Army Trail Road IL70
This road followed an Indian trail that began in Chicago and went through DuPage, Kane, DeKalb, Boone, and Winnebago Counties to a Winnebago village at Beloit, Wisconsin. In August, 1832, during the Black Hawk War, United States Army reinforcements from the eastern department followed the trail. Their General, Winfield Scott, left Chicago ahead of the troops and took a different route to the war area.Delayed by cholera, his men did not reach the front until after the Black Hawk's defeat. The tracks left by heavy army wagons formed a road for early settlers.

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Shabbona IL69
In the early 1800's Shabbona was a principal chief of the Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Chippewa group of tribes which banded together to form 'The Three Fires.' Shabbona camped briefly in a large grove one-half mile south of here. He fought with the British in the War of 1812 and later helped the settlers of northern Illinois by warning of Indian uprisings during the Winnebago outbreak. In the Black Hawk War, Shabbona alerted pioneers to impending Indian raids and offered to lead an attack against the Sauk and Fox Tribes.

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Thy Wondrous Story, Illinois IL24
The fertile prairies in Illinois attracted the attention of trader Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette as they explored the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers in 1673. France claimed this region until 1763 when she surrendered it to Great Britain by the Treaty of Paris. During the American Revolution George Rogers Clark and his small army scored a bloodless victory when they captured Kaskaskia for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and Illinois became a county of Virginia. This area was ceded to the United States in 1784, and became in turn part of the Northwest Territory and the Indiana and Illinois Territories. On December 3, 1818, Illinois entered the Union as the twenty-first state. Illinois acquired the fourteen northern counties because of the forsight of Nathaniel Pope, congressional delegate from the Illinois territory. His amendment to the Statehood Act moved the upper boundary from an east - west line through the tip of Lake Michigan to the present location. US 52 passes a variety of scenic and historic sites. The Mississippi Palisades, north of Savanna, and the White Pines forest, east of Polo, preserve the natural beauty of the area. In Dixon the statue of Abraham Lincoln as a soldier in the Black Hawk War and in the Lowden State Park near Oregon the towering Indian statue recall the exciting year 1832 when a band of Sauk and Fox Indians terrorized the settlers in northern Illinois.

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A Stone Arch Bridge on the Galena Road IL23
The Stone Arch Bridge that stands to the east of the present highway was on the Galena Road, once the most important trail in northern Illinois. Along this route innumerable people streamed northward to the lead mines near Galena every spring and many returned southward in the fall. The movement was likened to that of the fish called Sucker, from which the State received its nickname. This portion of the road from Dixon was surveyed in 1830 as the road from Woodbine Springs to Ogee's Ferry (later Dixon's Ferry, now Dixon), replacing the longer 1825 Kellogg's Trail and the 1826 Boles' Trail. Roads from Peoria and Chicago joined at Dixon and continued as one to Galena. Mail and stagecoach lines traveled the Peoria - Galena route as early as 1830 and the Chicago - Galena route by 1834. Here the road intersected the earlier Gratiot's Trail, which also ran from Dixon to Galena but extended farther north to avoid the rough terrain. During the Black Hawk War in 1832, militia and regular army troops marched on both trails. Abraham Lincoln, as a private in the company of Captain Elijah Iles, camped overnight near here, June 8 and 12. As a private in the independent spy company of Jacob M. Early, Lincoln made a forced march to Kellogg's Grove (near Kent), arriving there June 26, the day after the last battle fought in Illinois during that War. Isaac Chambers, who was not only the first settler of Ogle County at Buffalo Grove near Polo but also of Lima Township here in Carroll County, operated a stage coach inn nearby and a sawmill on Elkhorn Creek two miles to the southeast.

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Plum River Falls IL21
Steamboats once navigated to this point, where Plum River Falls powered the saw, powder, grist, and flour mills at various times between 1836 and 1885. Near here the Rock Island Military and Prophetstown Trails to Galena were intersected as early as the 1830's by roads to Freeport, Rockford, Polo, and Milledgeville. On three occasions during the Black Hawk War, companies of mounted volunteers from Galena scoured this area for hostile Indians.

