When the permanent “Route 66 Experience” opened on the Illinois State Fairgrounds in July 2023, one of its attractions was a Muffler Man unlike any seen before.
Buttons don’t just hold clothes together; they hold forth with announcements, art, and opinions. It’s those kinds of pin-back buttons that are made at the Busy Beaver Button Co., which in late November 2016 moved to a new location.
Built in 2014, a 25-foot-tall statue of Abe Lincoln and Perry Como has gradually made its way westward, from New Jersey to Ohio to Indiana….to Illinois
“It was one of the top ten days of my life,” said Bob Rea, president of the Franklin County Historical Preservation Society in Benton, Illinois. He was referring to May 4, 2013, the day that he first laid eyes on the gallows that hanged Charlie Birger.
The Chicago Sun-Times has published a muckraking report suggesting that the Lincoln stovepipe hat currently displayed in the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois, may not be Abe’s at all.
