Journal Standard
  • Looking Back: Exhibit is a panorama of the American journey

  • Nothing has had a larger stake in United States history than the changing modes, methods and moods of its travel, its migrations, its journeys. It’s taken generations of diehard, daring people brave enough to wend their way across the prairies, to forge their way through, throw caution to the wind and just take off o...
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  • Nothing has had a larger stake in United States history than the changing modes, methods and moods of its travel, its migrations, its journeys. It’s taken generations of diehard, daring people brave enough to wend their way across the prairies, to forge their way through, throw caution to the wind and just take off on their chosen journeys. This is true from the beginning when pioneers suffered pain and privation to roll across in wagons, and through the years up to those who test fly the fragile first aircraft until those later daredevils buckled into spacecraft to walk on the moon. We trace their paths with awe.
    The story of American journeys is one of a nation continuously on the move. America has never been stationary, never, from the beginning when a hardy breed of man roamed its prairies, mountains and shores, on until these present times when populations are so mobile. The entire awesome saga of the centuries is depicted in the current exhibit, free for all, at Freeport Public Library. To digest it all and savor it fully, it can take an afternoon. But it is well worth it. What better recommendation could it claim than its Smithsonian Institution label?
    The pictorial exhibit with striking art and plain-talk narrative depicts the drama, bitter and sweet, of the development of the land, the industry, the varied cultures and the tough fiber it took to form the mindset and muscle of our nation, from the primitive to the present. Given the attention it deserves it can take several hours or perhaps more than one visit. The following is a sampling of what you’ll find in the various stages of the exhibit.
    In the Beginning
    As early as 1591, a French expedition landed in what is now Florida and received a “friendly reception” by the Indians. As years passed, immigrants from both northern and southern Europe braved the Atlantic in their wooden tubs. Others came from Africa to our southeastern coast and to South America.
    Immigrants came from varied motivations, some for religious liberty, some for the opportunities of wealth and others just for the adventure to settle in an unknown land.
    More than 20,000 Puritans moved to America during the 14 years between 1629 and 1643. They came to break free from the Church of England, stated the narrative accompanying illustrations such as a ship jam-packed with people. The exhibit is a winding progression of standing screens which display pictures and narrative such as pioneer men carrying an ax and a gun on their shoulders and a wife with the rim of a spinning wheel in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other. In spite of the dangers and hardships, these brave adventurers came, overjoyed, in quest of good and cheap land.
    Page 2 of 3 - The Settlers Push West.
    Eager traders and settlers followed the Indian trails. They found villages which the Indians had established. They staked their claims wherever they saw fit and built their log cabins.
    The settlers in the Appalachian Mountains found it a huge task clearing the land of the endless forests of pines and hardwoods. They learned that killing the trees by stripping a band of bark from their trunks made them easier to cut. The smoke from the burning piles of dead trees was a common sight in the 1700s and early 1800s.
    The immigrants heading west of the Appalachians cut new roads through the dense hardwood forests which blanketed the eastern United States. Travel was still mostly on foot or horseback but some could travel by coach. Freight was moved on wagons drawn by horses or oxen. St. Louis became a hub for western development.
    Meanwhile, there were those folk who had implemented the slave trade for labor to aid in the work of their developing plantations. The narrative described the conditions aboard the slave ships from Africa as “scenes of horror,” with the screams of women and groans of the dying, along with the awful stench which was “enough to suffocate the passengers.”
    The Africans were brought in chains, being treated as trade goods, and became a crucial part of the economics in both the North and the South. In the Caribbean area the slaves produced sugar and rum for export, and in the south of the North American continent produced tobacco and cotton for shipment to England.
    By 1800, we are told, the settlers were demanding new and better roads, bridges and canals, as well as ferry crossings. Until the 1860s when the slavery question came to a head splitting the North and the South, the slaves and immigrants provided much of the labor to build these new aids to travel and transportation. Thus the slave trade flourished.
    The Rails Were Laid
    As railroads became more prevalent in the mid-1800s, the trains offered expansion of the cattle industry in the southwest and the wheat belt of the upper Midwest. Wheat crops made Minneapolis and St. Paul into major flour-milling centers. Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, Fort Worth, Denver and Los Angeles became beef-packing centers. Eastern industries prospered by supplying western settlers with necessary supplies and farm equipment. One impressive picture showed a train of open cars loaded with sheep. Another showed cattle in a North Dakota stockyard. A picture of an 1886 cattle drive is shown.
    One antique poster hailed free land available in Dakota. Another poster dated 1877 invited all “colored people” to come to Kansas, no reason given. Their rail fare would be $5. A third poster advertised millions of acres available in Iowa and Nebraska for low prices and 6 percent interest. A poster with notations in the German language offered land in Nebraska.
    Page 3 of 3 - From an 1889 Harper’s Weekly magazine was shown a mad “free-for-all” of horses and wagons “tearing across the open country like fiends.” The railroads were selling lands along their right-of-ways “to pay the huge debts incurred to build their lines.” A notation tells us the railroads brought vast numbers of people to the Midwest many of whom came and stayed. There was some Indian resistance, but as it was explained, this died when the natives realized it was futile.
    Greater Day for Travelers
    May 10, 1869, was a key day in American journeys. The country’s first transcontinental railroad was completed. The rails from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Sacramento, California, met. Chinese laborers building from the west and Irish immigrants and war veterans from the east met at Promontory, Utah, after laying 1,776 miles of rails. It was a grand scene of celebration. It was a great boon to the west and for much of the 20th century “railroads carried everybody everywhere.”
    The first half of the 20th century saw great rapid transformations in mobility and commerce. Railroads reached their peaks in the 1920s while electric and gasoline-powered vehicles were becoming commonplace.
    Travel Takes Flight
    By the 1920s the U.S. Post Office Department awarded contracts for Air Mail and soon the early airlines were organized. The bold and brave … and wealthy … citizens were enduring the noise and vibration of piston engines to fly to their destinations. The schedules were haphazard, we’re told, but by 1940, “travel by air was safe and more extensive, even though a small percentage of Americans had ever tried it.”
    Air travel was here to stay, and starting in 1934 the Donegle DC-3 made commercial aviation truly practical. This plane brought airline travel to every major American city and to smaller towns as well.
    American travel was able to expand forevermore and meet the perpetual and eternal passion of Americans for the journey, by land, sea and air, and eventually into space. This account is only a fraction of what there is to see in the total display. You will discover, if you take it in, a fascinating historical gem, an entertaining, informative history lesson. 