As part of a series on the influential, colorful, historic people, places and things along Illinois Route 66, we present…

Ernie Edwards, The Pig Hip Restaurant

Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame Class of 1990

100-198 N Frontage Rd, Broadwell, IL 62634

Here’s the story behind this historic landmark:

Ernie Edwards bought what would become the Pig Hip Restaurant, the Harbor Inn, in Broadwell, Illinois 1937. Until 1991, he served up his famous Pig Hip Sandwiches along IL Route 66, featuring fresh, uncured ham which, as Ernie claimed, “came only the left hip of the pig, never the right.” What went into this special culinary creation? A Pig Hip sandwich consisted of that aforementioned fresh ham, tomato and lettuce on a toasted bun with Ernie’s proprietary special sauce. His motto for the sandwich was, ”it made its way by the way it’s made.” In the early days, “Ernie’s Pig-Hip Special” came with a Pig-Hip sandwich, French fries and Jell-O salad and cost 65 cents. The sandwich’s popularity prompted a change to the name of the restaurant itself in 1939.

During WWII in 1942, there were two lanes added to Route 66 because of its strategic military status. Because a portion of the Pig-Hip’s property was in the path of the new road, Ernie’s house was sold and moved to Elkhart (south of Broadwell) and his restaurant and small filling station also had to be demolished. A new restaurant was constructed with funds he received from the government on a short stretch of road that was added to the west of the military lane in 1943. That same year, Ernie went into the Army, working as a cook in the South Pacific and Japan.

Once home from overseas, Ernie settled down into a bustling few decades which included rubbing elbows with such famous names as bandleader Guy Lombardo and Harlan Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame.

Entrepreneurship ran in the family; his brother owned their Phillips 66 station next to the restaurant and his sister Bonnie and her husband built and operated the Pioneer Rest Motel on the property.

Despite construction of Interstate 55 through central Illinois in the mid 1970s, Broadwell’s overpass and freeway exit allowed easy access to the Pig-Hip, sparing it from the decline in patronage suffered by many other businesses along old Route 66.

Ernie goodnaturedly adopted the nickname, “Old Coot on 66” while serving hungry travelers and locals alike throughout the decades. And when Route 66 was decommissioned n 1985, he soon thereafter joined with fellow local fans of the Mother Road including Tom Teague and Springfield artist Bob Waldmire in founding the Route 66 Association of Illinois.

For his contributions to the character of Route 66 in Illinois, Ernie Edwards was inducted into the Route 66 Association of Illinois in 1990.

Ernie closed the restaurant in 1991 and converted the building into a Pig Hip/Route 66 museum which he ran for 17 years. People continued to visit over the years: tourists from around the world, those with fond memories of the restaurant, even the famous like Arnold Palmer and former President Jimmy Carter stopped by.

The building burned down on March 5, 2007. All that remains is an informational plaque attached to a boulder and a restored Pig Hip sign on the original site of the restaurant. Artifacts from the Pig Hip that survived the fire are now located at The Mill Museum on 66 in Lincoln, Illinois.

Ernie Edwards passed away in 2012 at the age of 94.

Click to read stories about the ever-growing list of Hall of Fame inductees.

As part of a series on the influential, colorful, historic people, places and things along Illinois Route 66, we present The Riviera and the Streetcar/Diner.

Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame Class of 1993

District Six, Illinois State Police, Pontiac, IL

Here’s the story behind this Route 66 icon:

The Illinois State Police was formed in 1922 to serve the people of Illinois on the “new hard roads.” In 1942, District Six headquarters were established on Route 66 near Pontiac. In 1957, fresh out of the police training academy, 26-year-old Chester Henry reported to work there for the first time. From then on until his retirement in 1984, Route 66 was a daily part of his life.

“I was out there on Sundays, I was out there on holidays and I was out there on the graveyard shift,” he said. Frequenting their cafes, gas station and truck stops, he soon became a familiar sight to the citizens of all the little towns from Dwight to McLean. In the early days of radar, he and his partner also became familiar sights to motorists along the route – they set a record one year for the number of tickets written. This made motorists wary when they traveled through District Six, but it also kept the number of accidents well below average.

