The History of Starved Rock provides a wonderful overview of the famous site in Utica, Illinois, from when European explorers first viewed the bluff in 1673 through to 1911, when Starved Rock became the centerpiece of Illinois' second state park. Mark Walczynski pulls together stories and insights from the language, geology, geography, anthropology, archaeology, biology, and agriculture of the park to provide readers with an understanding of both the human and natural history of Starved Rock, and to put it into context with the larger history of the American Midwest.

Visitors to Starved Rock State Park are often struck by the grandeur of its rustic lodge. They marvel at its massive fireplace and hand-hewn logs. Yet few realize that this structure is a tangible reminder of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which in the 1930s provided work for young men left unemployed by the Great Depression. Starved Rock Lodge was one of the biggest projects of the "CCC boys" along the Illinois and Michigan Canal, but it was far from the only one. Working as a team and living in camps from Willow Springs to La Salle-Peru, they built facilities that transformed the old canal into what became the I&M Canal State Trail (1974) and the nation's first National Heritage Corridor (1984). President Franklin D. Roosevelt's nation-wide program preserved the landscape from the ravages of soil erosion, flooding, and deforestation. In the process, the young men built beautiful parks, buildings, and shelters that we use and admire today.

If anything is endangered in America it is our experience of wild nature—gross contact. There is knowledge only the wild can give us, knowledge specific to it, knowledge specific to the experience of it. These are its gifts to us. How wild is wilderness and how wild are our experiences in it, asks Jack Turner in the pages of The Abstract Wild. His answer: not very wild. National parks and even so-called wilderness areas fall far short of offering the primal, mystic connection possible in wild places. And this is so, Turner avows, because any managed land, never mind what it's called, ceases to be wild. Moreover, what little wildness we have left is fast being destroyed by the very systems designed to preserve it. Natural resource managers, conservation biologists, environmental economists, park rangers, zoo directors, and environmental activists: Turner's new book takes aim at these and all others who labor in the name of preservation. He argues for a new conservation ethic that focuses less on preserving things and more on preserving process and "leaving things be." He takes off after zoos and wilderness tourism with a vengeance, and he cautions us to resist language that calls a tree "a resource" and wilderness "a management unit." Eloquent and fast-paced, The Abstract Wild takes a long view to ask whether ecosystem management isn't "a bit of a sham" and the control of grizzlies and wolves "at best a travesty." Next, the author might bring his readers up-close for a look at pelicans, mountain lions, or Shamu the whale. From whatever angle, Turner stirs into his arguments the words of dozens of other American writers including Thoreau, Hemingway, Faulkner, and environmentalist Doug Peacock. We hunger for a kind of experience deep enough to change our selves, our form of life, writes Turner. Readers who take his words to heart will find, if not their selves, their perspectives on the natural world recast in ways that are hard to ignore and harder to forget.

According to the Legend of Starved Rock, the last of the Illinois Indian tribe fled to the summit of the bluff where they were surrounded by the Potawatomi and Ottawa Indians. Unable to obtain food or water, Illinois men, women and children, were destroyed by starvation. Was this account a horrific historical event, or nothing more than fanciful fiction, based on fragments of many events, popularized by the creative pens of imaginative nineteenth-century writers? Massacre 1769: The Search for the Origin of the Legend of Starved Rock reviews the earliest and most influential accounts of the well-known legend, traces the history and culture of the Illinois Indian tribe from its earliest contact with Europeans, and closely examines the event of 1769, the murder of Ottawa war chief, Pontiac, at the hand of an Illinois warrior, the incident that, according to the legend, precipitated the destruction of the Illinois tribe at Starved Rock. With careful examination of archaeological excavations and surveys, at or around Starved Rock, and extensive study of the well-documented historical record, Massacre 1769, at last, brings clarity to this event, proving again, that history is even more enthralling than fiction. For both scholar and history enthusiast alike.

Inquietus takes a fresh look at the achievements-and setbacks of René-Robert Cavelier, a seventeenth-century French adventurer, later known simply as La Salle, in the Illinois Country. This work reassesses assumptions about the explorer that have been repeated and used as source over the last 150 years. It brings to light and identifies significant places in the upper Illinois Valley that are associated with La Salle and his enterprise, and it takes a critical look at previous assumptions based on ambiguous or misleading information found in seventeenth-century maps, reports, and correspondences. Inquietus also incorporates subjects such as Ice Age geology, geography, and climatology to help the reader to better understand the environment and conditions of seventeenth-century Illinois, it explores linguistic problems associated with La Salle's ability to communicate with Native American groups, and it examines rivalries between the explorer and the Jesuits, and between La Salle and other French explorers. Lastly, Inquietus reviews La Salle's Illinois Country legacy; how his observations about the Illinois Valley waterways, landscape, and natural resources have been mined, harvested, or otherwise manipulated by the government, private companies, and individuals. This is an eye-opening and much-needed reexamination of La Salle in today's Illinois.

At the heart of Peoria's Haunted Memories is the rich and compelling history and folklore of the Peoria area. Buildings and cemeteries in and around the city provide ideal stomping grounds for many restless specters. In this collection of haunted sites, the reader will be introduced to some of Peoria's best-loved mansions, institutions, and graveyards, as well as many of its more illustrious citizens. From Bartonville State Hospital to Bradley University, historic downtown theaters, hotels and taverns, and local churches, where ghostly congregants and ministers continue to worship, this book presents these ghost stories and legends for the fi rst time together in print. In addition to providing thrilling tales, Peoria's Haunted Memories serves as a unique guide for the intrepid supernatural sleuth seeking confi rmation that the dead do not always rest in peace.

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