This was a quick drone pass over Lighthouse Grill and Stump Pass Marina in Englewood, Florida. The water on Lemon Bay was flat. The big American flag had enough wind to keep moving, and the tiki roof gave the frame its color.

A small place from the road. A different place from the air.

What caught my eye

The marina sits in a narrow piece of Florida where almost everything points back to the water. Boats stack into dry storage. Docks run toward Lemon Bay. The Lighthouse Grill sits under its namesake tower with the flag high enough to pull your eye into the shot.

From ground level, you see a restaurant and a working marina. The drone shows how close the whole property sits to the bay. One turn of the aircraft catches the roofline, dock slips and open water in the same frame.

That is why I stopped.

Where this is

Lighthouse Grill and Stump Pass Marina are at 260 Maryland Avenue in Englewood. Boaters know the location as Channel Marker 17A on Lemon Bay. Drivers reach it from Placida Road by way of Maryland Avenue.

The marina connects boat traffic on Lemon Bay with the Intracoastal Waterway and the Gulf. Stump Pass Beach State Park sits nearby at the south end of Manasota Key, where the bay side runs into mangroves and the Gulf side opens into white sand.

The restaurant and marina are their own stop. The state park is a separate destination. Both make more sense once you see the water around them.

A good stop by road or boat

This is one of those Florida places built around arrival. You can come off the road, walk under the tiki roof and watch boats work through the marina. You can also arrive from Lemon Bay and tie the afternoon to a meal.

The official Lighthouse Grill page lists live music nightly and gives the boat location as Channel Marker 17A. The marina describes dry storage, a fuel dock, ship store and waterfront dining. It is not a staged waterfront made for a brochure. Boats still need fuel. Forklifts still move hulls. People are coming and going.

The camera likes that movement.

Flying the shoreline

Waterfront flying needs patience. Flags tell me what the wind is doing above the roofline. Boat traffic changes the shot without warning. People move through the docks, and a clean composition can become a bad flight path in seconds.

I keep the aircraft away from people and active boats. I check airspace, weather and temporary restrictions before launch. Wildlife gets room too. Manatees and coastal birds use this part of Florida; a low drone is a visitor, not the main event.

The short pass worked because I did not ask it to become a movie. The water stayed quiet. The flag moved. The marina filled the frame.

That was enough.

Plan your stop

Lighthouse Grill:

https://www.lighthouse-grill.com/location/lighthouse-grill/

Stump Pass Marina:

https://stumppassmarina.com/

Stump Pass Beach State Park:

https://www.floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/stump-pass-beach-state-park

If you like seeing the places most people pass from the road or pull up to by boat, subscribe. More flights are waiting down the road.

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Either name fits. It is a 30-foot human eye planted on a lawn in downtown Dallas, surrounded by buildings that seem almost ordinary beside it. The blue iris belongs to artist Tony Tasset. The red veins spread across its surface. From the street, the sculpture looks like something that rolled loose from one of the skyscrapers above and came to rest on Main Street.

I went there to film it from the air.

The evening began with dinner alongside my creative group. Afterward, I grabbed my drone and walked over to The Eye. The first few minutes went exactly as planned. I launched, established my position and started collecting footage—left pan, right pan, gimbal up, gimbal down.

Fan-freaking-tastic.

Then I tried descending while raising the gimbal. I held the stick down a beat too long, and the drone did exactly what I had unintentionally told it to do.

It landed.

Right on the lawn.

Behind the fence.

An Eye With a Past

Before I explain how I got the drone back, The Eye deserves a proper introduction.

Tony Tasset created the sculpture as a monumental replica of his own eye. It is made from fiberglass, resin and steel, and its scale turns a familiar part of the human body into something surreal.

The sculpture made its public debut in Chicago’s Pritzker Park in 2010 after being commissioned for the Chicago Loop Alliance’s Art Loop program. Three years later, it arrived at its current home across from The Joule hotel in downtown Dallas.

Tasset has connected the image with everything from the eye of a pharaoh and the Masonic eye to Big Brother, God and human consciousness. He has also resisted assigning it one fixed interpretation. The work can mean whatever the person standing before it brings to the encounter.

That openness is part of its power. Humanity has attached ideas of knowledge, authority, protection and surveillance to the eye for thousands of years. Tasset simply made one too large to ignore.

It has since become one of the most recognizable sights on Main Street. People photograph it, practice yoga beneath its gaze and even hold wedding receptions on the surrounding lawn. The Dallas Art Fair’s closing celebration is appropriately called the Eye Ball.

