This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
If you are at all inclined to superstition, avoid that whole bottom land below Black Hawk State Park where the Rock River meets the Mississippi. It may be haunted.
That land is where the Sauk Indians came to settle in the middle of the 18th century. Here they built their principle village, Saukenuk, surrounded with gardens and pastures—until the Black Hawk War of 1832, which removed the Sauk west of the Mississippi.
The Americans who came in 1833 could see immediately that this was prime real estate. The two rivers provided transportation and waterpower, and the bottomland was rich. But nothing seemed to work out. The land seemed to be hexed. In 1836, speculators laid out a glorious paper city on the site, complete with streets and handsome buildings, but nothing was ever built. Among others, Daniel Webster lost thousands of dollars he had invested.
That same year, the state of Illinois began construction of a canal along the Rock River, intending to make it navigable to its source. A year later, there was only a short ditch to show.
Americans don't give up easily. In 1844, new investors laid out the town of Lowell on Vandruff's Island in the Rock River at this location, intending to build a great milling center. Nothing happened. That was followed by construction of a huge factory to make watches, intending to employ hundreds of people. It never opened.
Following the Civil War, David B. Sears, who had already founded Moline, moved here to harness the Rock River for mills. He founded Searstown, which seemed finally to be a success. Searstown had a post office, a town hall, a public school, a general store, and streetcar lines. Searstown businesses included flour mills, a coal mine, a brick yard to make bricks out of local clay, a paper mill and a cotton factory. Rows of houses were built for all the workers. Several prominent people chose to build homes in Searstown.
Then, Searstown, too, just faded away. In 1915, the land was annexed to the growing city of Rock Island. The Promised Land of the Sauks kept its promise only for them.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
