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Coal was the lifeblood of the Industrial Age, indispensable to railroads, factories, municipalities and households. → Read More
For pioneers, a river crossing sometimes was a matter of life and death → Read More
Editor's note: This is an enlarged and revised "Page from Our Past" that originally appeared Sept. 9, 2012. There’s plenty of handwringing these days over the corrosive effects of political polarization. And yes, things are pretty bad today. That said, perhaps we should take solace in the fact that things aren’t as bad right now as they were in 1866, one year after the Civil War. To say… → Read More
During the summer of 1855, cholera swept through Bloomington and outlying communities. It was one of the largest outbreaks of this dreaded infectious disease in local history. → Read More
Football, it’s been clear for several decades now, is the national pastime, having assumed the mantle long held by that most American of games — baseball. An aging, shrinking Major → Read More
One hundred and forty years ago this week, on Sept. 18, 1879, the incomparable Sojourner Truth spoke at Second Presbyterian Church in downtown Bloomington. → Read More
Editor's note: This is a revised and enlarged version of a "Page from Our Past" column that first ran Jan. 25, 2009. → Read More
Next year will mark the 100th anniversary of the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the constitutional right to vote. → Read More
In the spring of 2018, Canadian agricultural equipment manufacturer Brandt Industries began assembling grain augers and belt conveyors at its new facility along Interstate 39 north of Normal. With the → Read More
“It is very seldom that a town of some 350 inhabitants can boast of an up-to-date hospital,” declared a spring 1923 advertisement for Dr. L.M. Johnson Hospital in Arrowsmith. The → Read More
Tucked away on Bloomington’s far west side, Buck Mann Park is one of the lovelier, out-of-the-way corners in all the Twin Cities. → Read More
Try as he might, Bloomington Mayor Robert McGraw could not close the Subway Club, an after-hours “set-up” joint on the city’s west side that he once described as a gathering → Read More
American residential architecture has long favored dominant English-inspired styles. When most folks conjure up their ideal of an attractive, marketable home, they’re more often than not thinking along the lines → Read More
Novelist, poet, essayist and farmer Wendell Berry has said that we live in a time of “punishment and ruins.” This is certainly true when one considers the lost landscape of → Read More
With Major League Baseball’s spring training well underway in the warmer, sunnier climes of Florida and Arizona, thoughts of this writer naturally turn to Bloomington-Normal’s many and deep connections to → Read More
On the western edge of downtown, the no-frills, mom-and-pop Butler House was an old friend to the weary traveler and local resident alike. The hotel doubled as an economy boarding → Read More
Back in the 19th century when miracle pills, plasters, creams, powders and tonics promised to cure all — from mild indigestion to pancreatic cancer —there were few patent medicine entrepreneurs → Read More
Along Illinois Route 165 between the rural communities of Cooksville and Colfax in eastern McLean County is a long-abandoned, impeccably weathered farmhouse, old and forlorn but still standing strong, a → Read More
Three months after Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II, Normal residents found their attention momentarily turned to an undersized but tough-as-iron Normal Community High School boys’ → Read More
In the decades before and after the Civil War, the focal point of the holiday season was not Christmas, but rather New Year’s Day. Before trimming the tree, caroling and → Read More