On the night I filmed it, however, none of that was on my mind.

My drone was stranded on the other side of the fence.

“Re-calibrate Compass”

I pressed the launch control.

Nothing.

I tried again.

Still nothing.

Then a message appeared across the top of my screen:

Re-calibrate compass.

Shit.

At first, I thought the downtown buildings and trees might have blocked the connection. I moved closer, hoping the signal would return. It didn’t. The drone wanted a compass recalibration, and it could not perform one while sitting motionless on the grass.

There was only one solution: I had to physically retrieve it.

I found a man at a nearby bar and asked how someone might get over the fence to recover a stranded drone. He told me that The Joule owned the property.

Fine.

I walked next door, found a security guard and explained exactly what had happened.

“My drone landed on your property. Can I go get it?”

He looked at me and said, “Oh. I was wondering what that was.”

Thankfully, he let me retrieve it.

Relief does not quite describe that moment. The drone was hot when I picked it up. I shut down both the aircraft and controller and decided I had carried enough gear through downtown Dallas for one night.

That should have been the end of the story.

It wasn’t.

The Scooter That Wouldn’t Unlock

I found a Lime scooter and tried to rent it for the trip back. I scanned it and thought the rental had started, but the scooter refused to unlock. After another attempt, the app finally explained why: I was outside its operating hours.

Great.

I left the scooter and started walking. A few steps later, my chest went cold.

My drone bag.

I had walked away from it.

I turned around and moved quickly toward the unattended bag. A man nearby noticed me approaching it with purpose. A police officer had apparently been watching it too. When he realized it belonged to me, he said he was glad I had returned because someone had left a drone bag sitting there and nobody knew whose it was.

That someone was me.

My fellow creators stayed with me through the entire ordeal, and we walked back to the hotel together. It was only about ten minutes away. I was full from dinner, carrying all my gear again and soaked through with nervous sweat.

The finished footage looks calm.

The person operating the drone was anything but.

What the Flight Taught Me

Every expedition teaches me something. This one delivered two lessons in quick succession.

First, dense urban surroundings can complicate a flight. Concrete, steel, trees and restricted access leave little room for correcting a mistake. A landing that would be a minor inconvenience in an open field becomes a recovery operation when it happens behind a fence.

Second, small control inputs matter. Hold the descent command a little too long and the aircraft may land regardless of what you intended.

That was the entire education: one hot drone, one scooter that wouldn’t unlock, one temporarily abandoned bag and a shirt soaked through by the time I reached the hotel.

Cheap tuition—if you are the one reading about it instead of living it.

The Eye itself remained perfectly still throughout the whole episode. Fifteen feet of blue iris, fixed on the lawn, watching me turn a short filming session into a downtown recovery mission.

Maybe that is what the sculpture means to me now.

It saw everything.

Another landmark flight from the road: Mount Vernon From Above.

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I didn’t arrive in Mount Vernon with a complicated plan. I wanted to fly, look around and see what caught my attention.

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The weather made the decision easy. It was mild, not too hot, and the wind was sitting in that comfortable range where the drone feels steady without the air feeling dead.

So I launched the mini 5 pro near the Fifth District Appellate Courthouse and started watching the town move beneath me. Cars passed through the intersections. People continued with their day. I was enjoying myself, and one flight naturally became another.

Watch DD-0001 below, then continue reading to discover the stories behind the places in the film.

A City at the Crossroads

The traffic is what first held my attention. Mount Vernon is not a large city, but it has always been a crossroads. Zadok Casey founded it in 1817, and the historic Vandalia Road helped turn the settlement into a stopping point for travelers and commerce across southern Illinois.

Jefferson County was created two years later, and Mount Vernon became the county seat. During the nineteenth century, the city also served the southern division of the Illinois Supreme Court. That brought lawyers from around the state, including Abraham Lincoln, to argue cases here.

You can drive through town without thinking about any of that. From the air, the older landmarks interrupt the ordinary pattern of streets, roofs and traffic. That is what made me stop and keep filming.

The Fifth District Appellate Courthouse

The first landmark in the film is the Fifth District Appellate Courthouse at 14th and Main Streets.

This is not the current Jefferson County Courthouse on South 10th Street. It is the older white Greek Revival building with the raised courtroom and two exterior stairways. Once you see those stairs, there is no mistaking it.

I made several passes around it. From ground level, trees and neighboring buildings break up the view. Once the drone climbed, the symmetry became obvious.

