Downtown in Sterling, Illinois

~Today's edition of Where in the World is David finds me in Sterling, Illinois around 1.5 hours west of Chicago.  It's a small city of around 15,000 people, once a prosperous manufacturing center but now fallen on harder times.  While I was there, I walked around the downtown area near City Hall and snapped a few shots for your enlightenment and edification:

A tall monument in a park near the city center.  What could it be for?  Let's take a closer look...

And there's our answer.  It's refreshing to see a monument favoring the Union; in my home state down in the South, almost all Civil War monuments are dedicated to the Confederacy.  This is understandable, given that soldiers from North Carolina would have been almost exclusively fighting in the Confederate army.  The idea of a monument dedicating the "value of the union of the states" is tantamount to blasphemy in much of the South.  In fact, it wasn't until March of this year that a memorial to Union soldiers was dedicated in North Carolina.

Closeup of the statue on top of the monument.  He must have a great view of Sterling from up there!

Grandon Civic Center, home of the Sterling Municipal Symphony Band.  Only a symphony of wind and falling leaves greeted me there.

Since 1996, the Sterling Mural Society has commissioned 18 murals to beautify downtown Sterling.  I like how the person in the lower left is stepping inside the mural from beyond the edge!  But what does this mural depict?  Let's take a closer look at the caption on the lower left (which the person climbing in is also holding on to):

An all-female wall scaling/acrobatics team!  What fun!

A monument outside City Hall commemorating the founder of the original town, which as the plaque says was once known as Harrisburg before merging with nearby Chatham to become Sterling in 1857.  The new name was chosen to honor James Sterling, mayor of Harrisburg, who fought in the Black Hawk War of 1832 along with a young Abraham Lincoln.

In the late 19th and mid 20th centuries, manufacturing was the major industry in Sterling.  Driving over the Rock River bridge from the nearby town of Rock Falls, I was greeted by two large factories on either side of the road, stretching along the river banks.  Both now appear to be vacant, as is this ivy-covered building across the street from City Hall.  The economy here is slowly diversifying into retail and new industries.

What a great sign!

Beautiful autumnal foliage downtown.

Next: exploring the woods along Hennepin Canal in Rock Falls.