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Echoes of the Prairie
Here is where you will find written scripts and bonus information for episodes of Echoes of the Prairie.
Echoes of the Prairie features the history of places in TSPR's broadcast region. Echoes of the Prairie airs Tuesday - Friday at 8:19 am and 5:48 pm. Each episode features content created and recorded by local residents. For more information about the program's content contributors please visit the show's home page.
How Loraine, Illinois got it's name
The town of Loraine was started in 1870 on the Carthage branch of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad. Like many small towns in Western Illinois at that time, it was started as the result of the railroad coming through the prairie. Anthony Pitzger Lionberger worked for the CB&Q railroad and helped put the railroad line through the area that became Loraine. The residents admired Anthony so much that they named the town after his daughter Loraine who was two at the time. In August of 1873, at the age of 40 after jumping off a train onto a railroad spike, Anthony sadly passed away from blood poisoning. Little Loraine lived a long full life eventually passing away in 1952 at the age of 83. Anthony Pitzger Lionberger is my 3 times great Uncle.
Episode written by: Rebecca Williamson
The Pearl Button Capitol of the World
Walk around the riverfront in places like Canton Missouri these days and you can still find peculiar little shells, polished smooth, with several small holes cut in them. Younger people are puzzled but older folks know them as relics of a once powerful industry and of an age before modern plastics when freshwater mussels were central to the region’s economy.
In the early 1900s, this part of the Mississippi was the “pearl button capital of the world”. The largest producer, the Hawkeye Pearl button factory in Muscatine Iowa, specialized in mother-of-pearl buttons and other pearl novelties, producing at its peak a staggering 1.5 million mother-of-pearl buttons a year.
Clammers collected mussels and worked in camps along the river to open them and remove the meat and pearls. In cutting plants in Canton, Keokuk, and Oskaloosa the raw shells were processed. Some cut the shells into squares, while others polished, drilled the holes, or machined decorative designs. At its peak, the Hawkeye Pearl Button Factory had more than 800 employees.
Eventually, as Mississippi mussels were fished to scarcity, zippers and other closures became more popular, and mass-produced plastic buttons came to dominate, the pearl button trade died out. Canton’s Hawkeye Pearl button factory closed in 1960. The last Muscatine pearl button was produced in 1967. Today a 28 foot tall statue of a clammer stands in Muscatine as tribute to the workers who built what was once a $1 million a year industry at a time when more than a third of the world’s buttons came from our area.
Episode written by Scott Giltner
The Naming of Burlington, Iowa
Other than the fur traders who reaped untold riches in their trade with the Fox and Indians, it was 1832 when the earliest settlers were allowed west of the Mississippi. The area which would become Burlington became a popular site. In 1833 streets were being laid out. John B. Gray bought one of the first lots and opened the first grocery store. He also acquired naming rights and settled on Burlington - in honor of his Vermont home town. Prior to the official naming, the area had been known as Shoquoquon - meaning Flint Hills.
Then in 1859, several Wisconsin and Burlington people became part of the Colorado gold rush. There were Alonzo Allen and Henry Dickens, George and Morse Coffin, and the Beckwith family. They settled along St. Vrain Creek. Some panned for gold – others chose farming. By 1962, a name was needed so that a post office could be established. It became Burlington – this time in honor of Burlington, Iowa. Despite high hopes for the settlement – flooding became an issue – just as at home. There remains an Old Burlington Cemetery, but most residents moved to nearby Longmont.
Episode written by Mary Krohlow