The courthouse was completed in 1856 for the southern division of the Illinois Supreme Court. The courtroom occupied the upper floor, reached by those twin stairways.

Before he became president, Abraham Lincoln argued and won a tax case in Mount Vernon. I like that the connection is not trapped behind museum glass. The building still works. The Fifth District Appellate Court continues to hear cases there.

The white façade catches the light. Cars continue along Main Street. The courthouse stays planted in the middle of it all, nearly two centuries of Illinois legal history surrounded by an ordinary weekday.

That contrast was enough for me. I kept circling.

Veterans Memorial Park

After the courthouse, I moved over to Veterans Memorial Park at 800 South 27th Street.

The park wraps around a six-acre lake with fountains, islands, footbridges and a gazebo. A one-mile trail follows the water. Playgrounds, courts and shelters fill the rest of the grounds.

From above, it looked calm. The history underneath it was not what I expected.

The grounds once held a small city zoo with lions, monkeys and zebras. They were also home to the Mount Vernon Kings, a minor-league baseball team whose park hosted league All-Star Games in 1949 and 1951. The club played its final season in 1954.

The park carries a different kind of history today.

At the entrance stands the Veterans Memorial, dedicated on December 7, 2022. Bricks along the approach record the names, ranks and military service of individual veterans.

A few minutes away, children can play, people can walk the lake and traffic can continue beyond the trees. The memorial is not separated from everyday life. It sits inside it.

That was what I wanted the second half of the film to hold: remembrance at the entrance, then water, movement and a town carrying on.

What the Drone Reveals

I did not think of the courthouse and park as a matched pair when I launched. The connection appeared later, while I was reviewing the footage.

The courthouse preserves memory through a building that is still doing its original kind of work.

The park does it differently. Its memorial shares the grounds with walking paths, basketball courts, playgrounds, fishing and fountains. One place keeps history inside its walls. The other lets daily life move around it.

Not every pass worked.

When I filmed the Lincoln statue, my stick inputs became jerky. The orbit lost the smoothness I wanted, and I could see the mistake as soon as I watched it back.

I refuse to use automated flight paths for these films. Automation could draw a cleaner circle, but it would also remove the part I am trying to improve: flying the aircraft myself, reading the wind and learning how small movements translate through the camera.

DD-0001 has no narration or natural location sound. The first music track fades with the courthouse. A new track begins when Veterans Memorial Park appears. It separates the two locations without breaking the journey.

The finished footage is calmer than every moment behind the controller. That gap between the flight I planned and the flight I actually flew is the reason I keep going back up.

Follow me on X: @Dronedrifterx2
Explore more films and field notes: DroneDrifter.com

Sources and further reading

• City of Mount Vernon: About Mount Vernon

• Illinois Courts: Fifth District Appellate Court

• Society of Architectural Historians: Appellate Courthouse

• University of Illinois: The Appellate Courthouse

• City of Mount Vernon: Veterans Memorial Park

Finishers stood around in the heat, medals still on, paper cups in hand. Nobody in a hurry to leave. An empty stroller parked by the cones. Same parking lot the freeway commuters blow past every morning, and for one Saturday morning it belonged to the people who ran it.

See the run and the finish line first:

And the church behind the whole scene:

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Kids crossed the line in gold laurel crowns. A red FINISH flag, a folding table, a timing clock on a tripod, and the inner belt arching over all of it with downtown sitting right behind. Same patch of grass I shot empty for the church piece. Packed this time.

The church story behind the finish line:

Next stop, the after party:

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Another park that changed shape from the air: North Jetty at Casey Key.

Six pickleball courts on one side. Soccer fields on the other. And a deer highway running right down the middle.

Carter Woods Park in Grand Chute, Wisconsin hides a wild corridor most people walk right past.

The parking lot won't tell you. Drive in off Bluemound and you get the usual town-park stuff. A softball diamond. A playground. Picnic tables, and pickleball courts that fill up with regulars by 8 in the morning. Looks like every other suburban park in the Fox Cities.

Then there's the middle.

Down the center of Carter Woods runs a strip of real woods, with dried-out stream beds that feed Mudd Creek. Bridges cross it. Footpaths wind through it. On foot it's all leaf litter and downed trunks, the light coming through green. And the deer are almost always in there. They hang back, far enough to keep one eye on you.

You can't read the shape of it from the ground. So I put the drone up.

Not for long. There's a National Guard armory sitting right next to the park, and that changes how you fly. You keep it short and tight. You keep the bird close, and you don't linger over anything with a fence and a flag. I got my shots and brought it back down.

