag flying from a flagpole. On 1 side there is list of World War I, World War II, and Korean War veterans from the Ogden Community. On the other is a plaque bearing the names of local Vietnam War veterans. What got my attention was that more than once, there were 2 or 3 people listed with the same family name.

The inscription on the monument reads, “Proudly we pay tribute to the men and women of Ogden Community who answered their country’s call. I’m blessed to these small towns honoring their veterans in this way. I’m sure some day the community will add the names of our more recent American service members to the same monument or to a nearby monument in the same park.

 Veterans Memorial in Memorial Park

 

Ogden was settled in 1870. The surrounding prairie was often bog or swampland, and drainage of land to make it suitable for farming continues to be an issue today. Just the day before I has seen a long tile line buried in standing soybeans, and much of the farmland near Ogden is also tiled.

Just west of Ogden was a grove of shag bark hickory trees, that came to be known as “Hickory Grove,” or simply “The Grove.” In 1853, the same year that my home town of Mt. Carroll was founded, John Harmeson moved from Anderson, Indiana, to the present site of Ogden. He bought 9,160 acres of land from the U.S. Government at $1.20 per acre. He then parceled out the land between his sons. John Anderson, his son, got the land where present-day Ogden is, and in 1861 he sold it to a relative, John Leney, after whom Ogden’s Leney Street is named.

John Leney platted the town in 1870. His farmhouse stood near the railroad station. He named the town after John Ogden, an early settler, who sold land to the railroad officials in exchange for their naming the town after him. In 1870 Theodore E. Haworth built the first house in the new settlement, and Patrick Brennan built another soon after. The same year, Gabriel Johnson built the third house, and William R. Hill built a store building. Thomas J. Carpenter opened the store in June, 1870.

The Champaign County fairgrounds used to be at Ogden, and of course the fair drew people from all over Champaign County. The Ogden American Legion post (998) was organized in 1946, and it continues to be an active service organization today. It was the American Legion who raised the funds to establish Memorial Park and to build the veterans memorial there.

I am indebted to the Rose Library staff for the use of the 1970 Ogden Centennial booklet that they keep on their reference shelf. The also have bound copies of numerous back issues of The Leader, the local newspaper they share with St. Joseph.

Another excellent history they have in their collection is a book that was recommended to me only yesterday (and twice more today), Essays on the Historical Geography of Champaign County: From the Distant Past to 2005, written by Dannel McCollum. The book is not only well researched, but it is also a good read, unlike many history books I’ve struggled through.

Homer
South of Route 150 on Illinois Route 49 is the little town of Homer, which is on the Norfolk and Southern Railway line. When the rails were laid south of town, the entire populace got involved. They used 18 yokes of oxen (36 oxen) to literally pull the buildings of the town south to the rail line, to the present site of the town.

Fithian

Just east of Ogden is Fithian. Millions of people travel past these little towns each year on I-74, which roughly parallels U.S. 150, my chosen route. Being of a curious nature, I’ve often left the Interstate and poked along Route 150, just to see what’s there.

Interstate highways are a great invention, though it’s sad in a way that they were copied from Adolf Hitler’s design for Autobahnen in Nazi Germany. Dwight D. Eisenhower saw those incredible 4-lane highways during and after World War II, and he decided the United States needed something of the sort. Once he was president, he was in a position to do something about the U.S. road system.

In 1919, as a young Army officer, Eisenhower had been sent across the United States with a convoy of Army vehicles, at least in part to assess the condition of the roads. By 1921, there were the beginnings of a plan to build a national network of roads.

If you take our communication system for granted, you’re not as old as I am. My parents jolted down rutted dirt roads for a good number of years. At some time in the 1930s, my dad saw his first concrete highway, U.S. Route 52, which ran right past the grade school he attended. Having never seen concrete before, the schoolboys were curious. Farm boys all, one night after school they picked up a sledge hammer left by workers and slammed it down on the smooth, gray surface, only to get a shower of concrete chips in their eyes.

When my wife’s parents came to Illinois in the 1950s so her dad Willis Robert Coggins could assume his duties as a new professor of music at the University of Illinois, there was no Interstate highway leading to Champaign. Instead, there was an old highway that turned to brick, starting at the Illinois state line. Both town people, Willis and Jesse thought they must be near the end of the earth, as they drove across a nearly flat prairie with cornfields stretching away as far as the eye could see.

