The American Bottom Gazette The American Bottom Gazette vol. 01 2019 >>> 1
Episodic but not accidental There are few regions in the United States with such a rich cultural history, complicated patterns of social belonging, and deep layering of spatial inhabitation, as the bottomlands of the Metro-East region of St. Louis. As a coherent geographic interval stretching from the confluence of the Mississippi with the Missouri River down to that with the Kaskaskia River, this floodplain—known to geographers and anthropologists as “The American Bottom”—is site to the social and spatial systems of pre-contact Native Americans, 18th-century French Colonial settlement, 19th-century industrial expansion, 20th-century infrastructural consolidation, and 21st century ecological precarity. Through this rather compact region, then, an entire history of North American settlement and aspirations can be told. As the title of this publication, perhaps the name “The American Bottom” deserves additional clarification. For those unfamiliar with the language of “bottom” or “bottoms”, this term refers to the flat, alluvial floodplain that lies
The American Bottom Gazette
adjacent to a river—a territory that is geographically, topographically, and often-times culturally distinct from the upland areas that lie further afield. The “American” designation here can be understood most fundamentally as a distinction: a distinction from the “Spanish” territory that, at the time of increased settler expansion in the late 17th and early 18th century, lay to the West, across the Mississippi River. At this time, prior to the Louisiana Purchase and the Corps of Discovery Expedition of 1804, the Mississippi River—and this particular floodplain—was the westernmost edge of the United States. So it is to this floodplain—rich in history, soil, and struggle—that we dedicate this publication.
Yet, to be sure, this is a landscape that is significant not only for its history. Alongside these deep historical episodes, still-vital communities call this place home. From Alton to Prarie du Rocher, from Brooklyn to Valmeyer, from Granite City to Kaskaskia, and the many smaller communities in-between, this is a landscape that is deeply lived, and which continues to be made and remade. And alongside it all runs the truly incomparable Mississippi—a river whose course has been modified and whose presence has been distanced from everyday life, but which remains a defining undercurrent to all of the spaces and meaning that inhere in this region. The publication you are holding is an effort to contribute to a more synthetic history of the region. Rather than focus on the municipal, county, or state divisions that have so defined this area, we instead want to scale out and draw a more connective narrative whereby we identify patterns of belonging, typologies of struggle, and, perhaps, galvanize collective meanings. Each issue of the Gazette will adopt a slightly different framework—and across all issues we hope to share the important work of cultural institutions on the ground, lived memories of inhabitants, and forgotten histories. Our goal, then, is to provide frameworks for reading and understanding the landscape we find today. Importantly, it is our hope that this publication— alongside its online presence www.theamericanbottom.org—serves as an invitation that facilitates actual navigation of and connection across this region—that these pages can work as a threshold between the world outthere and the immediate world of everyday-life. So dive in! And we hope to see you in the field! —The Editors Drainage in Southwestern Illinois 1973 Courtesy of Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis
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Goshen Settlement is located at the base of the bluffs where Judy’s Creek emerges from the uplands and cuts into the bottomland terrace. The creek, which still gives this corner of the American Bottom its geographic textures, was named after the first American settler in Madison County, Colonel Samuel Judy, who, in 1801, received a grant of 100 acres in the American Bottom near here. This seam along the creek and bluff was the center of American settlement and immigration in the first decade of
GOSHEN
the nineteenth century, and carried the name of Goshen since at least 1797, when brothers David and Anthony Badgley traversed the area and described it as such. Recounting this exercise in naming, the Illustrated Encyclopedia and Atlas Map of Madison County amplifies that “The luxuriant growth of grass and vegetation, evidence of the great fertility of the soil, reminded the explorers of the richness of the country, the best of the land of
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Egypt, in which the children of Israel had possessions, ‘And grew and multiplied exceedingly,’ and they called it Goshen.” While this settlement never grew to any substantial size, it did give its name to a prominent road across Illinois connecting the American Bottom settlements with the salt works on the Ohio
Detail from Monks Mound Quadrangle 1935 USGS
River. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, Goshen Road was the main east–west road in Illinois and delivered salt from its eastern terminus to settlers of the American Bottom. Remnants of the road, or at least short stretches bearing its
AB.8159 Goshen Settlement, Collinsville Township, Madison County, IL 2016 Jennifer Colten
name, endure throughout the state. This road remained the primary infrastructural investment in the state until the National Road made its aborted reach toward St. Louis in 1820. For more information on Goshen Settlement, visit Borderlands: The Goshen Settlement of William Bolin Whiteside, an extensive website created by Ben Ostermeier located at https://whiteside.siue.edu The American Bottom Gazette vol. 01 2019 >>> 5
KIDD LAKE
The names of the numerous wetlands, sloughs, and marshes of the Monroe Bottoms have gone through a number of designations—mapping the changing nature of settlement, governance, and attitudes. What is now known as Kidd Lake wetlands was part of the much larger Grand Marais—or “Great Marsh”—that arced across the bottomlands north of Prairie du Rocher. This 800-plus acre marsh features prominently in early settler descriptions of the bottoms, with the cry of geese and other waterfowl loud enough to inspire settlers to orient their windows away from the water. What was once called the Grand Marais was, by 1875, known as the concatenation of three water bodies—Kidd Lake, Grand Coolie, and Conner Lake. By the early twentieth century most every part of the former Grand Marais had been substantially drained, though the Illinois Department of Natural Resources currently operates a managed wetland for migratory birds along the Mississippi River Flyway. Cattails, lotus,
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Kidd Lake Wetlands Monroe County, IL 2015 Jesse Vogler
smartweed, cordgrass, river bulrush, false aster, and arrowleaf balsamroot form the wetland plant community that houses the spring frog chorus, the fall migration of wetland birds, and the winter habitat of muskrats.
Map Detail Monroe County, IL from the 1876 Atlas of the State of Illinois
The present-day designation receives its name from one of the first American settlers in the region—Robert Kidd. A soldier under Colonel George Rogers Clark who had taken part in the capture of Kaskaskia, Kidd returned to the American Bottom in 1781 and settled at the base of the bluff near here. For more information on Kidd Lake State Natural Area, contact the Site Superintendent, Randolph County Conservation Area, at 4301 South Lake Drive, Chester, Illinois 62233, or by phone at (618) 826-2706.
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Eugene Redmond Rush City, IL 2019 Jennifer Colten
RIVER MEMORIES Treasure Shields Redmond
As a child in Meridian, Mississippi one of my favorite spirituals was “Wade in the Water.” In our Baptist church “Wade in the Water” was reserved for baptisms, which were conducted in the sanctuary, on a raised pool with a glass frontispiece. It allowed the congregation full view of the newly saved member’s submersion and reemergence as
Treasure: I just noticed that sign that says, it says
Cargill, one way, Malcolm and Martin Park another way. So to me that’s really emblematic of the kind of push and pull that’s going on in this area.
Eugene: But that’s not Malcolm X …
a full fledged member of “the body of Christ.” “Wade in the Water” was one of songs
Treasure: What is it?
that had the historic distinction of also serving as a coded form of communication for
Eugene: Oh this is a white millionaire who built the geyser up here.
enslaved Africans. Overlayed onto the biblical Hebrew enslavement story in one grand metaphor, “Water” was any river that revolutionaries like Harriet Tubman, (called “Moses”) led enslaved Africans over into freedom (the promised land). Water and, in particular, rivers have always rang resonant in the collective imagination and cultural productions of African descendants in the US. But, as my church’s jewel case of a baptismal pool indicates, even in the deep south, actual contact with a river was a rare occurrence. Nearly 50 years prior, my father, Eugene Benjamin Redmond, had a wholly different interaction with the water. My father’s upsouth childhood included the Mississippi River in a way that seems inconceivable now. From fishing it, to swimming it, to being baptized in it, to making love next to it, the river figured largely in the lives
Treasure: Oh really? Eugene: Malcolm Martin. Treasure: Oh wow, I thought it was Malcolm X and
Martin Luther King. Isn’t that interesting.
Eugene: No, no his name is Malcolm Martin, he built the geyser. Treasure: So we’re on Front Street, in East St. Louis
now—riding along the river. And we can see the St. Louis Arch across the way. Let me ask you a question. The way that we can kind of see the arch right here, what was here? When you were a child, could you just walk down to the river?
and imaginations of post-war East St. Louis. In this Mississippi River-themed episode of
Eugene: Oh yeah. All this was bare.
The Memoir My Dad Wouldn’t Write podcast, we’re joined by photographer and colleague
Treasure: But this train was still here or is this a new
Jennifer Colten to hear and see what the river meant to my father and his community.