“Route 66 affected me by the lives of the people that I touched and the accidents that happened and the injuries I’ve seen.” Chester said. “Sometimes the snow would come down and Route 66 would be packed with ruts like an old country road. Accidents would happen, sometimes even fatal ones. I would go home and sometimes not sleep too good for a night or two remembering what I’d seen. The next morning, the sun would come out and the snow would start melting off and you’d wonder if it ever happened.”

“I’ve been there when trucks have turned over and closed the road and we’d have to run traffic both ways on the other side. That’s dangerous practice, but we’d put up cones and direct traffic around them. Sometimes those loaded semis weren’t too easy to move if they were upside down or had both lanes blocked. We had to caution everybody and stop traffic until we could get the road clear.”

In 1967, Chester was promoted to corporal. In 1972, he became a sergeant. And in 1979, he was promoted to lieutenant and became administrative officer for District Six.He held that post until his retirement in 1984, not too many years after Route 66 itself “retired.” During much of his career, his commanding officer was Captain Francis Mowery, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1990.

“A great portion of my life was spent out there amongst the people – out on 66 – helping them and handling different things. We were right out there with them and we were out there all the time. I was glad to be there during those times and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Route 66 was a grand old. Road.”

In 1995, Lieutenant Henry began preserving his memories of his time as an officer along Route 66 in written form. In 2014, his book, Route 66, My Home Away From Home, was published.

Friend of Route 66, Chester Henry, passed away at the age of 86 in 2018. His unique and profound experiences along the road remain a cherished piece of Route 66’s history.

Click to read stories about the ever-growing list of Hall of Fame inductees.

As part of a series on the influential, colorful, historic people, places and things along Illinois Route 66, we present The Riviera and the Streetcar/Diner.

Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame Classes of 1994 and 2004, respectively

Formerly,  Gardner, IL

Here’s the story behind this historic landmark:

The Riviera stood at the wooded junction of Old 66 and the Mazon River, just northeast of Gardner, IL. It was the first true roadhouse inducted into our Hall of Fame. Building it was the longtime dream of Jim Girot. In 1927, just as Route 66 was being paved through the area, he was able to buy the land. Instead of building from scratch, he bought the payroll office from a coal mine in South Wilmington and a former church in Gardner, moved them to the site and put them together. The result was what was known as the Riviera. The establishment catered to those looking for alcohol and gambling during Prohibition. Slot machines and booze were located in the basement, secured behind an iron door to hide in case of a raid.

In 1932, a century old horse drawn Streetcar/Diner was added to the backyard of the property. A zoo and gas station were also added to the Riviera’s complex. An early restoration project of our association took on a restoration of the streetcar/diner.

Jim, his wife Rose and their children Irene, Violet, Larry and Lillian moved there in 1928. Members of the family would live there and operated the restaurant until it was sold to Bob and Peggy Kraft in 1973.

Bob and Peggy were transplants from Chicago. They’d owned two taverns up north and took over the Riviera as a “retirement” job. They continued serving up the Riviera’s long-time menu of steaks, chops and spaghetti. The Krafts didn’t change much else at the Riviera either. In the tradition of German rathskellers, the main restaurant was in the basement. The dumbwaiter between the restaurant and the kitchen upstairs remained a WWI artillery shell. The payroll office safe was used as a cooler. The Krafts operated the Riviera until retiring for real in 2008.

After reopening briefly in 2009-2010, the Riviera closed and its future remained unsettled. Sadly, on June 8, 2010, the Riviera was lost to fire. In 2019, the former location of the Riviera Roadhouse is marked with a simple sign that highlights this once great Route 66 roadie stop.

Click to read stories about the ever-growing list of Hall of Fame inductees.

As part of a series on the influential, colorful, historic people, places and things along Illinois Route 66, we present The Palms Grill Cafe.

Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame Class of 2013

110 SW Arch St, Atlanta, Illinois

Here’s the story behind this historic landmark:

The Palms Grill was opened in 1934 and declared it was, “in the center of Atlanta on U.S. Route 66. Dancing Every Night. Special Chicken and Steak Dinners. We Specialize in Club Parties.”

The original owner, Robert Adams, was a native of Atlanta who had moved to Los Angeles, California. It was decorated to resemble an eatery near where Adams had lived in California. Ray Thompson of Atlanta had been hired to oversee the restaurant and hire and oversee managers for the absent owner.