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Troy MO72
Troy

Troy, laid out on the site of Woods' Fort in 1819, lies on an old Sac and Fox Indian campsite where first settlers Joseph Cottle and Zadock Woods built their cabins, 1801. It was the Sac and Fox tribes, outraged by their 1804 land cession which included this region, who carried the War of 1812 west of the Mississippi into north Missouri.

To defend their homes, pioneers in this area, which is now Lincoln County, aided by Rangers under Nathan Boone, built Woods, Howard, Stout, Clark, and Cap au Gris forts as a first line of defense. At Fort Cap au Gris, Maj. (later U.S.Pres.) Zachary Taylor's command rendezvoused, Sept., 1814, and five months after the war, at Fort Howard, May 24, 1815, Black Hawk's band skirmished with settlers and Rangers in the Battle of Sink Hole. In 1824 the Sac and Fox finally gave up all claim to the region.

The Lincoln County seat, earlier at Old Monroe and Alexandria, was located here 1829. The county, organized, 1818, was named by its first settler, Christopher Clark, for Lincoln counties, N.C., and Ky., which honor Revolutionary Gen. Benjamin Lincoln.

Troy serves as a trade and legal center for a Mississippi River county in Missouri's Glacial Plains Region, an area of livestock, grain, and poultry farming. As early as the 1790's, roving hunters and trappers took up Spanish land grants in the county's fertile Cuivre (Fr. copper) River Valley.

During the Civil War, the fighting missed pro-Southern Lincoln County, though Union troops occupied Troy almost continually. The area prospered when the St. Louis and Hannibal R.R. reached Troy in 1882. Early schools here were Lincoln Academy (later Troy Christian Institute) chartered in 1835 and Buchanan College founded in 1894.

Troy was the birthplace of Frederick G. Bonfils (1860-1933) noted co-editor of the "Denver Post". Elliott W. Major, thirty-third governor of Missouri, was a native of this county, and Congressman Clarence Cannon, noted parliamentarian, was born in Elsberry. Among points of interest in Troy are the Woods' Fort marker near the town spring; the 1870 courthouse; and the 1859 Christian and 1868 Presbyterian Churches. Just east of Troy is Cuivre River State Park.

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Fort Koshkonong WI152
"Whilst lying here we have thrown up a stockade work flanked by four block houses for the security of our supplies and the accommodation of the sick," wrote General Henry Atkinson of this spot in his army report to General Winfield Scott on July 17, 1832.

Atkinson with more than 4,000 frontier soldiers had followed Black Hawk and his British Band up the Rock River in an attempt to end the Black Hawk War. After an unproductive sortie east up Bark River, Atkinson returned and built Fort Koshkonong, later known as Fort Atkinson.

The fort, constructed of oak logs eight feet tall, was abandoned when the army pursued and defeated Black Hawk at the Battle of Bad Axe in August 1832. Thus ended the Sauks' last hard fight against continued encroachment of the white men into their tribal lands.

In September of 1836, Dwight Foster arrived and erected the first cabin in what is now Fort Atkinson on this site. He and other settlers used logs from the stockade to build cabins, river rafts and for firewood. By 1840 little of the fort remained.

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Indian Lake Passage WI399
On July 21, 1832, during the Black Hawk war, Sac Indian leader Black Hawk and his band left Pheasant Branch, west of Madison, retreating ahead of the military forces commanded by Colonels Ewing and Dodge. The band fled north following a route past the west end of Indian Lake and turned westward down the broad valley now bisected by Highway 12. The military, despite rain and exhausted horses, managed to catch up to Black Hawk's warriors late that afternoon at the Heights overlooking the Wisconsin River.

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Pheasant Branch Encampment WI398
On the night of July 20th, during the Black Hawk War of 1832, Sac Indian leader Black Hawk and his followers camped near this location. Desperate for food and frightened by the approaching military, the Indians fled northwest towards the Wisconsin River the next morning.

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Tragedy Of War WI396
On July 21, 1832, during the Black Hawk War, the U. S. Militia "passed through the narrows of the four lakes," Madison's Isthmus, in pursuit of Sac Indian leader Black Hawk and his band. Near this location, the Militia shot and scalped an old Sac warrior awaiting his death upon his wife's freshly dug grave.

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