What will it take for us

[2naSalit]

4. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back when...

I spent my honeymoon in Galena. It's such a cool place, the whole town is like a museum with a building and construction code that requires everything to end up looking like the rest of the buildings to maintain the "period" aesthetic... from the mid 1800s. Ulysses S. Grant's retirement home is there. Galena was a thriving "customs" city before Chicago was heavily settled... Galena is located along the Galena River, they have flood gates to protect the lower levels of town, and was in its heyday a major source of lead. It was mined and melted then dropped from specially designed towers to make lead balls for guns and cannons. There was also a noted potter there, John Dowling, who made interesting functional wares but had a secret recipe for his glazes... that stuff is worth a lot now. I have two small crockery pieces that may actually be made by him... probably the most valuable possessions I own.

It would really suck if something bad happened to the town, much of the old section is in the national register of historic places.

This is bound to happen again and in a more heavily populated place eventually.