American Heritage Dictionary -
u·to·pi·a (yoo-toh-pee-uh)
-noun
1. often Utopia An ideally perfect place, especially in its
social, political, and moral aspects.
2. A work of fiction describing a utopia.
3. An impractical, idealistic scheme for social and political
reform.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
–noun
1. an imaginary island described in Sir Thomas More's Utopia (1516)
as enjoying perfection in law, politics, etc.Mbr> 2. usually
lowercase) an ideal place or state.
3. (usually lowercase) any visionary system of political or social
perfection.
Utopia Illinois, I never heard of it until I was heading
home tonight and I spotted it on my Garmin Mapsource map. It sure
seemed like this point on the map was Oakbrook Terrace but that's
not what the map says. But how can this be? How can there be a
Utopia really and how could it be this close to Downers Grove and
I've never heard of it?
Being a non-believer I pulled over and Googled
"Utopia Illinois" and sure enough it showed me a map of the same
location where my car was parked. It showed a zip code too - 60523,
but if you search the zip
code lookup 60523 comes up as Oak Brook Illinois. However, as I
look at the nearby businesses none of them mention Utopia and
Google didn't come up with any businesses, any municipal buildings,
or anything else.
Could Utopia really exist? Could it be more than a name on a map
and a zip code? Come to Utopia Illinois and see for yourself it's
located about 65 feet south east of the posted coordinates. But
where is the cache? At the posted coordinates look for a clue, the
final cache is a short drive away in a city park which is open
sunrise to 10pm.
It turns out Xyval had been researching Utopia Illinois and had
planned a cache but I beat him to the punch. Here is the
information he found in his research and posted to the cache page
when he found this cache:
In July of 1956, Oak Brook Mall was originally going to be named
Oak Brook Terrace Mall. Utopia decided to change their name to
Oakbrook Terrace and annex the land to improve its tax base. This
forced Oak Brook to incorporate and through a series of escalating
moves the two towns battled for control over the mall. Eventually
Oak Brook won and the mall's name was changed to reflect this.
sources:
*Notes on The History of Oak Brook by Richard Alan Barton, page 2.
Available at the Oak Brook library 977.324 Bar
*Hinsdale & the World: One Hundred Years by Tom & Mary
Sterling, pages 139, 140, 146. Available at the Oak Brook library
977.32 Hin