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track?
Eugene: Yeah, some of it is new but there were
openings. Most of the tracks were here. So you just cross the tracks and went on down to the river. They were on the ground. Treasure: And what kind of things would you do
when you went down there?
Eugene: To the river? Treasure: Yeah. Eugene: Well we’d do everything from party. Treasure: Okay so have drinks, have women there. Eugene: Right, right. Have sex. You would have
baptisms.
Treasure: Oh, churches did baptisms down there? Eugene: Yeah, yeah. Whatever, you know barbecue
and fun, family reunions. Swim in the river, boat in the river, canoe in the river, paddle in the river.
tampered with in the same ways.
Eugene: Our graveyard.
Jennifer: So what was the current of the river like
But now we’re heading to Rush City to show you where I walked. Now this tree street here, I walked that street. Just to show you where we walked to the river. So we were right on the river.
back then, was it really strong?
Eugene: It was sometimes strong, sometimes weak
but we knew. We instinctively, you know, Kentucky wind. So we could tell and we knew where to swim ... That’s one right there. We knew where there were sinkholes, you can read them. If you know it, that’s one over there. See that spot is a flow— Treasure: Yeah, you can see that spot where the flow
changes. You can see the whirlpools and sinkholes. You can tell from the surface type a little bit.
Eugene: Yeah, you know what’s gonna take you
down.
Treasure: Wow. So you said people would trap
rabbits on the way to the river?
Eugene: On the way to or on the way back from the
Eugene: Yeah.
river. Just fat rabbits, we made our own weapons. I never was a hunter, I never ... I couldn’t stomach it. I’d eat the results but I was just a ... I always had a weak stomach.
Treasure: So it’s really loud right now because we’re
Treasure: Well you were a poet!
Treasure: Interesting.
literally about 20 feet from a train. But we have maneuvered our bodies over here, right near the river. To see the landscape that has now been made so inaccessible. We had to kind of fling our bodies up on a piece of concrete and that’s just to see the river, not to get near it. As I’m looking further down this wall they have, we could get near the river…
Eugene: We could go in there if you want to. Treasure: Yeah but it’s so interesting that this used
to be something that people could touch and now—
Eugene: I know. It’s been made really hard to get
near. All this was just beach like. Sand. Like a normal beach. Treasure: And now it has a lot of debris, it looks
Eugene: Yeah. Treasure: You might’ve been thinking about the soul
of the rabbit…
Eugene: And all this stuff, no bridges no freeways all
this. All this, we just walked. It was like woods.
Treasure: I wonder is it like that in every city, where
the river is kinda like the outskirts place. It’s where you put stuff that you don’t want to look at, think about, that you see as refuse or dumping. Because we could even say that about the mental health facility nearby. People don’t want it near, in the middle of the city.
Jennifer: Now to see it this way, all with the highways and— Eugene: I know and it ... You know each time I would come home before I moved home, it would marvel me and disturb me, what are they doing to my city. Especially when they dropped the freeway down in the middle of this. You see what I mean? All of this, look how much area we had. All this stuff, you see the dips, it was just full of puddles. Treasure: So right now we’re driving through the
part that used to backup and flood all the way from the river. And right now it’s crisscrossed by a network of highways.
Eugene: And railroad tracks. Highways are above us on pylons or stilts or ... Whatever you would call them. But before, these would be all the homes on the way to the river. And we would just stop. Watering holes, we called them fishing holes. Had all these dozens of holes, this is all up and down the river right—whatever town you were in. Treasure: What kind of fish was it? Do you
remember?
Eugene: Yeah, catfish. Carp. Some would call it gar-
fish and those were fish without scales. They sort of look like ... They were like catfish, no scales but they looked more like these grotesque prehistoric snakes.
Treasure: Really, but were they tasty? Jennifer: You saw them? Treasure: He ate them. Jennifer: You would catch them and eat them?
industrial, it looks like it’s not owned by people, like it’s owned by a corporation. But we can see St. Louis from right here. The ice is floating down the river. Is this one of the areas where people would swim or is that another part?
Eugene: I’ll show you. Yeah, closer to where our actually streets were. But this would be one place ‘cause people would come from their homes. I’ll show you, yeah. Treasure: Okay. Eugene: My older brother would swim to the middle pier, climb it, lean against it or whatever. Treasure: That same one? The east one? Eugene: Yeah. Take a break, rest, swim all the way
over to St. Louis. Take a break, swim back to the same thing. And swim back—we watched him. Treasure: Wow. Burnett or John Henry? Eugene: John Henry. Jennifer: With all the current and everything in
river?
Map Detail 1875 from Robert Tyson, A History of East St. Louis
Eugene: No not that, it faulted out. Treasure: You know what I’m suspecting, that the
current was different because the river hadn’t been
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Treasure Shields Redmond and Eugene Redmond East St. Louis, IL 2019 Jennifer Colten
Treasure Shields Redmond Fairview Heights, IL 2019 Jennifer Colten
ridicule people who came up and put a red handkerchief in the upper pocket of the coveralls like they are so country. And they say “ultra zero” and we didn’t say it because we were first generation. I mean Midwesterners. But our folks said it, you know my father was a very well educated man, not with formal education but he was self-taught. He taught me, he taught my grandmother, his mother how to read during the Depression. How to read and write. Treasure: Well you know what, I had two questions.
Eugene: Something called garfish. Snake looking. Treasure: Did boys cook or did you take it home to
Jennifer: That must be a regional thing crayfish,
crawfish.
mothers who cooked?
Eugene: It is. It’s a southern thing.
Eugene: Mother, my mother cooked them and then the boys learned a different way of cooking from the men. So, the boys learned how to cook in open pots outside and a lot of red pepper... In fact so much red pepper that it would turn the fish red. And some of the fish turned red like crawfish. Which I didn’t even know how to pronounce until I first saw it written down that it was crayfish, right? It was really funny, like I’d be trying to figure out, looking at the picture in the book, and looking at the spelling.
Treasure: Because the heart of East St. Louis is very
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southern.
Eugene: Yeah, that’s right. And as I was saying, they
call it “up south.” That meant two things. Take pride in their southern black culture and your life is still in danger even though you’re up here. Be aware of white people but at the same time don’t just give up that bad ass southern culture. The way you cook and the way you talk and the way you walk. Then people would get up here for a few years and then they would start to
Number one I’m thinking about the kind of selfdetermination that being able to go out into the landscape and feed yourself creates. I was wondering, do you see that as some sort of major loss, some kind of psychic loss?
Eugene: Oh very much so. Very much so that’s why
I said to Yan and Ram, you had to be able to make a fire without a match. You had to be able to count quickly without a digital machine. If somebody says okay, you owe me $87.13. You’re supposed to be able to say ... I mean this cost $80.13 you’re supposed to say I owe you $19.93. I mean I do it all the time when I’m around people that don’t know, we’re trying to do something and then I just instantly do it. So you have to know how to do that. I tell them every time we’ve been together. Know how to make a fire, make sure you got a lot of water around you.
Make a fire without a match and you see we can keep going on and on.
been gone so fast in my day because people needed them for fuel.
Jennifer: Yeah, this is incredible.
Treasure: The railroad ties, the wood?
Eugene: Yeah, it’s a hell of a network. This was our
Eugene: Yeah. Know what we would do? I would
territory. This was our joint, it came in handy when we— Treasure: So what is now basically below this
network of highways and kind of barren could be one way you describe it.
Eugene: And along the side and shot through with railroad tracks. These are animal trails. Treasure: Sure. Just the other day driving down
St.Claire into East St.Louis, a little troop of deer ... It looked like the mother was standing in the road so that the other younger people, well they’re people, the younger deer could cross and that was right behind East St. Louis Senior High School, that I saw the group of deer. So they’re still among us, they’ve just retreated because we kind of encroached on them.
Eugene: And I’m gonna show you a phenomenon
when we get up here ... These cross ties or railroad wall. How valuable they were right there. Whenever they changed the ties, they put new ones down. They’d throw those on the side. Now those would’ve
run over there. I would race boys over there and put my family’s initials on in chalk. To speak for them. And everybody would do it and it was always honest. Nobody ever went in and erased any and sometimes when they were throwing them over or throwing them off the bridge, we would run under there and sometimes people would get hurt. Treasure: Because you guys had wood heaters in
your house, and coal?
Eugene: Yeah. But if you were going to be frying fish in breakfast, you could just use the wood. If you were gonna cook a stew then use coal. Long burning. I mean that was something that’s gone now. Treasure: And the last question I had was regarding
pollution Dad. With the river, specifically with the water, did you notice anything in the fish that indicated it? Did you hear adults talking about anything regarding the cleanliness of the river and how did you guys see the river?
Treasure: Okay. Jennifer: To take out all the insides. Eugene: After you scale them. Treasure: But the idea of a chemical pollution
wasn’t talked about.
Eugene: It wasn’t talked about. You know like, unfortunately ... Of course there were always people around, there was always a nerdy person. Just like there was somebody on the corner saying ... We’d be in church and somebody would say “you think a white kid’s just gonna save you from this shit?” And our grandmas would make us cross the street. Treasure: So there was always somebody speaking
against, in opposition to the environment? In opposition to the cultural story.
Eugene: And then there’d be somebody with a sign: “Jesus will be here at 11:15 A.M. Tuesday.” Treasure: The doomsday folks, the rapture folks. Eugene: Yeah. It was coldblooded.
Eugene: It wasn’t talked about that much, but fish
were cleaned very carefully.
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The American Bottom East St. Louis, IL 2013 Jesse Vogler
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While Cahokia Mounds State Park, 12 miles to the south, receives the majority of archeological and tourist interest, the community of South Roxana has a pre-contact mound of its own. Part of what was once a larger clustering of 11 mounds known to archeologists as the Grassy Lake site, the Roxana Mound is one of the few remaining mounds after large-scale agriculture and the development of the Shell Oil Refinery
SOUTH ROXANA
leveled the area for industrial purposes. William Clark—of Lewis and Clark fame—was one of the first to record the presence of these mounds as he explored the area while waiting out the winter of 1803–4 at Camp DuBois, not far from the site. In 1947 Roxana purchased the land around Mound 10 for
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Mound [6330] South Roxana, IL 2016 Jennifer Colten
Grassy Lake Mound Group + Village Site South Roxana, IL 1940 Charles Laun
a city park, and to this day, sitting behind the fence of Dad’s Club Park and perched on the mown lawn of a municipal park, there is a non-descript, overgrown knoll whose massing dates to the Mississippian period of settlement. While human remains were found in many of the other mounds of the Grassy Lake site, there is no evidence of human burials in this remaining mound.
The Grassy Lake Mound at South Roxana Dad’s Club Park can be visited at 417 Roxana Ave, South Roxana, Illinois.
This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Fri, 02 Nov 2018 19:00:46 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
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FAIRMONT CITY
Travelers speeding through the American Bottom on Interstate 70 would be forgiven for missing the Fairmont City exit while contemplating the monumental scale of Monks Mound and the Milam Landfill on either side of its municipal boundaries. Indeed, an appreciation of the cultural and historical complexity of Fairmont City requires slowing down, spending time with its citizens and their community institutions. One might find, between visits to Mexican restaurants, neighborhood taverns, and the public library, a social fabric unique within the entire St. Louis region. Proudly home to the highest concentration per capita of Latinx residents, Fairmont City presents a rich cultural fabric that animates its neighborhoods and public spaces. Though the community might be surrounded by unmistakable mounds in two directions, Fairmont City’s cultural heritage offers a pathway through which to understand its own hidden, lesser-known mounds and compelling connections between the past and future of this entire region.
