PEORIA MAGAZINE December 2022

A PROUD PAST History is everywhere inOttawa. One of the jewels is the Reddick Mansion and Gardens on West Lafayette Street, just across from Washington Square Park, site in 1858 of the first of the famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. Colorful publicmurals tell the region’s story. The first Europeans, Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet, visited the area in 1673. Fort Ottawa — the name comes from the Native American word awdawe, which means “to trade” — sprang up in the 1830s and the town was incorporated in 1853. The 22-room, Italianate-style Reddick Mansion was built before the Civil War as the most expensive home in Illinois at the time

Art designs and sculptures decorate the streets of downtown Ottawa

as a visitor center for the I&M Canal National Heritage Area. The well maintained towpath can be hiked and biked all the way to Chicago. Out on the west side of town is the Ottawa Avenue Cemetery, burial site of WilliamD. Boyce, a Chicago newspaper publisher and Ottawa resident who is credited with bringing the Boy Scout movement to America. Scouts from across the countrymake pilgrimages to his grave and explore a treasure trove of memorabilia and local history at the Ottawa Historical and Scouting Museum on Canal Street. Meanwhile, Ottawa native Bob Mc Grath — one of the original human characters on Sesame Street — is por trayed in the mural at Jefferson School. The industrial history of Ottawa has taken a number of twists and turns. An abundance of “the purest silica sand you can get” has made this a center for sand mining and glassmaking for decades, according to Dave Noble, the citys economic development director. Locally mined “fracking sand” is prized in the petroleum industry, he said. Countless drivers have seen theworld through the automotive glass produced here. Glass was also fashioned into colorful Peltier marbles beginning in the late 1920s. Collectors now seek the rare specimens. A tragic chapter in Ottawa’s history is memorialized at the corner of Clinton INDUSTRY AND OPPORTUNITY

and Jefferson streets. There, a statue of a young woman serves as a memorial to the workers who died after ingesting radium while working for the Radium Dial Company in the early 1900s. Contrast the leisurely pace of down town with the north side of town, where two interchanges at I-80 hum with commerce and traffic, including big box retailers, fast food and fuel for trucks and weary travelers. Noble said more than 3,000 jobs are centered around the Route 23 exit, where companies such as Kohls, PetSmart and Tyson Foods have distribution centers. Manufacturers of plastics, motorcycle travel conversion kits, yearbooks, imaging products, packaging components and automotive belting products take advantage of a skilled labor force and quick, easy access to transportation. A couple of miles off the interstate at the Route 71 exit, some 536 acres of the Ottawa Industrial Park are ready for further development. “You never know what’s around the corner,” said Noble, summing up the future of Ottawa in one word: “Opportunity.” Learn more about the city of Ottawa online at cityofottawa.org/ and at pickusottawail.com/.

‘PEOPLE IN OTTAWA LOOK YOU IN THE EYE AND SAY HI. EVERYTHING HERE IS AUTHENTIC’

— Hank Wolf

European immigrants f locked to Ottawa to farm the rich soil, but it was the construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, completed in 1848, that put the town on the map. The canal connected the Illinois River to Lake Michigan, making it economically feasible to transport sand, gravel, clay and agricultural commodities to larger markets. In an amazing feat of engineering, the Fox River Aqueduct once carried the canal waters over the river. A restored tollhouse on Columbus Street serves

Scott Fishel is a senior communications executive at WTVP

78 DECEMBER 2022 PEORIA MAGAZINE