For Quincy Geocachers Aquila and LadyHawk.
In 1849, the same year as the California Gold Rush, a mineral discovery 1 was made in the hills south of Hannibal that would bring about the birth and ultimately the death of the town of Ilasco -- the discovery of abundant limestone and underlying shale deposits, the raw materials for making Portland cement. By the turn of the twentieth century, the availability of these materials, along with ready access to railroad and river transportation, made this location an ideal site for a new cement plant.
From its beginning in 1901 to its end in 1963, Ilasco was a "cement town"; even its name was an acronym derived from the components of Portland cement: iron, limestone, alumina, silica, calcium, and oxygen. The town of Ilasco was born to house construction and plant workers for the Atlas Portland Cement Company, which was opening a cement plant in the same hollows that, in fiction, were said to once echo with the voices of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Becky Thatcher, Muff Potter and Injun Joe.
Much of the manpower for the plant was recruited from Eastern European countries: Croatia, the Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Italy, Slovakia. Men who immigrated under the sponsorship of the company would work at the plant, live in company barracks-style housing or with friends or relatives, and send portions of their paychecks back to their families, with the hope that the families might eventually also save enough to immigrate and join them.
The history of Ilasco is one of:
- multi-national and multi-ethnic immigration;
- difficult and dangerous work in the quarries, crushing plants, and kilns;
- the rise and decline of labor unions;
- labor unrest (requiring the intervention of the Missouri National Guard at the direction the governor in 1910);
- economic booms and depressions;
- job displacement resulting from technological advancement.
Altogether, Ilasco spans the major events of the American workplace in the first half of the twentieth century; the disappearance of the town coincides with the coming of The Great River Road, Highway 79.
The site at the cache coordinates contains monuments to the now-abandoned town of Ilasco and the immigrants who were its citizens. Take the time:
- to read the stone markers and their inscriptions,
- to see the flags and markers representing the countries of origin for many of the residents, and
- to see the bell tower from the Dr. Martin Luther Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Church, along with the markers on the brickwork now supporting it.
There are two ways to log this cache:
- with your log, post a picture of yourself and your GPSR in front of one of the sides of the bell tower, or
- locate either of the curved frames that supports the bearing on which the bell turns; on each of these frames is cast the inscription "No. XY" where XY is a two-digit number. Email me that number.
For further information on the town and its citizens, see the following feature articles of the Hannibal Courier-Post on-line:
- about the Bell Tower, see "Historic Ring" 2 ;
- about the town of Ilasco, see "Hannibal History: Illasco" [sic] 3 .
More is written about the politics and history of this town; for more information, we recommend City Of Dust, A Cement Company Town in the Land of Tom Sawyer by Gregg Andrews, ISBN 0-8262-1424-X.
Also by Andrews on a closely related subject, Insane Sisters, Or, the Price Paid for Challenging a Company Town, ISBN 0-8262-1240-9, about a seventeen-year property dispute between the Atlas Cement Company and two sisters, Mary Alice Heinbach and Euphemia B. Koller.
Huckleberry