Kiddie Dude Ranch in Lombard, Illinois. (1940-1960)

After searching the Internet and making a few inquiries, I received a phone call from Ralph Weimer, son of Earl Weimer, the owner and operator of the "Kiddie Dude Ranch" located on the southeast corner of Roosevelt Road and Lawler Avenue in Lombard, Illinois (Glen Ellyn, today).

The story goes...

Ralph Weimer said his father was a carpenter by trade, and he built their house off Lawler around 1931-32. "In those days you could easily count the number of cars passing by on Roosevelt Road."

Weimer remembers, as a child, his father taking him for pony rides in Elmhurst (Roosevelt and York Roads) at a pony ring, run out of a trailer park by a man named Steve Wall. When Wall decided to sell the pony ring, Earl Weimer in 1939 bought the ponies - about 10 in all - and the saddles, along with the fencing, which Weimer noted was originally built for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. The fencing, which Weimer described as 66-foot wide, 200-foot-long "ornate ten-foot sections, painted white with red and white striped poles at each end.

When asked why his dad decided to create the amusement park, Weimer replied that his father "wanted to get into something like that; an entrepreneurial spirit." During the week Earl Weimer worked in carpentry and ran the pony ride operation on weekends.

Weimer recalled that his father set up pony rides at area carnivals, and around 1945, built a new barn on Roosevelt Road, and added a mini train, ticket stand and other features to the amusement park, including a parking lot, merry-go-round, "Turn Pike" car ride, whip, boat ride, small Ferris wheel, airplane ride, and a fire engine ride.

The amusement park came to offer for sale refreshments such as soda, candy, popcorn, and ice cream, and Earl Weimer went on to build a shelter over the pony hitching rail.

The whole family worked at the Kiddie Dude Ranch, including his mother, who was "very actively involved" in such jobs as working at the ticket stand, keeping the books and selling refreshments. His mother died in 1955, and his father closed the amusement park in 1960, due to illness, and died shortly afterward, said Weimer.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

*Permission from Ralph Weimer. Photographs are the copyright © of Ralph Weimer, who sent these photographs to me for scanning, so I may document his family's amusement park online.
*Special thanks to the Lombard Historical Society, the "Lombardian," and Jane Charmelo.

Chicago proposes to secede from Illinois to form the "State of Chicago."

On June 27, 1925, Chicagoans were talking about secession. Should Chicago break off from Illinois and form a new state?

The Illinois Constitution was being violated. Every ten years, following the federal census, the legislative districts were supposed to be redrawn. That hadn’t been done since 1901.

Downstaters controlled the state legislature. Letting Chicago have more seats would take away their power. So the legislature simply refused to redistrict after the 1910 census. They had again refused after the 1920 census.

According to Alderman John Toman, the city deserved five more state senators and fifteen more state representatives. So Toman offered a resolution to the city council—that the city’s lawyer should investigate how Chicago might secede from Illinois. The resolution passed unanimously.

Obviously, there were going to be problems. The U.S. Constitution specifically stated that no new state could be carved from part of an existing state unless the existing state approves it. Would Downstate be willing to let Chicago go and lose all that tax revenue? Probably not. But perhaps sometime in the future. Besides, there were ways of getting around the Constitution. Kentucky was a part of Virginia in 1792, Maine was a part of Massachusetts in 1820, and West Virginia was a part of Virginia in 1863 during the Civil War.

The proposed State of Chicago would take in all of Cook County. Suburbia was tiny in 1925. Out of 3 million people in the county, about 2.7 lived within the Chicago city limits. The secessionists said they’d consider including DuPage and Lake counties, too.

Most Chicagoans seemed to like the idea of being a separate state. Along with being freed from the downstate dictators, Chicago would enjoy more clout on the national stage. The new state would rank 11th out of 49 in population.

Even if the plan didn’t become a reality, the threat was worth making. “Chicago is having trouble getting a square deal from the state,” a South Side electrician said. “I believe the only way to get back at them is to rebel. That would give them something to think about.”

Faced with all the legal roadblocks, secession talk eventually died out. During the 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court’s various “one man, one vote” rulings gave the city its fair share of legislature seats.

