Starved Rock Lock and Dam Historic District

This bottom land was the favorite resort of the Tilinois Indians, who occupied it in great numbers, and both savage and civilized men have ever regarded it as a point of attraction, for its beautiful scenery, its rich soil, and mineral wealth. Old Utica was a town on the river first occupied by Simon Crosiar, and when the business was all done by river boats, was 2 commercial point of some importance, the boats arriving and departing with ¢onsiderable regularity. It was regarded as the head of navigation, except at very high water when the boats ascended to Ottawa. 'But the building of the canal and the Rock Island Railroad, both along the foot of the bluff, on the opposite side of the valley, a mile distant, and the river boats all discharging at the basin at La Salle, dried up its sources of business, and it now stands like Goldsmith's deserted village. Instead of the panting of the river boat, its shrill note of arrival and departure, and the busy hum of the cheerful denizens of the embryo town on shore, Mong Its glades a solitary guest, 'The hollow sounding bittern guards its nest ; Sunk are its bowers in shapeless ruin all, And the rank woods o'ertop the crumbling wall."

Passage source: History of LaSalle County, Illinois : Its Topography, Geology, Botany, Natural History, History of the Mound Builders, Indian Tribes, French Explorations, and a Sketch of the Pioneer Settlers of Each Town to 1840, with an Appendix, Giving the Present Status of the County, Its Population, Resources, Manufactures and Institutions, published 1877.

Ohio. He left Pennsylvania In 1815, and went to Ohio, and was married in 1817 ; removed to Tlinois and settled at Cap au Gray, in 1819, and removed to Calhoun Oounty, where he remained until 1824, then to Peoria, and to Ottawa in 1826, where he put up a log cabin on the ravine near where 8S. W. Cheever now lives ; resided there one year and then removed to the south side near the Bassrocks, where heremained about two years ; removed to Shippingport in the fall of 1829; built a mill on Cedar creek, and removed there in 1831. He was Postmaster, and carried the mail to and from Peoria once a month. Sold the mill to Mr. Myers; built a saw-mill and carding machine on the Pereomsoggin; started the saw-mill in the spring of 1888 and the carding machine in the fall after. Removed to Old Utica, on the north bank of the [linols in 1834, kept a store and warehouse for storage and commission business, and for a time was Captain of a steamboat ontheriver. He died in November, 1846; his widow died in 1871.

Passage source: History of LaSalle County, Illinois : Its Topography, Geology, Botany, Natural History, History of the Mound Builders, Indian Tribes, French Explorations, and a Sketch of the Pioneer Settlers of Each Town to 1840, with an Appendix, Giving the Present Status of the County, Its Population, Resources, Manufactures and Institutions, published 1877.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Utica Township - 1,633 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.