Mount Carroll

Quiet day at the Timber Lake Campground today, Monday. All the weekenders left yesterday and the seasonal group also is mostly gone, back to work in Chicago, Dubuque, or wherever. When Matt and family lived in Grand Rapids we often parked at a campground on the outskirts of town. There were quite a few locals who packed the kids, pets, tents, and campers and spent the weekend at essentially their neighborhood campground. Swimming, campfires, etc., just like a real vacation but without the driving hassle. Nobody ever said, "Are we there yet?"

We picked Kaci up at noon and drove into Mount Carroll for lunch (about five miles from Timber Lake). Had a nice visit - she's really enjoying the summer, even though there's NOTHING HERE - in Mount Carroll, pop. 1800. Thirty miles to a Target or Wal-Mart; more seriously, one hour to a hospital. She was up until 2:00 am after yesterday's show, tearing down the Grease set and putting up the set for the next show -- pretty complicated set, I guess. She's on the wardrobe team this week, which means she and others were driving to nearby towns with thrift shops this afternoon in search of appropriate costumes for upcoming shows. That's show biz -- one day you're a star; the next you're doing wardrobe.

After we took Kaci back to Timber Lake we returned to spend some quality time in Mount Carroll. Doing the Chamber of Commerce's bidding, "Come experience Mount Carroll's historic grace, scenic beauty and country charm."

On the south side of town there is a very nice college campus -- red brick buildings, green lawns, lots of trees -- the prototypical small midwest college, at least that's what it appears to be. Turns out that Shimer College was founded here in 1853. It was one of the smallest liberal arts college, enrollment 150, and one with a Great Books curriculum. But, it moved away 30 years ago. Here's the Wikipedia short history:

Shimer was founded in 1853 in Mount Carroll, Illinois, by Frances Wood Shimer and Cinderella Gregory as a non-denominational all girls seminary. In the early 1960s, Shimer gained national attention with a Time magazine article about the school highlighting its reputation as a counterculture mecca. The article cited a survey by the Harvard Educational Review that ranked Shimer as among the top eleven small liberal arts colleges in the United States, along with Carleton College, Reed College, and Swarthmore College. Mounting debts and bankruptcy forced the college to leave its Mount Carroll campus and move to the northern Chicago suburb of Waukegan, Illinois in the winter of 1978-79.

On January 19, 2006, amid controversy, the Board of Trustees announced that it had accepted an invitation to move Shimer College to the Illinois Institute of Technology campus in Chicago. The move was completed August 10, 2006.

I don't know what happened, but I can't imagine this being a counterculture center for very long.

For the last 29 years the campus has been the site of the Campbell Center for historic preservation studies, which sounds interesting. Their clientele is mid-career professionals in the business of collections care and historic preservation. Many campus buildings appeared to us to be not in use, but the campus is neat and well-maintained and must be successfully filling a need.

The town has several brick streets and many elegant houses on leafy lots. Here's a shot of downtown. Brick-making was a key industry in the town's founding.

And here's a Civil War monument on the courthouse square.

I'm sorry, though, the courthouse doesn't compare well with those we've shown you earlier, so no picture. It looks like three buildings stuck together that don't quite match.

After our sightseeing turn we found a tea shoppe and had some very good pie and cobbler, each a dollar and a quarter! What a deal.

Cheers,

Susie and Rob