This is not the first time in the state's 200+ year history that there have been attempts to separate portions of the state to form a new state.

Between 1840 and 1842, several northern counties in Illinois, including Jo Daviess County, Stephenson County, Winnebago County, and Boone County, voted to reattach to Wisconsin, from which the counties were ceded to Illinois by Congress in 1818. The split was precipitated by the mutual antagonism between northerners and southerners due to social and political differences. The split was never realized due to lack of support from Chicago and Cook County, as the benefits of the Illinois and Michigan Canal linking northern to central and southern Illinois outweighed secession. Nathaniel Pope was responsible for giving Illinois its shape.

In 1861, the southern region of Illinois, known as Little Egypt, proposed secession due to cultural and political differences from Chicago and much of Central and Northern Illinois.

In the early 1970s, residents in western Illinois were upset over the allocation of state funds for transportation, prompting a student at Western Illinois University to declare 16 counties the Republic of Forgottonia.

In 1981, State Sen. Howard Carroll passed a Cook County state split bill through both the State House and Senate.

In 2011, a similar proposal for Chicago to secede was introduced by two state legislators.

On February 7, 2019, State Representative Brad Halbrook, with co-sponsors Representatives Chris Miller and Darren Bailey, filed a resolution that urges the United States Congress to declare the City of Chicago a state and separate it from the rest of Illinois.

None of these bills passed, so were never implemented.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Victoria Station Restaurants in Illinois.

Victoria Station was a chain of railroad-themed steakhouse restaurants. At the peak of its popularity in the 1970s, the chain had 100 locations in the U.S. and Canada.

The concept evolved from a Cornell University Hotel School graduate project, according to original owners Bob Freeman, Peter Lee, and Dick Bradley, graduates of the school.

The first restaurant was located in San Francisco. The chain was designed to attract members of the baby boom generation. The theme of the restaurant was loosely based on London's Victoria Station.

Antique English railway artifacts were used as decor inside, and the exteriors were composed of American Railway cars, primarily boxcars, with a signature Caboose in front. A London-style phone booth was on the "entry platform" for each restaurant.

Prime rib was the featured item on a limited menu that included steaks, barbecued beef ribs, and shrimp done in a variation of scampi style known as "Shrimp Victoria."

Most Victoria Station restaurants used authentic railway cars for dining areas, often boxcars or cabooses. The Victoria Station chain flourished in the 1970s, according to a memoir by former Victoria Station corporate marketing manager Tom Blake.

The peak of success of the Victoria Station restaurant chain took place at the time of the culmination of a joint venture with Universal Studios, which resulted in the opening of Victoria Station Universal City, a location on the "hill" near where Citywalk now stands. At its peak, the Universal City location of Victoria Station was among the highest-grossing restaurants in the U.S. The U.S. operations of the Victoria Station chain began running into financial difficulties in the mid-1980s, causing gradual shut-downs of the franchise restaurants.

They filed for bankruptcy in 1986. The one Victoria Station restaurant in Salem, Massachusetts, was shut down on December 6, 2017.

VISIT OUR VICTORIA STATION SOUVENIR SHOP

INDEX TO MY ILLINOIS AND CHICAGO FOOD & RESTAURANT ARTICLES.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Chicago map of settlement patterns in 1950.

Looking over the map which shows where different ethnic groups settled in Chicago, some of the elements of this map caught my eye as they seem a little off.

CLICK MAP FOR A FULL-SIZE VIEW.

Let's start with the year at the bottom right-hand corner of the map: 1976. Also, the mayor listed on the map is Richard J. Daley, who was mayor in 1976 but wasn't mayor in 1950; Daley didn't take office until 1955.

Notice how its boundaries of O'Hare International Airport in the upper left of the map aren't bordered? That's because O'Hare wasn't annexed into Chicago's city limits until 1956. And the use of the term "black" to describe African-American settlements wasn't common in 1950—the standard nomenclature at that time was "negro."

This map was printed by the City of Chicago Department of Development and Planning to highlight Chicago's place in American history during the nation's bicentennial celebrations of the American Revolution. So Mayor Daley ordered the map reprinted to show Chicago's growth into a "world-class city." 

