Midwest travel links for March

Check out some of these great Midwest-related stories I read online during this past month:

• Baseball's First Opening Day-Catch this story at Cleveland Area History about the first major league baseball game. Cleveland Ohio's Forest City team and Indiana's Fort Wayne Kekiongas became the first baseball teams to play in a major league game on March 17, 1871, with the Cleveland team falling 2-0 to the Kekiongas at Fort Wayne.

  
  
  Toledo Mud Hens' ball field in Toledo, Ohio
  

• Civic Iconography Done Right: Chicago's City Flag-Aaron writes about Chicago's brilliant use of their flag as an iconic symbol to strengthen the city's visual identity at the Urbanophile blog.  You'll find this readily recognizable civic symbol everywhere in Chicago--flying in front of city and commercial buildings and displayed as a logo on everything from city police cars to tattoos on a local bartender's arm.

• Millennium & Grant Park-I loved reading this story at the designslinger blog about how Chicago's Millennium Park evolved out of an effort to clean up the lake front after Chicago's devastating fire in 1871 and how the original Frederick Law Olmsted plan for a grand park became even grander as famed architects Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett expanded on Olmsted's ideas and incorporated elements of the City Beautiful Movement into its design.

• Gambling? No.-Stop by The Night Train to wish Amy well as she plans her wedding at the beautiful Casino building on Detroit's Belle Isle. Amy tells us that Frederick Law Olmsted, a champion of the City Beautiful Movement, planned most of Belle Isle, although the city rejected his plan for a sheltered promenade. His son later suggested that the casino building include some of the features of the promenade originally suggested by his father.





• Raise a Glass on 313: National Vernors Day-Kath writes about this day dedicated to Detroit's own "deliciously different" soft drink at Great Lakes Gazette. Detroit area ex-pats often go to great lengths to satisfy their craving for Vernors if they can't find it where they live, and I used to carefully pack and ship 12-packs of the pop (yes, it's "pop", not "soda") to my cousin in California until she finally found a local source for Vernors. Ask any Detroiter--if it's not Vernors, it's not real ginger ale.

• The Oldest Ford Plant Still in Operation-I recently saw a presentation a local history conference by a group seeking to preserve portions of the historic Ford plant in Highland Park, Michigan, which pioneered modern mass production with the first continuously moving assembly line in 1913. Ford closed down operations at the Highland Park plant years ago, but check out this story at the Nokohaha blog about a 1924-vintage Ford factory in St. Paul, Minnesota, that now holds the distinction of being the oldest Ford plant still operating.

• Bridges of Madison County (and beyond)-I enjoyed Linda's story about visiting Iowa's famed Bridges of Madison County at Travels with Children. She also includes a few other useful links for finding covered bridges in the Midwest.

  
  
  Pointing the way to covered bridges in Ashtabula, Ohio
  

• Monkey Business in Rockford, Illinois-I always wanted a sock monkey as a kid (in fact, I still do!), but maybe I just need to visit Nelson the world's largest sock monkey in Rockford. Julie writes about her visit with Nelson at the Midway Village Museum and other Rockford attractions at Road Trips for Families.

• Musings on Museums-Amy writes about visiting one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood homes in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, at A Closer Look at Flyover Land. She found the museum there a little disappointing, but advises that fans of Laura's books will find the Ingalls family dugout home site well worth the stop.

• Keeping the Union (and Ohio's Civil War History) Alive-It was all in the family for Kyle Yoho as he grew up the only child of parents who shared their love of historical re-enactments with him. The 21-year-old still travels the country as a member of one of Ohio's most active Civil War re-enactment groups and shares his thoughts with Discovering Ohio's Ashley about why young people continue to enjoy the hobby as we move into celebrations of the Civil War Sesquicentennial.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved