Thursday, September 23, 2004 11:54 AM CDT
Embarras River has many stories to tell about local history
By BONNIE CLARK, Features Writer
Boaters on the Embarras River could while away an afternoon drifting and daydreaming about what life was like along the river over the past century and a half or so.
With a healthy imagination, they could watch history unfold along the river banks -- watch a young Burl Ives paddle by crooning a 1920s ballad or, for the more history-minded, watch a young Abraham Lincoln and family ford the river on his first visit to Coles County.
There are so many stories to be told, stories of Indian skirmishes and hardscrabble pioneer farmers in the early 1820s and 1830s; and of an Oakland entrepreneur, Colonel Tibbs, who early newspapers report was operating a steamboat on the river -- a paddleboat -- for pleasure cruises between Oakland and Charleston around the turn of the century.
The Embarras River, with headwaters in Champaign-Urbana, flows southeastward for 174 miles before it joins the Wabash River near Vincennes, Ind., according to "Paddling Illinois," a Trails Books Guide by Illinois native and veteran canoeist Mike Svob.
Svob cites Fox Ridge State Park as "a beautiful place to use as a base camp for a weekend of paddling on the Embarras." Area settlers to the Fox Ridge Settlement in the 1830s and earlier apparently thought of it in much the same manner, only for a more permanent reason.
Along the river in 1831, there was Parker's Mill, a grist mill, and later Shaw's Mill, a wood watermill near Parker's Ford.
A 21-year-old Abraham Lincoln first set foot in Coles County -- along with a party that included his father, Thomas, and stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, Dennis Hanks and family and Squire Hall and family -- in March 1830.
There are differing opinions on whether the group, on their way from Spencer County, Ind., to Macon County, crossed the Embarras at McCann's Ford near Diona in Hutton Township or Parker's Ford.
The late Charles H. Coleman, a former professor of social science at Eastern Illinois University and noted Lincoln authority, believed it more likely that the party crossed at Parker's (later called Blakeman's) Ford.
Today, that area is known as Blakeman's Bridge, located on Illinois Route 130 opposite the main entrance to Lake Charleston.
The area was appealing to the men who had been commissioned to find the site where the town of Charleston would be located, and their first choice was a high section of ground on the northwest side of the Embarras. Obviously, they were persuaded to go with another choice.
Nearby was the Parker settlement, actually the first settlement in what is now Coles County, according to local historian Nancy Easter-Shick.
That was the birthplace of Cynthia Ann Parker, who moved with her family to Texas and was captured by Indians when she was 9. She would later become the mother to Indian children, one of whom would become the famous Commanche war chief Quanah Parker. She would choose to remain with the Indians even when rescuers finally arrived.
"Flatboats or barges came regularly by way of the Wabash to the Embarras carrying lumber to Shaw's mill and returning loaded with grain," Easter-Shick said.
Northeast of Charleston, a crumbling brick structure is all that's left of a private outdoor kitchen/pavilion area that in its day housed fish frys and parties for friends and a few area businesses.
Boaters Tim Oakley of Mattoon and Morris Sparr of Neoga noticed the structure on the west side of the Embarras as they were kayaking northeast of Charleston.
"You can tell it was a beautiful place," Oakley said. "Somebody spent some money building it."
The pavilion-like building, concrete steps leading to the river and concrete boat dock, now underwater, is all that remains of a house and outdoor entertainment area.
The house, once a two-room cabin with a loft believed to have been built in the mid-1800s, was owned by Clive Dick, a Charleston plumber in the 1930s. Lou Eichberg, owner of the Castle Inn in Mattoon, and Robert and Jane Woodyard of Charleston were later owners.
Remodeling and additions to the original cabin gave it five rooms and a screened porch. There was a floor-to-ceiling Bedford stone fireplace, and the second floor -- all one large room -- was complete upholstered in leather, Woodyard said.
The outdoor cooking/entertaining area overlooking the river was screened on three sides. The remaining side was filled with a large grill, ovens and a sink.
"It was a beautiful place," Robert Woodyard said. "We entertained out there a lot. It was a great place for fish frys and steak frys and playing cards."
The Woodyards lived in the house from 1959 until 1966, when they sold it to the Charleston Stone Co.
Also northeast of Charleston, another house on the river was called Schamerhorn for the family who had owned it. It, too, was later sold to the stone company.
"The house or cabin, whatever it was, was just a pleasure place, someplace to go to have fun," remembers Harold Marker, 91, of Charleston. "The last time I saw it they had put boards all over it so when they blasted at the stone quarry they wouldn't damage it.
"The first one I remember owning it was Dr. John Alexander Jr., who was a charter member of the (Charleston) Kiwanis Club in 1936."
Marker said there was a place to ford the river, when it was low during the summer months, called Schamerhorn Ford at the north end of the quarry.
"That was a long time ago," he said, "when I was just a kid. I don't even know if it's still there."
Academy award-winning actor and folk singer Burl Ives was a freshman at Eastern Illinois Teachers College in 1927.
Ives and a friend, Wayne Isley, used a canoe on the Embarras as a way to commute home from college on weekends. Isley's parents would bring both men and canoe from near Newton back to Charleston on Sunday evenings.
Up and down the river in the 1940s, seining for catfish was especially popular.
One group of farmers north of town would get together with their families, stretch the net to catch their supper, and enjoy a huge fish fry along the banks of the river.
Several parks or resort areas were popular along the river from the turn of the century until the 1930s. One, The Rocks Park, even had Charleston's early version of today's water slide.
Riverview Park, located at the site of the original Parker's settlement -- today's Lake Charleston -- boasted fishing, boating, picnic grounds, a dance hall and diving boards, as well as musical entertainment by the Fox Sisters Orchestra daily.
The park was owned by brothers Leo and Earle Threlkeld, the latter a composer and former vaudevillian. The brothers lived and operated a music publishing company adjacent to the park.
Rock Valley Mineral Springs Park (later known as Rocks Park) was providing a place to swim, boat, fish and hike by 1909.
Located a short distance downstream from the Harrison Street Bridge, its main attraction was the mineral water from the springs, which was said to have medicinal properties.
"Riverview and The Rocks Park were going about the same time," said Marker. "They were in competition, but their heyday was over in the ‘30s. The Depression is what killed them."
For a brief time, there was also Edgewater Park south of Illinois Route 16. The park, which included a swimming pool, dance hall, skating rink and cabins, closed after a few years because of repeated flooding.
While it wasn't a public park, many young men in Charleston from about 1900 through 1940 spent free summer hours at a place they called the Doc Yac shack located on the river south of Harrison Street Road, according to Marker.
"It was right where Whetstone Creek joins the Embarras," he said.
"The shack was owned by a Chinese man by the name of Harry Pong, whose main occupation was bootlegging," Marker said, "although he may have had a restaurant in town."
Marker said the shack got its name from a comic strip years ago called "Old Doc Yac."
"We used to go out there and swim, and there was a big swing, as I recall, from right off the porch and out over the river.
"The shack was there when I was 6, and that was in 1918, and before that. And, it was there through the ‘40s," he said.
Although today's Lake Charleston, built at the site of Riverview Park and completed in 1947, changed the look of the river, many of the landmarks are still there, including the house on the hill that belonged to the Threlkelds.
"They moved the river east when they built the new levee," Marker said. "Where the reservoir is now, the river used to meander around."
And, beneath the road into main entrance to the lake, "right where the road turns back east," Marker said, "is the old Charleston spillway, about 12 feet under."
Like other sites along the Embarras River, for some it still exists in memories, for others in imagination.
Contact Bonnie Clark at bclark@jg-tc.com or 348-5727.
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