192 pgs. | $27.00 paperback
The cost of living being what it is today, local road trips pose an attractive alternative to long-distance travel by air. But where to go? That’s a question with a million answers, but a book like Jessica Mlinaric’s Secret Illinois: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure can act as a good starting point to help you decide where you may be interested in going. Mlinaric also tells you what attractions are free but refers you to the appropriate website for attractions that charge an entry fee, a smart move since pricing often changes (in fact, I’d double check for anything listed as free as well since such things often change).
I’ve lived in the St. Louis area for upwards of 20 years, with regular excursions into Illinois, and I still discovered quite a few things I didn’t know by reading this book. For instance, Illinois contains both the first town in the United States platted and registered by an African American and the oldest majority African American town still in existence. The latter, Brooklyn, gets an entry in this volume, while the former, New Philadelphia, gets only a mention, but if you’re interested in African American history both might merit a visit. That particularly goes for residents of St. Louis, since Brooklyn is located about three miles from downtown St. Louis, while New Philadelphia is just 110 miles further to the northwest.
If Nordic heritage is more your thing, you might like to see the Viking ship located in Geneva, a western suburb of Chicago. It doesn’t really date from Viking times but was built in 1893 using materials and technology available to the Vikings in the 9th century by a Norwegian sailor who wanted to demonstrate that Leif Erickson could have sailed to the New World. That point seemed particularly relevant at the time due to the World’s Columbian Exhibition taking place in Chicago to celebrate the “discovery” of America five centuries later by Christopher Columbus (the idea of discovering a place where people were already living is rather strange but that’s the language often used in this context). The possibility of such a trip was further supported when the ship made the 3674-mile journey to America and then to Chicago and the Columbian exhibition while manned by 12 sailors and powered only by oars and sails.
There are many more sites like these featured in Secret Illinois, as well as some more obscure attractions like the albino squirrels of Olney, the world’s largest corn maze near Spring Grove, and the home of the corn dog in Springfield. Large representations of the human figure get a lot of mentions as well, so if that’s your thing this book has you covered. The best way to explore the possibilities is by browsing to see what strikes your fancy, although you’re on your own to figure out where each location is since there’s no map or geographic index. Both would have been nice additions to this book, particularly for car-free adventurers like myself, and a thematic index would also be useful if there’s ever a revised edition.
Mlinaric has written several similar books about the Chicago area, so the 84 locations featured in this book are mostly in the rest of the state, although a few could be described as being within greater Chicagoland. The author visited all the locations herself and supplemented her first-hand experience with interviews, so the entries are grounded in a personal but informed perspective. Even if you don’t have a trip planned for the near future, Secret Illinois is a fun armchair read, full of entertaining trivia and unexpected facts and illustrated by photos (taken by Mlinaric herself) so that you may find yourself tempted to hit the road after all. | Sarah Boslaugh
Click here for more information or to purchase Secret Illinois directly from Reedy Press. For any readers in the greater Chicago area, Jessica Mlinaric will be doing a public presentation/signing on October 2 from 3-4pm at Maine Township, 1700 Ballard Rd. in Park Ridge, IL.