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AB.7183 Fairmont City, IL 2019 Jennifer Colten
The story of Fairmont City begins in 1914, when the American Zinc Company moved its smelting facility from Kansas and recruited experienced zinc workers from Asturias, Spain, to lead operations. After a prolonged strike in 1918, the company looked to Mexico to expand its workforce, and, though the subsequent years, workers from Poland, Croatia, Lithuania, and Italy, among many European nations, joined what quickly became a community of immigrants brought close through shared labor. As their need for housing increased in this as-yet unnamed community, homes were constructed from the sides of disused refrigerated boxcars, a majority of which were still emblazoned with the logo for the Nebraska-based Fairmont Creamery. Through that accidental iconography, a town found its name. As the American Zinc workforce rose to 1,800, a tight-knit community developed and created physical and social structures that continue through to today. Families intermarried across cultures, worshipped together at Holy Rosary Church, and sent their children to the parish school. Mexican Hall, now El Ranchito restaurant, served as one of the community centers, offering music, dancing, and a place from which citizens could hold fundraisers when a neighbor needed assistance. Stevie’s Tavern would frequently serve schoolchildren hot lunches at noon, and Kokotovich’s Tavern (Koke’s) cashed checks for the plant’s workforce on payday, as Fairmont City had no
official bank. To welcome guests and travelers along Route 66 (Collinsville Road), The Indian Mound Motel was built on top of the former site of a Mississippian-era burial mound. Each evening at 9pm, as residents retell it, the whistle at City Hall would call the children back to their homes. Though replaced by a siren, this nightly reminder continues today. On quiet nights, coyotes in the woods at the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site can be heard answering its call. Both the everyday social and spatial characteristics of Fairmont City were shaped by the organizing presence of industry, in ways that have provided an uneasy continuity to the present. Deeply ingrained in local memory is Acid Ditch, an orange-colored creek that ran along the periphery of American Zinc and was a childhood stomping grounds for generations. For children and adults alike, the proximity to the zinc plant was an inescapable part of daily life. “You could always see solid black dust clouds,” a resident told the St. Louis Post Dispatch in 2010. “When there was a hard wind, you could actually feel the cinders.” The byproduct of this smelting process was dispersed through other means as well, as the plant provided zinc slag to residents repair their roads, alleys, driveways, and yards. Though American Zinc relocated its smelting operations to Sauget in 1967, the legacy of this slag persisted in ways that have complicated
Mexican Hall Fairmont City, IL [n.d.] Courtesy of Fairmont City History Club
‘We have always been a community of immigrants. We still are full of exceptional people, and those immigrants that come in are not here to ‘get something free.’ They send their kids to school, and their kids go out and become good citizens. You hear all the bad stuff. This is a really good example of the good stuff. And it’s still happening, it’s not something of the past.’ —Mary Migalla
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Original Pole from Mexican Hall Fairmont City, IL 2019 Jennifer Colten
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Mound [5960] Fairmont City, IL 2016 Jennifer Colten
Fairmont City Civic League Platform [n.d.] Courtesy of Fairmont City History Club
contemporary life in Fairmont City. Concerns heightened in 1976, when XTRA Intermodal began crushing the slag material to use as fill and leveler to construct a new operation on the site. Based on a US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study, there is an average of three and a half feet of this ground slag material, which contains numerous hazardous heavy metals, spread across the 90 acres of the site and in the surrounding shallow ground water, including Acid Ditch. Upon the direction of the Illinois EPA in 1996, XTRA’s subsequent corporate partner Blue Tee dug up 152 properties and residences contaminated with lead. However, to the disbelief of Fairmont City citizens, the EPA allowed Blue
Tee to dump this material back on the old XTRA ground. Another twenty years elapsed until, in 2016, the former American Zinc Company site received Superfund status. Reclamation work is currently taking place across Fairmont City, as teams are removing 24 inches of topsoil from many residences and replacing with clean fill. This $11.4 million project gathers this waste in a corner of the former American Zinc Company grounds, a 35-acre hill surrounded by silt fencing and covered with soil— adding a further symbolic mound structure to the landscape of the central American Bottom. Though this mound sits behind fencing in the recesses of the municipal grid, and though it continues to be weighted with complex community memories, this industrial legacy has not defined Fairmont City’s present moment. As tax revenue decreased, in 1987 city leaders formed a mutually beneficial partnership with Waste Management and annexed the expanding 176-acre Milam landfill, in exchange for sizable support for civic infrastructure, first responders, and donations to the Holy Rosary elementary school. As that section of the landfill has since reached capacity, and revenue has decreased, Fairmont City has coordinated developments at the former site of the National City Stockyard, annexed in 1999, that now sits within the junction of interstates and the landing point for the recent Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge.
national story to emerge from Fairmont City has centered on the innovative and inclusive programming of its public library. With the closure of Holy Rosary, the library has become even more of a cultural center of the community— offering a host of social services, and welcoming Spanish-speakers from a multi-county range. In 2015, TheBANK of Edwardsville opened a branch in an adjoining portion of the building, offering the first full service, bilingual banking center in the St. Louis region. Whereas a previous generation may have cashed their paychecks at Kokotovich’s Tavern, the next generation of Fairmont City residents can do their banking while their children explore the stacks in the public library. It is in this space that the Fairmont City History Club meets. Led by local historian Mary Migalla, the group has curated displays on Fairmont City families, the American Zinc strike of 1948, and Mexican heritage, among many others, with future displays and publications planned. The Fairmont City Civic League Platform, included in this archive, bridges its history with the vibrant environment one might find in the library on a given afternoon (see above). The Fairmont City History Club gathers the third Saturday of each month at 10am. All are welcome to attend.
