July 8, 2008
Back to Galena
Our summer of weekends begins in a town that's never what it was
This isn't Ulysses S. Grant's Galena. It's not even your mother's Galena.
Whether either would like what it's become is, well, immaterial. It is what it is.What we know for sure is this: Galena has been chosen to lead off a summer-long series we're calling Classic Midwest Weekends. From now until nearly Labor Day, we'll be visiting 13 "neighborhood" destinations known and, sometimes, loved by you and your neighbors.
Why Galena? Well, we had to start somewhere.
Please understand: This isn't a "best of . . . " thing. We won't be pitting Vincennes against Cedar Rapids, and we won't be driving up to Mackinac Island, which qualifies as "classic" and "Midwest" and "weekendable." No Door County either.
These are just 13 Classic Midwest Weekends, from a list longer than the Lincoln Highway, we picked because we wanted to take a fresh look at them.
That's all.
Now, back to our story . . .
Galena.
Atmosphere to the max. Bed-and-breakfasts, small-town charm, a few struggling artists and antique dealers, some restaurants (a couple of them very good) and shops--lots of shops selling, among other items:
- Artificial flowers made in China.
- Dolls made in China.
- Teddy bears made in China.
- Italian-style dishes made in China.
- "USA Leather" jackets made in China.
- Harley-Davidson boots made in China.
- Betty Boop purses made in China.
"I Love America" patriotic wall hangings--made in China.
"My criticism," says Dee Levens, in her 26th year operating Galena Trolley Tours, "and this is true--I don't care if they deny it or not--there's too many stores having too much of the same thing. It doesn't take a genius to see."
"You have to go with the trends," says Carol Shutts, whose family owns Custom Picture Framing/American Eagle Galleries on Main Street. "You have to listen to the people and give them what they want--and they do keep coming back."
So shopping Galena, once a Mecca for antique-loving treasure-hunters, has evolved into shopping at Cracker Barrel.
On the other hand, Galena has been evolutionary from its earliest days in the1820s, '30s and '40s, when it emerged as a lead-mine-powered boomtown.
Commerce and agriculture had already surpassed mining by 1860, when Grant lived here for a few months and worked in the family leather shop before the Civil War mandated a career move. He returned briefly after the war, lived in a house donated to him by grateful residents, won the presidency in 1868 and left again, returned briefly (to a much less prosperous Galena) after his two terms, left this time for New York in 1881, and he's still there.
By the 1880s, Galena was no longer the busiest port on the Mississippi River system north of St. Louis, its link to the Mississippi--the Galena River--had become only grudgingly navigable, and the Illinois Central bypassed the city as a terminal, choosing, instead, East Dubuque, Ill.
More blunders, depressions and floods, the clincher flood coming in 1937, pretty much finished the place.
By then, the silted Galena River was a ditch. The city of brick and stone--14,000 lived here in 1858--just sat, many of its Main Street buildings boarded up, others crumbling.
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