In the northwest Illinois town of Oregon, a 48-foot concrete figure gazes over a river valley, arms folded. Over the years, it's been home to many ambitious men. Abraham Lincoln joined the militia here. John Deere forged the first steel plow. Ronald Reagan got his first lifeguard job. The man who inspired the gigantic blufftop statue also had an ambition: to keep this beautiful valley for his own people.
Go to story ...Like many places, Starved Rock State Park has a name whose origin is lost in the mists of time. Supposedly, the Potawatomi and Ottawa trapped a band of Illini on a 125-foot butte along the Illinois River. However, anyone who's actually climbed up Starved Rock — and millions of tourists have — can see that no one could defend it long enough to starve. "It's like Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox,'' says Kathy Higdon of the Illinois Waterway Visitor Center across the river. "It's a legend, like the Lover's Leaps we've got all over the place.''
Go to story ...For centuries, people have beaten a path along the Fox River: Pottawatomie Indians, pioneer entrepreneurs, escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad, city-bound commuters . . . and now, bicyclists. Thanks to a network of abandoned electric railways, this part of northeast Illinois is a hotbed of bicycle trails. They're all popular, but the 40-mile Fox River Trail past St. Charles, Geneva and Batavia includes an astonishing amount of scenery and attractions: a Dutch windmill, Japanese gardens and a lighthouse plus many forest preserves, gazebos and wildlife sightings, mainly herons and egrets lurking on the shallow river.
Go to story ...There are thousands of lakes in the north woods, but the most famous one is a stone's throw from Illinois. Lake Geneva has been the favorite retreat of Chicago folks for 150 years, and everybody who was anybody had a place there: the Wrigleys, Maytags and Schwinns, but also cartoonists, actors, brewers and bottle-cap makers. Geneva will seem citified to people who vacation on woodland lakes. There's a good reason to go there, though: It's entertaining to gawk at extreme wealth, and there's no better place to do it than Lake Geneva.
Go to story ...So you've done Galena — the shopping, the wine-tasting, the trolley tours, the historic houses. What now? This mining town in northwest Illinois boomed, went bust and came back as a boutique town for urban weekenders. Now, it's returning to nature.
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