In its early years, businessmen, tourists, and even celebrities frequented the Palms Grill Cafe. Beginning in 1940, it was also the designated Greyhound bus stop in Atlanta for many years. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the Grill continued to serve as a popular gathering spot, especially for the students of Atlanta High School. Many students held their first real job at the Palms Grill.

After the Grill closed in the late 1960s, the building remained empty for nearly 20 years. John Hawkins purchased it in 1982, and upon his death in 2002, his family donated the building to the Atlanta Public Library and Museum. In 2003, the Atlanta Library began the restoration project that culminated in the rebirth of the Palms Grill Cafe.

It became a well-known, highly-praised restaurant that beckoned all to stop and dine and go back in time. Blue plate specials, spam sandwiches and definitely the pie attracted tourists to stop and make the Palms Grill Cafe  the center of Atlanta.

Sadly, The Palms Grill Cafe closed in 2020. It is currently owned by the Atlanta Library District and leased out.

Click to read stories about the ever-growing list of Hall of Fame inductees.

As part of a series on the influential, colorful, historic people, places and things along Illinois Route 66, we present…

Ed Waldmire Family, The Cozy Dog Drive-In

Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame Class of 1991

2935 S 6th St, Springfield, Illinois

Here’s the story behind this historic landmark:

The Cozy Dog is an original and traditional Route 66 business. Before our association was even formed, its founder and owner, Ed Waldmire, was supporting the road’s revival with displays at the Cozy Dog. His son, Bob, has drawn many scenes and maps of the highway. And Ed is credited with perfecting a classic form of American roadside fast food – the corn dog – on Route 66.

Ed was visiting a brother in Oklahoma in 1941 when he saw the first corn dog being made. “We stopped at a greasy spoon in Muskogee,” Ed said. “They were making it in a contraption like a waffle iron. They poured batter in a trough, put in three wieners and baked it for 15 minutes.”

Toward the end of WWII, Ed was stationed with the Army Air Corps in Amarillo, Texas. With a lot of time on his hands, he began thinking about those corn dogs in Muskogee – and how he could make them faster and in greater quantity. “Finally, I called a fraternity brother in Galesburg who ran a bakery and I asked him to make a batter I could dip a weenie in and deep fry like a doughnut,” he said.

Cooked in a gas-fueled fryer at the base PX, the corn dogs were an immediate success. Soon Ed was ordering hundreds of pounds of the batter mix at a time. After the war, Ed continued perfecting his hotdog on a stick. Cozy Dogs were first sold at the Lake Springfield Beach House; they were introduced at the Illinois State Fair the same year. The first Cozy Dog House was located in Springfield on South Grand between Fifth and Sixth Street. A second Cozy Dog House was located at Ash & MacArthur. In 1949, the Drive-In was born, built along “Route 66” South Sixth Street. In 1996 Cozy Dog moved to its current location, 2935 S 6th St.

At first, he called his batter-dipped specialty Crusty Curs. But his wife, Virginia, convinced him a more inviting name would help the product sell better. She suggested Snuggle Puppies, Long Johns and finally Cozy Dog. The last one stuck and she drew a logo showing two hot dogs in love. Only Snortin’ Norton on the trucks of Campbell 66 Express and the Fat Man at the Club Cafe in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, rank alongside the Cozy Dog couple as classic logos of Route 66.

Ed’s son, Buz, ran the Cozy Dog at the time of their induction to our Hall of Fame while Ed wholesaled the mix throughout the country. Meanwhile, Ed and Virginia became proprietors of Cardinal Hill Crafts, a unique shop built in an old corn crib near Rochester. They also built their solar-heated home onto the side of the crib. 

Their son Bob lived on the grounds in a converted 1966 School bus. A freelance artist, he specialized in Route 66 scenes and maps. He designed our association’s letterhead, T-shirt, bumper sticker,1991 Motor Tour shirt and much more throughout the years. Bob was to become an avid Route 66 preservationist and icon. Sadly, he died of cancer in 2009

Today, Sue (Ed’s daughter in law), Josh, Eddie, Tony & Nick (Ed’s grandsons) continue on with the business right next door to the original location.

