Lowe's Homestead Lake (Hillcrest Amusement Park) Traditional Cache
Reviewer Smith: As I have not heard from the cache owner within the requested time frame, the cache is being archived.
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Reviewer Smith
Lowe's Homestead Lake (Hillcrest Amusement Park)
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I hide this 12 years ago, It is now under maintenance.
The area was first surveyed in 1801 through 1806. The lake is not shown, just as timber, the survey was not detailed enough, but a spring is mentioned and a creek is shown just to the south. The lake is on the line between squares 23 and 24 about one quarter way down. Illinois is referred to as the part of the Arkansas Territory. http://landplats.ilsos.net:9001/StyleServer/calcrgn?cat=Will&item=13-64.sid&style=basic&wid=800&hei=800&oif=jpg&rgn=0.5214229320,0.4890881913,0.8067468150,0.6086696562&cmd=zoomout Lowe's Lake identified as such on the 1873 Du Page Township Map, section 23: http://will.illinoisgenweb.org/Maps/1873Large/1873-04-Dupage.jpg The lake is a natural geologic formation from the last glaciation period. Probably formed from a huge block of clear ice as the glacier retreated. It is spring feed as there are no natural tributaries, the surrounding land slopes away. The soil is clay which allows the depression to hold water. Native Americans camped around the lake. A tomahawk, arrow heads, flakes and other stone implements dating back 5000 years were found during the excavation of homes to the south. During the 1870's to 1880's the lake was drained to a low level with clay tile, as was the practice to farm marshy areas, the last land to be brought under cultivation in Will county. The lake remained at this level to approximately the mid 1940s. Stumps of the oak trees that grew during this period can be seen in the water. It then became the Hillcrest amusement park. It is now owned by the Bristol corporation and is used to hold rain water runoff from the parking lot and warehouses to the east. They have decided to keep this as a natural area. Hillcrest Park was a 58.8 acre private picnic park catering to outings from 200 guests on weekdays to 2500 guests on weekends. The land was purchased from "Peabody" (first name not known) in 1951. Rick Barry's father purchased the park and it was one of several parks that were owned by the family. The park's closure was due to a decline of corporate outings and the simultaneous increase in value of the land. September 1st was the last outing. The park's rides and equipment were auctioned off on October 25th. The land was sold to developers to build a large warehouse.(www.rcdb.com) MARSHALL, Wis. (AP) -- A 55-year-old wooden roller coaster that sat idle in Illinois after its amusement park closed has now been resurrected in Wisconsin. The Meteor was dedicated Saturday in Marshall by Governor Jim Doyle. He praised the Little Amerricka Amusement Park for preserving fun for a new generation of kids. The Meteor originally opened in 1953 at the Kiddytown Amusement Park in Harwood Heights, Illinois. After that park closed it was moved to Hillcrest Park in Lamont, Illinois in 1966 and renamed the Little Dipper. Little Amerricka bought the coaster at a 2003 auction for $9,000. Officials then spent $100,000 and three years moving it to Marshall, where it was rebuilt and restored. Marshall is about 20 miles northeast of Madison. -------------- The Cement Pond Site Richard Johnson Phase III field work at Cement Pond (11-Wi-2533) was conducted by Midwest Archaeological Services, Inc., staff archaeologists in the fall of 2002. The site occupies the southern slope of a small knoll in a picnic area on the grounds of the Hillcrest Amusement Park in Romeoville, Illinois. This site location is near the outer edge of the Valparaiso Moraine at the pre settlement boundary of upland prairie and a narrow band of mixed deciduous forest bordering the north side of the lower Des Plaines River valley. A swimming pool forms the western border of the site. The discovery of prehistoric artifacts in fill along the concrete pool surround suggests that a portion of the Cement Pond site was destroyed by pool building activities. The remaining site area covers 300 m2 of the picnic area. Over 7,000 pieces of tool-making debris and twenty-two prehistoric tools, including projectile point fragments, scrapers, bifaces and cores were recovered from forty, one m2 excavation units. Almost all of the cores, debitage, and tools from Cement Pond are made of chert taken from Silurian dolomite outcrops found in drainage downcuts along the Des Plaines River bluffs Phase III investigations at the Cement Pond site revealed two debitage concentrations representing knapping activity areas where cores were reduced to more refined bifaces and flakes were fashioned into small scrapers. Some flake tools in the assemblage were used without edge preparation. The most likely use for these tools given the site's location at the prehistoric forest/prairie ecotone would be for the processing of meat and hides from game such as deer. No floral or faunal material was recovered in good context. Fragments of Matanzas and Brewerton Eared Notched points were recovered indicating that the Cement Pond site was a Late Archaic processing camp. _____ In the sequence of North American pre-Columbian cultural stages first proposed by Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips in 1958, the Archaic period was the second period of human occupation in the Americas, from around 8000 BC to 1000 BC although as its ending is defined by the adoption of sedentary farming, this date can vary significantly across the Americas.(wikipedia) The site is now buried under the warehouse parking lot.
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(Decrypt)
uggc://snez6.fgngvp.syvpxe.pbz/5057/5581734107_3n3s2o984p_m.wct
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