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

An Indian village was discovered in 1993 buried under the Sanctuary Golf Course in New Lenox, Illinois.

Indians lived in the area as early as 10,000 years ago. Over time, the cultures changed from Early Archaic (9000 to 6000 BC.) to the Mississippian Period (1000 to 1600 AD.) The native populations lived along Hickory Creek in longhouses constructed of tree limbs and wattle. Tallgrass prairies and clusters of hickory, birch, oak, and maple trees were left relatively undisturbed by these tribes despite the evidence that they hunted, trapped, and fished and planted small amounts of corn and used indigenous clay to make pots and reeds to make baskets.

The settlers who arrived in the 1830s found friendly natives of the Potawatomi tribe. Their Chief Shabbona often visited Gougar Crossing, preferring to sleep on the floor while his wife slept in the bed. At Gougar Crossing, an Indian burial site was marked by the traditional pole with a white feather attached. After the Black Hawk War in 1832, the Indians from the area were forced to move to the west of the Mississippi River.

sidebar

The word "Mississippi" comes from the Ojibwe Indian Tribe (Algonquian language family) word "Messipi" or "misi-ziibi," which means "Great River" or "Gathering of Waters." French explorers, hearing the Ojibwe word for the river, recorded it in their own language with a similar pronunciation. The Potawatomi (Algonquian language family) pronounced "Mississippi" as the French said it, "Sinnissippi," which was given the meaning "Rocky Waters."

The discovery of three Indian skeletons during an archaeological dig in New Lenox, Illinois, in 1993 gave birth to the Midwest SOARRING (Save Our Ancestors' Remains and Resources Indigenous Network Group) Foundation.

For the past 26 years, its mission has not only been the repatriation of native remains, but the protection of "sacred" sites and public education of their culture and issues, said president Joseph Standing Bear Schranz.

Joseph Standing Bear Schranz

The human remains and artifacts were carbon-dated from the Late Woodland (400-1000 AD.), the Mississippian (1000-1600 AD.), and the Proto-Historic (1600-1673 AD.) periods. The bodies, believed to be that of a 50 to 70-year-old woman, an 18 to 22-year-old woman, and a five-year-old child, from the 1600s, were found during a required dig before the construction of the Sanctuary Golf Course, owned by the New Lenox Community Park District Course at 485 North Marley Road. Buried with them were a black bear skull and the antlers of four deer.

For a year after the bodies were found, Midwest SOARRING conducted an honor guard at the site and ensured the bodies were repatriated by the Miami tribe in Oklahoma. Archaeologists believed there may have been more bodies, but Schranz considered this a sacred site and wanted the bodies left undisturbed so they could continue their journey.

The Sanctuary Golf Course archaeological dig sites.

As researchers tested and excavated 20% of the 235 acres at the golf course, they also uncovered three complete structures: a 46 by 18-foot "longhouse," a 16 by 23-foot house, and a large enclosure measuring 78 by 56 feet that sits beneath the parking lot could have been a ceremonial center. According to historical documentation, researchers also unearthed several incomplete structures, an extensive array of hearths, storage, trash pits, and post holes.

A visual aid: Longhouse

The pits and hearths contained hundreds of European traded goods, such as pieces of a brass kettle, brass ornaments, an iron tomahawk, and glass beads, as well as pieces of stone, ceramic, and bone artifacts, tools, plant, and animal remains.

The structures have been covered up and reburied, while the artifacts are stored at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield, Illinois.

The Native American Cultural Center is at 133 West 13th Street and State Street, downtown Lockport, Illinois. It is located in the old historic train station. Schranz said he would like to make room at the cultural center to display these artifacts if the state museum would allow that. "It all belongs to the people of Will County," he said.

The Lockport Station was originally built in 1863 by the Chicago and Alton Railroad. The tracks run parallel to the Illinois and Michigan Canal and shares the right-of-way with Amtrak's Lincoln Service and Texas Eagle trains. Today, Metra goes by the station but doesn't stop here.

It is believed that more graves, structures, and artifacts remain intact below the ground, all evidence that several Indian tribes inhabited this land along Hickory Creek from 400 to about 1700 AD.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.