Click to read stories about the ever-growing list of Hall of Fame inductees.

by Joseph D. Kubal, Ruth D. Nelson and Maria R. Traska

Most Route 66 roadies are familiar with the purposefully rusted Cor-Ten steel sculpture of French explorers Père Jacques Marquette, Louis Jolliet (aka Joliet*) and a Native American guide that stands just west of 48th Street and Harlem Avenue, surrounded by a forest preserve near Lyons, IL and only a few blocks from Route 66/Joliet Road.  The Chicago Portage National Historic Site is located at the periphery of the famous Chicago Portage, a nine-mile long scrap of swampy land bordering Mud Lake that was the only thing separating the Great Lakes and the Chicago River from the Mississippi River system and the Gulf of Mexico via the Des Plaines and Illinois Rivers.  A canal through that area – an idea first conceived by Jolliet on the expedition with Marquette – would link the East Coast with the Gulf of Mexico, cutting through the heart of the continent.  Its economic and political value was literally incalculable.

Not far away, on the other side of the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal and Interstate 55, is another memorial to Père Marquette in Summit, IL.  Located in Summit Park at 5810 S. Archer Ave. is a large group of boulders that form a stone monument or cairn dedicated to the French priest and explorer.  Often overlooked on the busy road, which was once was an old Indian trail, the monument stands at the edge of the park and out of the view of passing vehicles.

The monument was relocated here in 1968 from its original historic site on a sandy ridge southwest of the spot known as Point aux Chenes, or Point of Oaks – the latter being literally the summit from which the village got its name. The promontory once overlooked the exaggerated eastward curve of the Des Plaines River, before construction of the Sanitary & Ship Canal more than two centuries later required that a straighter diversion channel be dug west of the curve (that permanently changed the path of the Des Plaines near Lyons, thereby also creating Prescott Island).

But let’s not get ahead of the story.

Marquette’s first trip through Chicago, 1673

Father Marquette, a Roman Catholic Jesuit missionary and himself a geographer and cartographer, first ventured into the Mississippi Valley in 1673 with fellow explorer Jolliet.  They set off from St. Ignace near the Mackinac Straits to find the elusive Mississippi River and traveled down the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers before they encountered the Great Water, as it was known to the natives.  Having paddled down as far as present-day Arkansas and returning from this circuitous trip, they were guided by local Illini to a shortcut back to Lake Michigan (known to the French as Lac des Illinois) via the Illinois River, then the Des Plaines River.  Marquette must have been miserable at the time, as he had developed dysentery during the return trip, so a shortcut was no doubt welcome.

Previously unaware of this route to the Chicago Portage, Marquette and Jolliet paddled northeast through the great tallgrass prairie to the vicinity of Lyons and Summit, where the Des Plaines made an enormous curve east and north and a tiny tributary later called Portage Creek led them to Mud Lake.  There, they had to either paddle through mud the consistency of wet cement or portage around the bog, carrying their canoes over a minor continental divide that separates the Illinois/Mississippi basin from the Great Lakes basin.  Given the choice, they portaged.  From the eastern end, they took a meandering stream (the Chicago River and its South Branch) to the shore of Lake Michigan, then moved north along the lakeshore until they reached the mission of St. Francis Xavier at present-day Green Bay, Wisconsin.  At the mission, the travelers parted ways:  Marquette remained to report to his Jesuit superiors, while Jolliet returned to Quebec to report their findings to the new governor, the Comte de Frontenac.

Marquette had promised the Native Americans along the Illinois River that he would return to them some day.  He had hoped to establish another mission among the native inhabitants of the wide prairie.  During the winter of 1674-75, he kept that promise and got to Kaskaskia, where he founded the mission.  The plan was to go down to the River of the Portage (aka the Chicago River) in the autumn and camp on its banks through the winter, so as to be ready to return to Kaskaskia as soon as possible when the thaw and spring freshets came – high water would make traveling down the shallow Des Plaines easier.  Why Marquette chose to do this, however, risking more illness in the cold after it had taken him nearly a year to recover from the dysentery, nobody knows; but it was a decision that would kill him, and Marquette realized that too late.  Then again, the priest was all too willing to be a martyr.

