Items | Digital Collections at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library

Gas station
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Gas pumps sit in front of the McLean County Service Company at the northeast corner of Jefferson and East streets. An attendant is shown servicing an automobile.
Cooking class, Bloomington High School, Illinois
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Girls practice their cooking skills in cooking class at Bloomington High School, Illinois.
Sanborn Map, McLean County Court House, Bloomington, Illinois
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Sanborn map of the McLean County, Illinois Court House, 1901.
Sanborn Map, Urbana, Illinois
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Sanborn map of Urbana, Illinois. Shows the area bordered by Broad on the west side and by S. Race on the east side.
Major Nolton Engine
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)A number of men surround the C&A "Major Nolton" Engine. The engine went to Chicago to fight the Great Fire in 1871, and it became nationally known because it reached Chicago in such short time to help fight the fire.
Sanborn Map, Urbana, Illinois
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Sanborn map of Urbana, Illinois. Shows the area bordered by with Main on the north side, S. Race on the west side, with Elm on the south side, and S. Market on the east side. Includes the Masonic Temple and St. Nicholas Hotel.
Map, Cunningham Township, Urbana, Illinois
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Map of Cunningham Township, south-west area of Urbana, Illinois.
Map, Urbana, Illinois
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Map of east side of Urbana, Illinois.
Atl-atl weight
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)The atl-atl weight was a spear thrower used by the Archaic Indians for hunting animals. It was made of stone. Archaic Indians also supplemented their food supply by gathering nuts, berries, herbs and roots.
Kickapoo Bear Chief (Mkopahmah)
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Bear Chief (Mkopahmah) was a Kickapoo Indian living on the Kickapoo reservation in Kansas. He was photographed by Milo Custer, who visited there in 1906 and 1911.
Gable Roof Corn Crib
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Corn cribs like this were built for more than a hundred years in McLean County and were among the most valuable structures on many farms.
Circus performers on trapeze
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Trapeze artists fly through the air in Bloomington, Illinois.
Early Moldboard Plow
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)This early moldboard plow was used to open new land for cornfields in spring.
Corn Knife
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)The corn knife, about 18 inches long, was often hammered from available scrap metal.
Concrete Block Machine
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Concrete block machines like this one were available to make one's own blocks such as the one on the bottom left.
Slide, Magic Lantern
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)children had toy magic lanterns as well.
Merna Grain Elevator 1997
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)This Merna grain elevator, photographed in 1997, is no longer in operation.
Lamp, Camphene
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)A brass camphene lamp. The saucer base holds an elaborately molded columnar stand which leads to a reservoir with a cup shaped bottom and a broad shouldered top portion. The wick holders are splayed as is typical of ac camphene lamp.
Slide, Magic Lantern
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Rectangular glass slide with five handpainted figures, all of them appear to be Asian men. A man in the center wears a flat straw hat and holds a sword. On either side of him are men captured in portable stocks who are being dragged or led by a rope. The men who hold the rope are also whipping them, or threatening to whip them.
Heavy Plow
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)This drawing shows a heavy prairie-breaking plow used in early McLean County.
Map, McLean County Railroads in 1860
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)This map shows the path of railroads through McLean County in 1860.
Meskawki Lodge, Reproduction
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Free-lanced design, based on a study of Meskawki lodges
Indian Head Cent, 1863
Multi-Page Item | 2 pages | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)The profile of an Indian Maiden wearing a feather bonnet, which probably has LIBERTY written across the band, although coin is so worn it's hard to see. Around the maiden is UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and below the date of issue.
Corn Mortar
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)This corn mortar was used by early McLean County settler John Moore for pounding corn.
Delaware Village in Federal Land Survey
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)The Federal Land Surveyors recorded a Delaware village near the Mackinaw River. The area west of the village is where John Thompson planted his first crop in 1829.
Stalk Rake
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)This 19th century stalk rake was used to remove stalks in the field from the previous year's corn.
Ox Shoes
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Ox shoes, such as these, were used to protect oxen hooves when they plowed up prairie land.
Restored Patton Cabin in Lexington
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)The restored Patton cabin in Lexington.
Map of timber landscape in McLean County, Illinois
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Before McLean County was settled by whites in 1822, eleven percent of McLean County was timber and the remainder was tall prairie grass, as shown in this map.
Kickapoo Dwelling (Bark Hut)
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)After leaving McLean County, the Kickapoo fled westward. This dwelling was photographed in Brown County, Kansas, about 1906.
McLean County Train Yard
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Sanborn map of the train yard in McLean County, Illinois, 1901.
First Methodist Church of Bloomington
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)The former First Methodist Church of Bloomington is shown. The building, built in 1839, is covered with advertisements. Two men can be seen sitting in the open door. The Church had been converted to a livery stable.
Kickapoo Band
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Members of the Kickapoo Band are seated with instruments. The band was at Kickapoo School, Brown County, Kansas.
Map, Cunningham Township, Urbana, Illinois
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Map of Cunningham Township, north-east area of Urbana, Illinois.
Weston Depot
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)The small wooden depot served the town of Weston, Illinois. Multiple railroad tracks can be seen in the foreground.
Union Depot, Bloomington, Illinois
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)A crowd mingles on the Union Depot platform on West Washington Street, Bloomington, Illinois.
Wreckage of the Bloomington Fire
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)The damaged Bloomington skyline is visible beyond the courthouse square. A streetcar and a crowd of people are visible in the foreground. June 19, 1900, much of the center of Bloomington was destroyed by a fire that started in the Model Laundry. Flames spread rapidly and destroyed many buildings in a four square block area of the city. No businesses failed because of the fir...
Chinch Bug
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)The chinch bug in this drawing -- actual size is 1/16" -- destroyed millions of dollars worth of the corn in the 1930s.
Lamp, whale oil
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Whale oil lamp with single wick, bulb reservoir for oil fitted into a reused candlestand.
Lantern, Buggy
Image | Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)Rectangular buggy lantern. This rectangular lantern has a square footprint and has thin glass panes on three sides. One side opens via hinge to provide for igniting the lantern. The fourth side of the lantern has a reflector panel on the interior and, on the exterior, a folding hinged mechanism for fastening the lantern to the front of a buggy. Oil is held on the bottom by a...

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