They lived in Champaign long enough to see the Interstate highways extend their web throughout East-Central Illinois, and to see U.S. Route 150 paved with concrete, and then capped year after year with low-bituminous-base blacktop.

Today the Interstate Highway system boasts nearly 47,000 miles of roadway, all at least 4 lanes, and more miles are planned.

Fithian is in Oakwood Township, Vermilion County, the last Illinois county on this journey. It has a population of about 500 residents. The people who try to attract tourists to Central Illinois capitalize on local Lincoln lore through a campaign called “Finding Lincoln.” You don’t have to search, though. There are statues and historic markers littering the landscape.

There’s also a trace of Lincoln’s sojourning at Fithian, which is named after a Dr. William Fithian, who gave some land so the community could be built. Just a mile before one comes to Fithian, going east, and a little way south, there is a farm that he bought about 1830 right about when he came to Danville. He once owned more than 900 acres of land near Fithian. There’s no evidence, though, that Fithian ever lived at his farm.

Fithian and Lincoln were friends, and Fithian supported Lincoln for the presidency. In the mid 1800s Lincoln is said to have slept at Fithian’s farm on his travels. This guy slept in so many houses across Illinois, that his own bed back home must have been almost unused. And of course he also stayed often in Fithian’s home in Danville.

Dr. Fithian served in both the Illinois House and Senate. Fithian the town became a livestock and grain center, and it benefitted from the Illinois Traction System (ITS, an interurban rail line) that was built through Fithian in 1903. After the line became less important, and especially in the Great Depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, Fithian began to lose population. (No one knows where this lost population went, and I’m still trying to find them.)

 Fithian Power Station and Depot for Interurban Electric Train Line

 

Grain and livestock are still important to the area, though, and there are some examples of interesting architecture in the town. Fithian still has about 500 residents, and they live in about 200 houses.

Tree Thump Didjeridu Company

I spent a couple of hours looking for a building in Fithian associated with this little company, but of course I didn't find it there. Rural Fithian (not the town itself) is home to the Tree Thump Didjeridu Company, operated by Phil Clark and Ben Hay, both musicians who play the didjeridu, a musical instrument played by Aboriginal peoples of Australia in Arnhem Land in the very northern part of Australia’s Northern Territory and in nearby Western Australia and Queensland. The name Tree Thump, by the way, is shared by a band. Check out the didjeridu company at http://www.treethumpdidjco.com/. At that site you can also hear a sample of didjeridu music.

The highway through Fithian is lined on the north side with American Flags, and I mentioned that to several residents. Lots of homes also display the Flag, and I thanked a number of residents for flying Old Glory. Though I saw a number of veteran license plates, I didn't get to speak to any veterans in Fithian.

I did speak to the Ford dealer, though. If Don Stallings stays in business until 2013, the dealership will be 100 years old. He took it over after his dad retired, and he worked his way up in the company, starting "in the back," working on cars. When people ask the Don when he's going to retire, he says, "Hey. This is my retirement." I don't know about you, but when I'm ready to trade in my old faithful Ford Ranger, I'm planning to go see Don Stallings.

North and northwest of Fithian there is an east-west ridge called “California Ridge,” that served as a wagon route in the 1800s for people going west as far as California. Invenergy of Chicago is planning a wind farm there, and construction may begin as early as 2011. In fact I met a section of a tower for a wind turbine when I was biking back west on Route 150 at one point today. It may be headed there. It took up both lanes of U.S. Route 150. I sure hope he didn’t meet a combine with the corn head on coming the other way.

 California Ridge in Far Distance, North and East of Royal

"Faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love."
Also north of Fithian is the little community of Hope, with just a handful of houses left. In 2000, there were 415 residents, but it's hard to believe there are that many folks living there now. The local people say the town was originally named "Faith, Hope, and Charity."

South of U.S. 150, just west of Fithian I had stopped to thank the Saddlers for their beautiful display of Old Glory. We had a great conversation for at least half an hour, and I got to help move a metal cabinet. The Saddlers were cleaning out their garage. They shared all kinds of local lore with me and gave me some tips about what is going on east and north of their place. We need more good folks like them. Their daughter retired as a lieutenant commander from the U.S. Navy, and she has visited every continent with Operation Smile. She’s a surgical nurse. Her husband was a U.S. Marine Corps pilot.

Well, folks, just 2 more day of this walk. I’m sure my knee will feel better after I stop walking so far each day, but I don’t know about my heart.