Even in that short window, from a couple hundred feet, the whole place flips. Two ball diamonds, red infields set in a sea of green. I dropped low and skimmed the open field, tree shadows stretched halfway across the grass. What the camera caught from up there is a green seam cutting straight through the suburb, and it doesn't stop at the park line. Follow that tree line west and it threads through the Butte des Morts Country Club and runs to the Fox River. The deer use it like a road. So do the hawks nesting on the cell towers.

The pickleball place is a wildlife corridor wearing a town park.

A patch of wild woods right alongside a National Guard armory. Same fence line, middle of the Fox Cities. The deer don't seem to mind the neighbors.

Footage is up top. If you want more of these, overlooked parks and small-town corners shot from a couple hundred feet, subscribe to the Drone Drifter.

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The rain started the second I had the drone up. A Gulf drizzle, the kind that blows in sideways off the water for ten minutes and quits before you've decided whether to pack up. My niece was in town. She'd brought her boyfriend, and my second nephew came along too, so the four of us stood out on the rocks at the south tip of Casey Key watching me fly a drone into weather I'd normally land it for.

Nobody wanted to leave. That's the thing about the North Jetty.

It sits at the very bottom of Casey Key, a skinny barrier island about eight miles long that runs down the coast just north of Venice. The rocks hold Venice Inlet in place and help control the sand moving along the shore. Practical, ugly, the kind of thing nobody flies across the country to see.

Then the rock did something useful in a different way. The jetty and the sandbar beside it can shape a rideable wave when Gulf conditions line up. On a coast that spends plenty of days nearly flat, that is enough to draw surfers. They built a wall to manage the inlet and ended up with a wave. I think about that more than I should. You set out to fix one small problem and the world hands you back something it never occurred to you to ask for.

From two hundred feet up, the inlet goes dark green where it drops off. You can see the exact seam where the calm intracoastal water meets the chop of the open gulf, sharp as a chalk line. Two guys fished the rocks below us with cut bait. Not moving. Barely talking. A dolphin worked the inlet for a minute, then gone.

And under all of it, in the dark band of sand the low tide leaves behind, the shark teeth.

People drive here for them. Black fossilized teeth, washed out of old marine sediment and pushed back onto the beach by waves. Find one and you are holding a piece of an ocean that existed long before the shoreline under your feet. My niece found two before the rain came. Didn’t make a thing of it, just dropped them in her pocket and kept her eyes down on the sand.

The drizzle passed. The light went soft and gray instead of gold. Better that way.

We stayed until the lot emptied out. Best afternoon I’ve had in a while, and I didn’t get one clean sunset shot to show for it.

Another flight from the same stretch of Florida coast: Stump Pass Marina From Above.

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All of it sitting on top of a strange piece of history. On August 1, 1901, this was open prairie. By the next morning, 13,000 people were living in tents while they waited for land, and the place picked up the name Ragtown. When the town lots began selling on August 6, Hobart had 2,530 residents. Now the historic Kiowa County Courthouse sits in the middle of the square, with a tile mosaic laid into the ground nearby.

Catch it from the air at the right hour and the whole place glows the same red as the dirt it grew out of.

A small town that still knows how to fill its own square.

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Another courthouse landmark from above: Mount Vernon, Illinois.

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The red-stone clubhouse was built in 1925 for the original Clinton Country Club. It came back to life in 2007 as White Dog Hill, sitting high enough above the prairie that the sunset seems to take its time getting there.

Eat there once and you are already planning the drive back.

This was my last flight over the place. Every other time I came up here I flew it alone. This time I had folks with me I can truly call friends. Makes a difference, looking down at a spot you love and knowing the people standing next to you actually matter.

The Mini 5 Pro caught one more sunset off that hill.

Good way to shut it down.

My earlier White Dog Hill stops:

Another Clinton landmark from above:

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Three hundred fifteen acres is a lot of park.

The front side is easy to understand from the parking lot. There is a 23,000-square-foot recreation center, a competition pool, football fields, basketball and tennis courts, a skate park, disc golf, cricket and a dog park. It looks like Charlotte County gathered every kind of recreation it could fit and gave each one a piece of the property.

From the air, that busy side becomes geometry. The blue pool sits beside the pale roofs. Fields and courts break the grass into rectangles. Paths connect one use to the next. Then the lines loosen as the camera moves toward the back of the park.