Marquette’s second trip, 1674-75

Leaving the mission at Green Bay on October 25, 1674, Marquette and two companions (he was accompanied by two voyageurs, one of whom who had been with him on the expedition with Jolliet) traveled down the lakefront.  They encountered fierce snow, heavy winds, massive waves, and ice floes on the way south that forced them ashore several times.  After weeks of punishing weather and delays, Marquette’s dysentery returned and he could hardly sit up in the canoe.  By December 4, the travelers reached the then mouth of the Chicago River (near what is today the intersection of Madison Street and Michigan Avenue), where they camped for a week and killed game for food.  Then on December 11, they traveled six miles inland along the more sheltered South Branch and built a makeshift cabin on the north bank near what is now Damen Avenue and the Sanitary & Ship Canal, where they spent the worst of the winter – until the ravages of spring arrived.

There are those who suggest that Marquette occupied an abandoned cabin on the South Branch that someone else – either Indians or French trappers – had built, but this assertion is disproven by the narrative written by Fr. Claude Dablon, S.J., Marquette’s immediate superior and to whom he had reported after the expedition with Jolliet.  Dablon, who not only had Marquette’s original journal and had copies made that were sent to Jesuit houses in Quebec and France, also had the reports of all the voyageurs who had traveled with Marquette – including verbal reports from the two men who accompanied Father Marquette on his second trip in late 1674, Pierre Porteret and Jacques La Castor.  Dablon plainly states that “During a month of navigation on the Lake of the Illinois [Lake Michigan], he [Marquette] was tolerably well; but, as soon as the snow began to fall, he was again seized with his bloody flux, which compelled him to halt in the river [that] leads to the Illinois [i.e., on the Chicago River’s South Branch at Damen].  It was there that they constructed a cabin in which to pass the winter [emphasis added], amid such inconveniences that, his malady increasing more and more, he saw clearly that God was granting to him the favor which he had so many times besought from Him; and he even told his two companions very plainly that he would certainly die of that malady and during that voyage.”

When the thaw came, it was brutal.  On the night of March 30th, 1675, the floods on the South Branch were so bad that Marquette’s party had to climb up into the trees to avoid being swept away by the rising water; in the morning, the men set off further up the South Branch toward Mud Lake until they found significantly higher ground upon which to camp.  That ground was on the ridge at Point of Oaks.  With the floodwaters so high, they evidently didn’t need to portage around Mud Lake but were able to paddle through the area.  However, the weather was so bad that they were stuck at that third winter campsite for several days.  Eventually, they were able to continue southwest on the flooded Des Plaines River and past the oxbow and rapids between there and the Romeoville bend.

An inscription on the Summit cairn’s original plaque explained the reason for the monument near Point of Oaks:  “On March 31, 1675, Fr. Marquette was flooded out of his winter quarters at Robey St. (now Damen Avenue), Chicago, and next day camped at this point, which is located by a comparison of his Journal with the original Engineers’ levels and surveys of the Country.”  This plaque no longer exists, having been stolen and replaced twice – the first time before 1920, when it was replaced by Robert Somerville of the Chicago & Alton Railroad at his own expense, the second time at some point after 1924.

Marquette and his party relocated their campsite to the Point of Oaks area, near the southwestern tip of the portage in what is now suburban Summit.  This is just northeast of the present day intersection of Center and 54th Street, not far from a Metra/Amtrak train platform near which the memorial cairn was later erected.  From here, they traveled down past the Des Plaines rapids and the confluence with the Kankakee River to the Illinois River and Kaskaskia, arriving during Holy Week.  There, the missionary founded the promised mission, preached and said Easter Mass, and realized he was at last dying, thus hastening his return to St. Ignace even though the natives begged him to stay and be cared for there.  At that point, Marquette was so feeble that he had to be carried everywhere, including into the canoe.  He died on the way back, near the mouth of the river named for him at present-day Ludington, Michigan.

The memorial cairn is built

In 1895, a monument championed by Ossian Guthrie was erected at the Point of Oaks landing site by the Chicago & Alton Railroad Company, on grounds that the railway then owned.  This was done at the urging of Guthrie, then chief engineer of the I&M Canal Bridgeport Pumping Works, and Edward G. Mason, president of the Chicago Historical Society, with the approval of Somerville, who was general agent of the C&A’s passenger department.  According to author Robert Kott (2009), “Originally located across from the old Chicago and Alton Railroad station, this monument commemorates one of three spots researched over a lifetime by Guthrie:  the 1673 portage route, the 1674 Damen Avenue (Robey Street) Marquette cabin site, and the [1675] temporary Marquette encampment.”  Guthrie decided on these sites by studying Marquette’s journal, the interviews conducted after 1847 regarding the area’s original topography, and fieldwork and surveys ordered by the commissioners of the Chicago Drainage Canal, as the Sanitary & Ship Canal was then known.  As of 2016, the original monument’s foundation still stands near the train station.

