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Bob Hansen for The Hawk Eye It was a link to the town’s earliest history – a brick and mortar reminder that civilization finally arrived in Burlington. It was the town’s first jail and a testament that law and order – of a sort – finally was here to stay. It was 1838, and the red brick building taking shape in today’s North Hill Park was an object of some community pride. That dedicated building was considered a great step in forwarding community gentrification and it was greatly patronized because Burlington during the mid-19th Century produced a bumper crop of ner-do-wells requiring incarceration. ....
Around Burlington: Ammonia ice was proof that not all things flow downstream Bob Hansen for The Hawk Eye What ever happened to winter those winters of 150 years ago when freezing to death was a very real possibility? Then Burlington residents spent the season huddled about sputtering fireplaces, wrapped in buffalo robes and cursing the fact they had not headed downriver to Louisiana when they had a chance. The Great River that had been a link to a distant civilization where snug homes and efficient stoves provide winter relief each winter became a barrier to escape. The only way to cross into Illinois and on to civilization was to gamble on a long, frightening walk across the crackling and shifting ice. ....
Around Burlington: 1860s Christmases were diminished affairs Bob Hansen for The Hawk Eye America in the 1860s was a divided land with Confederate and Union forces frantically tearing at each other. The faith and zeal that both sides initially carried to the Civil War battlefields was an early casualty, and this sense of loss pervaded both the battlefront and home front as Christmas drew near. Burlington and its far away troops were destined not to escape the sense of loss as evidenced in the letters and diaries of the time. Many of the letters in those war years came from the front-line troops and contained a sense of longing for holiday family gatherings and the comforts of an Iowa Christmas. ....
Around Burlington: Sleigh bells jingled merrily to utter destruction Bob Hansen for The Hawk Eye Somewhere out there, winter waits. Ice, snow and gloom soon will predominate as we huddle next to the furnace, wrapped in layers of wool while contemplating a world gone white. But our 19th-century forefathers and foremothers were of tougher stock, and when winter’s worse arrived, they were quick to embrace the season in a variety of winter sports. Sleigh rides were perhaps the most typical of all winter outdoor activities. Livery stables, such as Burlington’s Unterkircher Livery, enjoyed a seasonal profit center with the renting of gaily painted omnibuses to private parties. The local stable would provide the adventurous a sleigh drawn by four horses that was the preferred winter conveyance to bands of singing, shouting merrymakers. ....