True to its legacy as a welcoming, collaborative community, the most recent regional and
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WOOD RIVER REFINERY HISTORY MUSEUM
Located at 900 South Central Avenue in Roxana, the Wood River Refinery History Museum offers the public a unique opportunity to understand the 101-year history of oil refining in the region. This story is told through a remarkably wide range of objects in their collection, such as cans of paint used to distinguish the exterior of Shell stations across the country (known at midcentury as “Shell Yellow, Ditzler PPG #80004”), spark-proof wooden shoes used to clean the storage tanks, and correspondence related to a strange goat herd problem in the refinery grounds. Through exhibits that incorporate photography, video, memorabilia, and even a 1924 Chevrolet Roadster, the Museum traces the site’s history as a Shell Oil refinery through to ConocoPhillips and EnCana’s use of this facility as a transcontinental connection point for refining oil, via pipeline, from destinations as distant as the Alberta tar sands. The Museum opened in 1986, the product of a group of retired employees who worked with Shell’s assistance for many years to gather and preserve this material. The results of this expansive archive stretch across three buildings, with the main museum exhibits housed in what was once the former Building Diagnostic Lab.
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AB.9982 Wood River, IL 2017 Jennifer Colten
The enormous care and dedication of museum staff is evident throughout, as exhibits reveal the complex scientific processes behind popular products made in the refinery—and also connect that labor to the individuals, families, and social bonds created in that space (see right). Other exhibits reveal lesser-known aspects of the refinery’s work, such as the massive caverns (see left) excavated 450 feet below the refinery’s northeast corner that can hold the equivalent of 500,000 barrels of butane. Ultimately, The Wood River Refinery History Museum tells a story much larger than Shell Oil, one that reveals how hard work, creativity, and camaraderie were the crucial elements that made possible a series of products that shaped the course of 20th-century life. This museum, located on the grounds of the refinery, also provides a unique opportunity to explore how industry shapes and remakes our landscape and communities, and how it gives form to social and spatial relationships not found elsewhere. The Museum is open 10am-4pm Wednesday-Thursday, with special tour hours by appointment. Admission is free and donations are welcome. We recommend spending two hours to fully experience this collection. The Museum can be reached at (618) 255-3718 or via www.wrrhm.org.
Butane Cavern, Last Underground View Wood River, IL 1960 Courtesy WRRHM
Shell Review, Picnic Issue Wood River, IL 1937 Courtesy WRRHM
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Map of the Country of the Illinois 1796 Georges Henry Victor Collot from VOYAGE DANS L’AMÉRIQUE SEPTENTRIONALE, OU DESCRIPTION DES PAYS ARROSÉS PAR LE MISSISSIPI, L’OHIO, LE MISSOURI ET AUTRES RIVIÈRES AFFLUENTES
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Alisa Blatter <<< Alisa is a landscape designer, mapmaker, and writer living in St. Louis. Struck by the tallgrass prairie landscape since her childhood in Minnesota, she seeks to resolve its loss against the forms of the urban spatial environment and across private, public, and nonprofit realms. Her writing, cast from first-person research, considers the phenomenology of this and other landscapes. Alisa holds a masters degree in landscape architecture from the Sam Fox School of Washington University in St. Louis.
Jennifer Colten <<< Jennifer Colten’s work focuses on ambiguous landscapes and histories of cultural and geographic space. Her photographic practice commits to an exploration of sites at the margins the urban environment addressing social, cultural and environmental implications of land use. Colten has received funding from the Mid-America Arts Alliance, the Ferguson Academic Seed Fund, and grants from Regional Arts Commission in St Louis. Colten’s photographs have been collected in institutions nationally and internationally. She currently teaches photography at Washington University in St Louis.
Matthew Fluharty <<< Matthew Fluharty is a writer, artist, and curator interested in the convergence of landscape and the vernacular with contemporary art. He is the Founder and Executive Director of Art of the Rural, a member of M12 Studio, and he serves on the Board of Directors of Common Field. Matthew is co-curating The River, an exhibition opening at the Minnesota Museum of American Art in February 2020, and High Visibility: On Location in Rural America, opening at the Plains Art Museum in November of 2020. Colorfield, a book of poems, archives, and fieldwork will be published by Last Chance Press in 2020.