Later in 1895, the C&A Railroad published a tourist booklet about notable sites along the newly dug Chicago Drainage Canal that riders on the Summit line could see from the train.  One of the sites mentioned was the recently constructed Marquette memorial, a photo of which was featured on the booklet’s cover.  Page 7 of the booklet notes that “This monument consists of granite boulders of various kinds brought from the Lake Superior region by the glacial stream and deposited in this valley.  The monument is, therefore, of great geological as well as historical interest.”  Another photo shows two large boulders; an accompanying explanation notes that “the smaller boulder is of granite, weighing 7 or 8 tons, smoothed and scored by glacial action (also somewhat affected by water), and now forms the capstone of the Alton’s Marquette Monument at Summit” (Chicago & Alton Railroad, 1895).

On May 31, 1937, the village of Summit held a celebration at the memorial site to honor Marquette’s 300th birthday anniversary. Led by master of ceremonies Henry C. Wahl and village president E.H. Wilson, attendees gathered “to pay honor and homage” to and “in contemplation of the example thus afforded” by the great French explorer.  In honor of the occasion, the Père Marquette Memorial Association of Ludington, Michigan sent a letter in advance to the mayor of Summit, along with a “small chest of consecrated sand taken from the revered spot where, on May 18, 1675, Père Marquette died.” The association’s pageant committee requested that the sand be sprinkled on the Summit memorial during the tricentennial celebration.  It is presumed that this request was carried out.

(Note:  Marquette died at and was initially laid to rest near Ludington.  However, two years after his death, a hunting party of local Christian tribesmen found his remains.  They washed and dried the bones, and, singing their funeral chants in a procession of nearly 30 canoes, returned them in a birch box to St. Ignace, where they were reburied by the Jesuits beneath the mission’s church – and were apparently forgotten for many years after the mission burned down.  Marquette’s grave at St. Ignace was rediscovered on the former mission site in 1877, but by that time only a few bones remained.  According to historian Donald L. Miller, “the rest were believed to have been taken by Indians who considered him a forest spirit.  His remaining relics are at Marquette University, under the care of his order.  And this gentle missionary who dreamed of the glory of martyrdom in the wilderness became, in time, the closest thing to a patron saint that gritty Chicago would ever have.”  In 1920, Chicago mayor William Dever officially declared December 4th to be Marquette Day in Chicago.)

The Marquette cairn is moved

Flash forward to 1968.  The C&A had by now become part of the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio Railroad, and the company wanted to develop the Summit site where the Marquette monument stood.  The 11,000-pound cairn was moved to its present location on June 8th that year at a cost of $2,000.  It was rededicated a month later during the village’s July 14th Marquette Days celebration (on Bastille Day; how very French).  In attendance were many state and local dignitaries and officials, including Illinois Secretary of State Paul Powell.  In 1973, the village of Summit celebrated another tercentenary – the anniversary of the Marquette-Joliet expedition.

In its initial location near the train station, the Marquette monument was maintained by the railroad, even though the first two plaques were stolen.  At the time, it was thought that they were most likely sold for their metal content; but without knowing precisely when the thefts occurred – for example, whether one or both of the thefts took place during the Great Depression or a major recession – it’s difficult to judge whether the thefts were simple vandalism or something more.  The current plaque reads:

Father Marquette landed here
1675
This monument is constructed of boulders brought by glaciers from
the Lake Superior region and deposited in this valley, having traversed
the route later followed by the earl[y] French explorers
LaSalle, Joliet
and
Father Marquette
Erected by the Chicago & Alton Railroad Co.
August 1895

It’s curious that LaSalle is mentioned at all on the most recent plaque, let alone named first – considering that his travels through the area occurred nine years the Marquette-Jolliet expedition – whereas Jacques Marquette is mentioned last, even though the cairn is his monument.  Did those who approved the third plaque’s wording realize that they were effectively demoting Father Marquette to an also-ran on his own memorial?  Moreover, this third plaque doesn’t even bother to explain why Marquette landed at Point of Oaks in the first place.  One is tempted to wonder whether the third plaque was a rushed replacement for its predecessor, ordered by someone whose interest in Marquette didn’t equal that of Ossian Guthrie.

