Galena and the Footsteps of Ghosts

I come from a very small town where nothing ever happens and the town is still frozen in the early 1900's era. The buildings are all standing still, waiting for their old builders and inhabitants to return. The house of Ulysses S. Grant is still decorated and open for the public to gawk at. But there was a time when Galena was the hub of Illinois. It rivaled Chicago in size and it was a toss up between which of the two would take the ultimate precedence in the state. Before the river silted in, Galena was the place where everything happened and the people who were searching for the right people or just the right opportunities flocked. One of these people was a Native American, Seneca to be exact, named Ely S. Parker. When Parker came to Galena he was a newly graduated Civil Engineer and Grand Sachem of the Seneca's. He was perpetually searching for those cultural boundaries that laid (and still to lie) between the white Americans and the Native Americans and fighting to ease the conflict between them. Parker came to Galena to build, to add to the splendor and help it thrive and ripen past that of Chicago. He built the Custom's House (today the Post Office) and the U.S. Marine Hospital. From the pictures that exist from Parker's time in Galena (shortly before the break out of the Civil War) the town looks very much the same as it does today, minus the steamboats jostling along the river front. The Custom's House still stands and in fact, I was just parked right in front of it about a week ago. It's incredible, really, to see my little town as a hub of activity and the center stone of ideas. Parker and Grant met in Galena and become friends, holding a bond all through the Civil War and long after Grant's run as President of the United States. As I walked down the streets of Galena, I couldn't help but feel in awe of what this now stagnant town had once meant to the country. Abraham Lincoln gave a speech in the town, the building and it's porch still there. Grant lived there with his family before the Civil War and before becoming President. Ely S. Parker discovered the full depths of his purpose and the extent to which he could help his people. It's easy to walk through town, when you're a local, and forget the history and the excitement. It's simple to see the town as a tourist center, with nothing really left to offer besides trinkets and crumbling buildings. But the truth is that Galena still rings with the beats of those in the past. Despite the men and women being gone, their homes and creations still harbor solidly in our streets. I don't get homesick very often but there's something about Galena that can always bring you back. It may be that America, such a young country in the consideration of the rest of the world, is not so young in Galena. We're reminded, every day, in Galena that footsteps belonging to the ghosts of the past are still hammering through the streets. We exist side-by-side in the hopes of never forgetting where we came from and who has fought to structure our world.