Treasure Shields Redmond <<< A Mississippi native, Treasure Shields Redmond is a published poet, master educator, community arts organizer, and successful entrepreneur. Treasure was raised in the federal housing projects, and went on to be signed to M.C. Hammer’s label as a hip hop artist, and writer. She is the author of chop: a collection of kwansabas for fannie lou hamer (2015). Her doctoral research focuses on the recorded performances of foundational Black Women poets, and the ways they deployed sound to impact the canon and justice movements. Treasure centers collaboration in her personal arts practice and as an organizing principle. As such, she has co-founded a funding collective for Black artists called The Black Skillet, and a podcast that centers voices of color called Who Raised You? Treasure is the founder of Feminine Pronoun Consultants, LLC, and Get The Acceptance Letter Academy.
Jesse Vogler <<< Jesse Vogler is an artist and architect whose work sits at the intersection of landscape, politics, and performance. His writing and projects address the entanglements between landscape and law, and take on themes of work, property, expertise, and perfectibility. Jesse is a MacDowell Fellow, Fulbright Scholar, and in addition to his art and design practice, is a land surveyor, is co-director of The American Bottom project, co-directs the Institute of Marking and Measuring, and teaches across landscape, architecture, art, and urbanism at Washington University in St. Louis.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to extend a special thanks to all the individuals and institutions that have made work on this publication so inspiring, and who have contributed time and stories to this issue: John Conrad of Conrad Press; Jonathan Hanahan of Milieu; Eugene Redmond; founder Mary Migalla and Tony Aleman of the Fairmont City History Club; Katie Heaton at the Fairmont City Library; Gabriel Morales of El Ranchito, formerly the Mexican Hall; Dave Lewis and John Mangoff of the Wood River Refinery History Museum; and docents Sharon Arnold and Robert LaMarsh at the Wood River Historical Society Museum. The Gazette is a collaborative publication of The American Bottom Project, Art of the Rural, The Institute of Marking and Measuring, and artists, communities, and collaborators up and down the Mississippi River. We gratefully thank and acknowledge Illinois Humanities and the Divided City Initiative of Washington University in St. Louis for their financial support in making this publication possible.
RECIPE
Rush City Crawfish This is the simplest way to prepare crawfish after immediately catching them using meat as bait. Boys would drape a sturdy stick or board with old rag bologna or another cheap meat such as the fat trimmed from a slaughtered hog, which would have been accessible in post war East St. Louis. They would immerse the stick or board in the river. Then once the desired number of crawfish had accumulated they would prepare them.
Equipment <<< Large boiling pot with a handle Coal for fire Firewood and sticks Area bricks to create a stand for the pot Matches
Ingredients <<< Live Crawfish Red pepper Hot sauce Vess cola for you
22 <<< The American Bottom Gazette vol. 01 2019
Cooking <<< Fill the pot half full of water and place it on the bricks over which a fire has been started. While waiting for the water to boil, send someone with a bucket to get water to wash the crawfish with cool water. Add around 1 lb. of your crawfish to the water and wait a couple of minutes. Add the red pepper and hot sauce. Let boil for around two minutes, then use a sturdy plank to remove the pot from the fire. Let the crawfish soak for a few minutes in the pot. Carefully pour off the water. Eat directly from the pot, adding hot sauce to taste as you eat. Enjoy with Vess soda. —Treasure Shields Redmond and Eugene Redmond
The American Bottom Gazette vol. 01 2019 >>> 23
TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 >>> The American Bottom 4 >>>
Goshen
6 >>> Kidd Lake 8 >>> River Memories
PROJECT EDITORS Editors <<< Jesse Vogler Matthew Fluharty Jennifer Colten Design Editor <<<
12 >>> The American Bottom
Alisa Blatter
14 >>> South Roxana
With Contributions By <<<
16 >>> Fairmont City
Treasure Shields Redmond
20 >>> Wood River Refinery History Museum
cover image
22 >>> Acknowledgments 24 <<< The American Bottom Gazette vol. 01 2019
WITH THE SUPPORT OF
AB.5210 Fairmont City, IL 2018 Jennifer Colten
Copyright © 2019 The American Bottom Project
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