That is where the place changes. Ann & Chuck Dever was formerly called Oyster Creek Regional Park. Of its 315.6 acres, Charlotte County identifies 50 acres for active use and 120 acres as environmental land, with another 36 acres north of the creek. The numbers make sense once the drone is high enough. Recreation occupies one section. The rest starts folding into pine, scrub and water.

The Oyster Creek Waterfront Trail connects this park with Cedar Point Environmental Park. It follows the creek and passes beneath State Road 775, tying the two properties together without sending walkers back onto the road. From above, that green connection matters more than any single field or court.

The park was built in 2007. The recreation center arrived in 2019. Both are substantial, but neither one explains the whole place. The interesting part is the seam between the developed side and the older Florida behind it.

That was the reason for coming back. I did not need another version of the same flight. I needed to go farther and let the park show its second half.

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Another Englewood flight from the same stretch of coast: Lighthouse Grill and Stump Pass Marina.

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The first time I flew White Dog Hill, I went looking for the sunset and the stories that come out after dark. This time I came back in daylight.

From the air you can see why the place owns the horizon. The old Clinton Country Club sits on the high ground, with Route 66 and the western Oklahoma prairie running away from it in every direction.

The Beany Bar is down a short path from the restaurant. It started as the country club caretaker’s house in 1925, built from sandstone quarried on the hill. A bedroom was added in the 1940s, and later work turned it into the small bar that sits there now.

That is what I wanted from the second flight. Not a repeat of the first one. A better look at how the clubhouse, the bar, the road, and the open ground fit together when the light is up.

I like returning to places with the drone. The location stays put. The story never does.

Start with my first White Dog Hill visit:

Then see my final sunset flight:

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My first flight with the DJI Mini 5 Pro happened on a windy day, which turned out to be a good test.

The first thing I felt was the weight. The Mini 5 Pro is heavier than my Nano, and I could feel that difference through the controls. It held itself with more authority in the wind. I was less worried about the aircraft getting pushed around and more focused on flying it.

The RC 2 also changed the experience. I did not have to clip my phone into a controller, wait for everything to connect and then give up my screen for the flight. I powered up and flew. Being able to assign functions to the controller buttons helped too.

One unexpected bonus: I can use the RC 2 with the Nano. Two very different aircraft, one controller I already like using.

Where the Nano Fits Now

The Nano is staying in the bag, but it will not be my main flyer. The Mini 5 Pro gives me more time in the air and more confidence when the weather is not calm. That is the aircraft I expect to reach for first.

The Nano still does something the Mini is not built around. It puts the camera on the person. I want to test that with short road vlogs and behind-the-scenes updates. The first few will be free. If they add something worth watching, I will keep making them.

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I came in through the east gate off old Route 66. Brick piers, sharp Art Deco lines, and the park name still glowing in its original neon after dark. The gate looks like it belongs on an old postcard because it does.

The park started in 1934, when federal relief programs put local people to work during the Depression. Between 1934 and 1937, crews working through the FERA, CWA, and WPA built a city park across 12 acres. They laid out the drives, gates, amphitheaters, pavilions, courts, bathhouse, ball field, and the stonework that still holds the place together.

Get the drone above it and the plan becomes easier to see. Bess Rogers Drive bends through the trees instead of cutting straight across. The amphitheater sits into the ground. The gates, bridge, and buildings feel like parts of the same place, not pieces dropped in over the years.

That is why the park went onto the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. It was not preserved because one famous person stood there. It was preserved because the whole place shows what a community built when work was scarce and the country needed places to breathe.

The park is still being used for the same reason. There is miniature golf, a city pool, playgrounds, tennis and volleyball courts, picnic tables, pavilions, and room to sit under trees that were planted when Route 66 was still young. It does not feel sealed off or turned into a museum. Kids run through it. Families use it. Cars still come through the old gate.

That is the part I liked. McLain Rogers Park is historic without acting precious about it. The neon comes on, somebody starts a game, and the place keeps doing the job it was built to do.

Another Clinton stop worth seeing from above:

Park history and visitor information:

https://www.nps.gov/places/mclain-rogers-park.htm

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Austin gets talked about so much that it can feel familiar before you ever arrive. Then the traffic closes in, the skyline rises beyond Lady Bird Lake and the city gets louder than whatever version you carried in your head.

I came through with a drone and a camera, expecting the usual Texas mix of heat and distance. Austin tightened that frame fast. Water, towers, bridges and neighborhoods all crowd the same view. The city spreads, but it never feels empty.