History buffs will appreciate knowing that engineer Guthrie (1826-1908), considered the “Father of Chicago’s Drainage System,” was the grandson of Dr. Samuel Guthrie, the discoverer of chloroform.  In 1885, the younger Guthrie found a granite boulder in southwest suburban Worth, IL that was later used as a monument to his famous relative.  Apparently, Ossian Guthrie was a real geology buff and saw no point in wasting a good boulder.

The stone currently sits on the east side of a small park and helipad on Harrison Street, across from both Rush Medical Center and the former Cook County Hospital; the park sits just east of Route 66/Ogden Avenue in the Illinois Medical District.  That same vest-pocket park includes a monument to scientist Louis Pasteur, the inventor of vaccination and pasteurization.  However, the Guthrie memorial was previously located in Grant Park – as was the Pasteur monument – next to the Art Institute of Chicago and near the starting point of Route 66 at Michigan Avenue and Jackson Boulevard.  It’s interesting that the boulder remains near the route today, on a different stretch of the Mother Road but still within the city.

As fascinated as he was by geology, Ossian Guthrie was an even greater admirer of Father Marquette and during his lifetime collected a large amount of research about the Jesuit missionary.  In his will, Guthrie bequeathed all his research and papers regarding Marquette to the City of Chicago.

For more information about the monument and other memorials to Marquette, we suggest reading Ruth D. Nelson’s book, Searching for Marquette: A Pilgrimage in Art, listed below.

Joseph D. Kubal is a Naperville, IL-based geographer, data analyst, and amateur historian.  The information in this article has been excerpted in part from the upcoming book, The Curious Traveler’s Guide: Route 66 in Metro Chicago, by Maria R. Traska, Joseph D. Kubal and Keith Yearman.

Ruth D. Nelson is a suburban Chicago-based art historian, author of the 2013 book Searching for Marquette: A Pilgrimage in Art, and adjunct faculty at College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL.

(The late) Maria R. Traska is a Chicago-based journalist, author, historian, blogger, editor of the Route 66 blog CuriousTraveler66.com, and editor and co-author of the upcoming book, The Curious Traveler’s Guide: Route 66 in Metro Chicago, by Maria R. Traska, Joseph D. Kubal and Keith Yearman.

Bibliography

Brennan, Edward P., “The Only Monument to Father Marquette in Illinois,” Illinois Catholic Historical
            Review, July 1924, vol. 7, Chicago: 1924

Chicago & Alton Railroad, A Guide to the Chicago Drainage Canal with Geological and Historical Notes to Accompany the Tourist via the Chicago & Alton Railroad, Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1895

Dablon, Claude, S.J., excerpts from “Account of the Second Voyage and the Death of Father Jacques Marquette,” reprinted in Illinois Catholic Historical Review, October 1924, vol. 7, Chicago: 1924

“Death Calls Ossian Guthrie,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 26, 1908: 5

Early Chicago, Inc., “Marquette Boulder Monument,” Early Chicago website at http://www.earlychicago.com/monuments.php?letter=M  (accessed October 28, 2015)

Kott, Robert, Summit, Chicago, Charleston, SC, Portsmouth, NH and San Francisco: Arcadia Publishing, 2009

Kubal, Joseph D, ”A Continental Divide in Illinois?,” Route 66 Magazine, Fall 2014, vol 14-4: 14

MacLaren, Agnes E., Letter from the Père Marquette Memorial Association to the Village of Summit, IL, Ludington, MI: May 13, 1937

Miller, Donald L., City Of The Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America, New York: Simon
            & Schuster Inc., 1996

Nelson, Ruth D., Searching for Marquette: A Pilgrimage in Art, Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2013

Thompson, Joseph J., “Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary History of Illinois,” Illinois Catholic Historical
           Review, October 1924, vol. 7, Chicago: 1924