Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

Shiloh, Tennessee, Dec. 29 — It was the bloodiest day of the Civil War until surpassed by Antietam, and a bunch of farm boys from Iowa were caught right in the middle of it.

The Iowa monument at Shiloh is the largest at the site. It is right by the visitors center.

This battle map shows the individual divisions on the first day. The 2nd, 7th, 12th, 14th, and 8th Iowa were all positioned along the Sunken Road. As some Union forces retreated to build a defensive perimeter, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant sent out a message: Hold the line at all costs.

The “Wolf Creek Rangers” of Tama County were in the 14th Iowa, Company G. They were among those captured by the Confederates the evening of the first day. (More images after the jump.) (To read the text, you may have to open the image in a new tab.) Continue reading →

Kaskaskia, Illinois, Dec. 29 — There’s not much left in the first capital of Illinois. In the 2000s, it was the smallest city in the state. Although now in second place, it remains the only city in Illinois west of the Mississippi River. You see it in that little bulge of Randolph County on the state outline, south of St. Louis. A easy way to clinch the county is to do precisely what we did, get there from I-55. (This was the only positive of stopping early the previous night.)

The Chicago Tribune has more background on the former city. The capital’s move from Kaskaskia to Vandalia is one of the few times a center of government moved east as territories and states grew. Kaskaskia’s geographical oddness also got it featured on “How the States Got Their Shapes.”

There are three brick buildings left in town: the church, a building that looks like it used to be a school, and the Kaskaskia Bell State Memorial. It’s not much but the bell has an important connection to the Revolutionary War.

If you press a couple buttons, the door opens (but a gate still bars entry) and an audio recording about the bell plays. Here’s a video of someone’s summertime visit (but you can’t really hear the audio).

More trip posts next week.

This is a preliminary entry in a Liberty Bowl trip report.

Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, Dec. 29 — If Missouri is supposed to be in the Southeastern Conference now, Mother Nature hasn’t gotten the memo. Heavy snow forced an early cutoff on the first day of travel, primarily using the Avenue of the Saints and I-55.

Outside the hotel in Ste. Genevieve, there was this semi-curious sight. Casey’s is a Midwestern gas station chain. Huddle House is a Southern 24-hour restaurant akin to Perkins. South of St. Louis, the two collide, showing a peek into the split nature of the state of Missouri.

Gas under $3! So sad that’s a thing to celebrate now.

This map from MapMuse shows a wider perspective. Blue squares are Casey’s, red squares are Huddle House. There is only one HH north of I-70. Notice how the Casey’s stores have a clearly defined border of the Ohio River. The Bootheel ones are the southernmost in the nation.