From above, Lady Bird Lake does most of the organizing. The water cuts a calm line beneath downtown while traffic works its way around it. Congress Avenue points toward the Capitol. Bridges stitch the banks together. The skyline has the glass and steel of a city that grew quickly, but the river keeps the whole thing from becoming one hard block.

Street level is louder. South Congress has old signs beside new storefronts. Music slips out through open doors. Food trucks sit near buildings worth more than entire blocks did a generation ago. Austin wears its changes in public.

That friction is the city now. The “Keep Austin Weird” slogan still hangs around, but longtime residents have watched rent climb and familiar places disappear. New money came in fast. Austin did not stand still for the postcard.

Even so, there are moments when the older rhythm pushes back through. A breakfast taco eaten in the car. A guitar case near a doorway. Late light turning the water copper while the buildings lose their sharp edges. Small scenes. They last longer than the slogans.

I left with Austin still arguing with itself. That may be the most honest thing about it. The city wants to grow, keep its old soul and make room for everybody arriving tomorrow. Those goals do not fit together cleanly.

I will stop again. There is too much here for one pass, especially once the drone is packed away and the city has to be met from the sidewalk.

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Decatur sits about 40 miles northwest of Fort Worth, where U.S. 287 and 380 cross in the Wise County seat. From the road, the courthouse tower shows up before the town explains itself. From the drone, it becomes the center of the picture.

The streets hold a tight grid around the square. Rooflines flatten out toward the highway. Pickups circle the courthouse while the newer edge of town pushes toward Fort Worth. You can read the whole argument from above. Old county seat. Busy road town. Both are still working.

The town began as Taylorsville in 1856, when the Texas Legislature created Wise County and ordered a county seat near its center. Absalom Bishop laid it out. Two years later, he helped change the name to Decatur in honor of naval officer Stephen Decatur.

Then came cattle and steel. The eastern branch of the Chisholm Trail passed nearby after the Civil War. In 1882, the Fort Worth and Denver Railway reached town and turned Decatur into a shipping point for farms and ranches across the county.

The courthouse carries most of that history in plain sight. Built in 1896 from pink granite and Vermont marble, it still anchors the square. Get above it and the clock tower, street grid, parked cars and low storefronts all fall into place. No brochure can explain the town that quickly.

I stayed longer than a fuel stop required. That happens to me a lot.

Decatur has Fort Worth close enough to feel the pull, but the square still belongs to Wise County. People come in for court, coffee, supplies and whatever business brought them off the highway. The town keeps moving without sanding down every old edge.

I left the same way I came in, back on 287. The courthouse stayed in the mirror for a few blocks, taller than everything around it.

Sources:

Decatur, Texas official history: https://www.decaturtx.org/202/History

Handbook of Texas, Decatur: https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/decatur-tx

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I came in with the drone packed and the road still on me. Galena made me look up before I ever launched. Staircases disappear between buildings. Streets rise hard from downtown. Old walls lean into the slope and somehow hold their line.

From above, the town finally explains itself. The river bends past downtown. Main Street runs tight through the middle. Church steeples, chimneys, trees and rooftops stack toward the ridges. Illinois usually gives a drone room to see for miles. Galena crowds the frame.

Lead built the first version of this place. The name Galena comes from the mineral that pulled miners into the region, and the town adopted it in 1826. Steamboats worked the river. Shops and warehouses followed. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Galena was a busy mining and shipping town with more weight than its size suggests today.

Main Street still carries that century in brick and stone. The Old Market House went up in 1845. The DeSoto House opened in 1855. Floodgates and an earthen levee now protect the downtown blocks from the river that once fed the town and flooded it.

Ulysses S. Grant arrived with his family in 1860 and worked in his father’s leather-goods business before the Civil War pulled him back into the Army. When he returned in 1865, Galena residents gave his family an Italianate house on Bouthillier Street. He used it during the 1868 presidential campaign and returned for short stays after reaching the White House.

The history is heavy, but Galena doesn’t feel sealed behind glass. Cars squeeze down Main Street. People carry shopping bags past buildings older than the state parks I usually stop at. A delivery truck blocks half the view while somebody takes a photograph of a doorway built before the Civil War.

That part worked for me.

I left town by climbing back out of the river valley. In the mirror, the roofs dropped away first. The steeples held on a little longer.

Sources:

Illinois DNR, U. S. Grant Home: https://dnrhistoric.illinois.gov/experience/sites/site.grant-home.html

Galena Country downtown walking tour: https://www.visitgalena.org/blog/post/walking-tour-of-downtown-galena/

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