Historic Red Oak cemetery

On a recent outing one of my faithful minion, Tom Anderson, clued me in to the location of the small and historic Red Oak cemetery. After a short drive and a couple of country roads we found it, stopping to photograph the many interesting markers to be found there. 

One of the fascinating things about this particular location was that many of the older monuments had brass plaques set into concrete next to them identifying the person buried there as the original stone was often worn and hard to make out. I hadn't seen this done before and found it a valuable tool.

Vestiges of the Interurban

After my lecture at the library a few weeks ago I was approached by Dave Husemann from the Chapel Hill golf course who invited me to come by and photograph the various ruins of the old Interurban railroad that still existed on his property.  So it was that myself, Lil Nick and Charles Moline got to explore the back woods behind the property along with Mr. Huseman who graciously took us around personally on a tour.

The Chicago, Ottawa & Peoria railway was formed in 1904 as a transportation system for the Illinois Valley. Ladd, Peru, LaSalle & Ottawa were first to be serviced with Marseilles added later that same year. In 1906 the line was extended to both Princeton in one direction and Seneca in the other. In 1923 the C O & P was folded into the Illinois Traction system. Unfortunately the Great Depression sounded the death knell for the railway and by 1934 the railway was abandoned.

There are still ruins of the railway available to see if you know where to look for them. At Chapel Hill there are several footbridges that used to carry passengers from the railway platform up to the country club. There's also the ruins of a couple trestles (Unfortunately covered by the foliage when we visited) as well as the old road bed.  I want to extend a big Thank You to Mr. Huseman for taking time out of his day to drive us around and show us the ruins.