Amazing place: Arcola has pride – for good reason

It's called Amazing Arcola.

With this Douglas County city's patchwork of rich history, dynamic personalities and enough stories for some serious lore, it's easy to see why.

Arcola claims the 1904 world champion hose firefighting team, the recruiting genius behind the Chicago Bears and the place where the Liberty Bell clanged its last clang. And visitors come to Arcola to celebrate Raggedy Ann and Andy, hippies, the memory of wild broomcorn johnnies and the simple lives of the Amish.

If you let them, locals will tell you Arcola begat the first ice cream cone (that's false), hosted Helen Keller (she visited the Arcola Chautauqua in 1915). They'll also tell you of the local mechanic who single-handedly fixed Charles Lindbergh's plane with a piece of fence (partially correct.)

The point isn't if these tales are true or not; it's that locals love their town enough to spin stories of its amazing qualities.

Residents first demonstrated their hardiness when the town was originally settled in Bagdad, about 4 miles west of Arcola near the Kaskaskia River. When the railroad roared past in the 1850s, it missed their town. So during the winter of 1855, Bagdad residents loaded buildings and possessions on wooden sleds and moved east.

That new place, called Okaw, eventually became Arcola. And by the 1890s, it was nationally recognized as the broomcorn capital of the world. It also drew broomcorn johnnies, men who'd come to harvest broomcorn each fall.

They'd sleep in the yard outside Arcola's brick depot, drinking and carrying on when they weren't working.

Later that decade, resident Riley Matthews supposedly hit the Liberty Bell with a hammer as it toured across the country on the railroad, according to "Amazing Arcola" by Eva Ridenour.

The turn of the century brought more notable events. A coal miner's strike caused a shortage in winter 1903. When an Illinois Central train full of coal stopped for repairs, residents brought their wagons, buckets and baskets and left with the fuel.

Town officials made sure they recorded how much coal residents took and repaid the entire amount.

Not only did they fight to survive, Arcolians took their competition seriously, too. They wanted the best firefighting hose team around, so they hired track athletes from the University of Illinois. It paid off: They won four state championships, plus a national championship at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904.

They didn't care to lose, especially when it came to football. So when the Decatur Staleys trounced an Arcola football team 41-0 in 1919, a group of businessmen and farmers decided they wanted a rematch – and a victory.

One resident, an Illinois Central conductor, recruited players at colleges in northern Indiana and Illinois. Apparently, he assembled such a team that the Staleys forfeited. But A.E. Staley, owner of the Staley company, saw the genius in the Arcolians' recruiting methods and got in contact with George Halas about recruiting his own talented young players.

Staley's team eventually became the Chicago Bears.

As the years continued, Arcola maintained its reputation for athletic prowess. It won three state titles in football and was runner-up three more time. Girls' basketball coach Nancy Stiff has been the only coach in that position and won more than 500 games.

Residents seem to think the winning tradition started before the interstate, when heading up to Tuscola was a big trip. They focused on sports and it stuck.

And of course, Arcolians are stuck on bringing visitors to see their amazing town. Between what they call the world's only Hippie Memorial (late creator Bob Moowmaw created it to illustrate the freedom of the 1960s and '70s, though he was no hippie himself) and Rockome Gardens west of town, there's lots to see.

And even the slogan "Amazing Arcola," has a story.

Resident Pat Monahan came up with the term when he was president of Arcola's Chamber of Commerce. He needed a catchy slogan for billboards and advertising Arcola.

"It didn't take very long," Monahan said. "We do have great community pride, and that's just a simple way of saying it."

As for Lindbergh, it turns out Arcola Resident Pat Murphy picked up the pilot near Decatur in 1923, where Lindbergh's plane landed in a field. Murphy drove him to Mattoon, where Lindbergh (and his mailbogs) got on a train for St. Louis. Lindbergh returned the next day to repair the plane.