Naperville 50 Years Ago — The Park District

 

1966 was also the year our Park District was born. Park districts weren’t a novel idea — Chicago launched it’s first incarnations in the 1850’s. While a little rural town didn’t need a park district in the nineteenth century, as Naperville became more suburban, visionaries started considering ways to preserve parkland for the citizens.

Dr. Robert Steunenberg was one of those visionaries. A WWII vet who was marooned for 30 days after his ship LST 808 sank, he later became  a research chemist at Argonne. After initiating studies in 1964, he was instrumental in forming the Park District and also served as commissioner.

A referendum passed in December of 1966 to establish a Naperville Park District, but the first 31 programs weren’t offered until 1968. That first year, 3,000 people participated at a time when Naperville’s population was about 18,000.

In 1967, the Park District purchased it’s first property, the Fraley farm, which later became Springbrook Golf Course. Frank Fraley was a long-time Wheatland Township farmer who passed away that same year. He and his wife Jenny were among those who organized the Naperville Rural Life Progress Club in 1917.

Ernie Nance was our first Director with a newly-minted Masters degree in Park and Recreation Administration and previous experience in the Mundelein Park District. He later moved on to other park districts across the country, winning numerous awards. In his last years, he was Executive Director of the Illinois Conservation, Park and Recreation Foundation.

Dorthea Weigand was the  sole woman on the first Board of Park Commissioners and was re-elected for a second six-year term in 1971. Enthusiastically committed to the Naperville Park District, Weigand has lovely park named after her on south Washington Street near Ring Road.

The Naperville Park District has big plans for their anniversary year from selling wine at the Riverwalk Café to the completion of the Fort Hill Activity Center.

Naperville 50 Years Ago -- The Barn

1966 was a remarkable time — even in our little town. At the beginning of a development explosion,  Naperville’s population grew 75% during that decade, from 12,933 to 22,617.

One of the remarkable things Naperville did was build The Barn. Technically, the project was finished in December of 1965 but it was highlighted in the 1966 high school yearbook, “Arrowhead.”

Today we think of

it as a location for Park District programs, but The Barn was actually developed by “youths of the community” with an adult advisory board.

Instead of tax money, 300 students went door-to-door  to sell $48,000 in general obligation bonds, “the largest sum ever raised in Naperville.”

There were some hiccups during the project, including a couple of location changes when residents protested the barn look and the anticipated loud rock ‘n roll music. At one point, a disgusted Mayor Zaininger walked out of a City Council meeting when he couldn’t get support for The Barn’s lease petition.

Eventually an agreement was reached and Naperville Youth Organization, Inc. was given a 20-year lease at $10 a year.

Teens, both male and “muscle-bound suffragettes,” joined adult volunteers to haul brick and boards and do “anything they can” to raise the shell and finish the inside in time to have their first dance on December 4,1965. It was extremely well-attended.

Teen centers like this were popular in the ‘60s and ‘70s and many towns had a similar venue for kids to hear local bands. The Barn sold memberships, special event tickets and refreshments to pay ongoing expenses.

In 2010, “Barnstock” brought back a bunch of bands from 1965 to 1973 to relive The Barn’s glory days. Perhaps something similar will happen once more before The Barn is torn down after this year’s Last Fling is over.

Throughout this year we’ll look back on how remarkable 1966 was in Naperville’s history.

Old Naperville Gossip about Colorado Beer Baron

If you were a Chicagoan of drinking age in 1980,  you remember how chic it was to drink Coors before it was legally distributed east of the Mississippi.

If you are a Naperville history buff, you’ve heard that Adolph Coors worked in one of our own breweries before he went to Colorado.

But perhaps you haven’t heard the whole story — and maybe none of us ever will.

The Coors brewery in Golden, Colorado takes visitors on a tour that includes an historical museum. You won’t find Naperville named in any of the placards, but if you talk to the tour guides, some of them have heard of our town. And some tell an “off the record” tale. 

Adolph Kohrs, as he was christened, immigrated from Prussia in 1868. Some stories say he was a stowaway, disembarking in Maryland.

Both of his parents died a few years earlier, but he did have siblings. Brother William eventually followed him to Colorado and joined the business.

Americanizing his name to “Coors,” Adolph made his way to Chicago and on to Naperville, which had seen a wave of German settlers in the 1840’s. 

Adolph spent three years at Stenger Brewery as a highly paid brewmaster before quitting. The local story is that while Stenger hoped to add Adolph to the family business, Adolph wasn’t interested in marrying a Stenger daughter. 

In Golden, it’s whispered that Adolph liked the Stenger girls just fine, but he wasn’t marriage-minded. Getting out of town was a decision to preserve his health and pretty face!

 

Adolph became very successful, but Prohibition nearly wiped him out. The company eked out a living making malted milk and other non-alcoholic items.

Before Prohibition was repealed and even before the stock market crashed, eighty-two year old Adolph went out a sixth-story hotel window in Virginia Beach. Contemporary accounts wouldn’t or couldn’t say whether he fell, jumped or was thrown.

Passing years have shrouded the facts. Now the story of Adolph Coors is a tale to tell the next time you share a beer with friends.

Naperville Goes West

The Gold Rush began in 1848 and nearly 300,000 people traveled to California to cash in on their share. Naperville folks were not immune to Gold Rush fever.

The Naperville settlement was only seventeen years old. In addition to the original group of Scotts and Irish, families from Germany and other countries had also made their way to the DuPage River, pushing the frontier even farther west.

This past summer we drove from Naperville to Los Angeles to visit our son and we were overwhelmed by the vast — and harsh — landscape. And that’s in an air conditioned car! We can only imagine what the trip must have been like for travelers in 1848.

Apparently Stephen Scott, who arrived in Naperville in the 1830s, organized a group of local folks who traveled together across the plains and deserts to seek their fortunes. Among them was John Stenger of the Stenger Brewery.  

Another man with gold fever was Morris Sleight, originally a ship’s captain like Joseph Naper, who spent four years in Placerville, California looking for gold before returning to his Naperville farm in 1854. 

Pierce Hawley, whose daughter married Willard Scott, Stephen’s son, had a farm in Kendall County, but lived for a time in Naperville as well. Hawley also went west, but for religious reasons rather than for gold.

Hawley was a Methodist who heard Joseph Smith speak and became a Mormon follower. When Smith was killed, a group of Mormons under the leadership of Lyman Wight went to Texas and Hawley went with them, taking most of his family. Caroline, already married, remained in Naperville.

One of Hawley’s daughters became a plural wife of Wight, but Hawley was starting to have his misgivings about his son-in-law. After his daughter died, the conflict grew and Hawley left the religious community. He moved to Cherokee Nation, Nebraska where he spent the last years of his life.

It seems no locals struck the mother lode. Looking out on those wide skies and dry plains during our trip, one can only admire the pioneer fortitude it must have taken to travel by foot, horse and wagon from the DuPage River to the California mountains in pursuit of their golden dreams.

Curfew Rings in Naperville

Today’s municipal code makes it “unlawful for a person less than seventeen” to be in public after 12:01am, but curfew certainly isn’t a modern concept.

In May of 1896, Mayor Willard Scott and Naperville’s Aldermen enacted a curfew ordinance that caused some consternation, particularly with our “Night Police Force” who seems to be just one guy. 

Curfew rang in Naperville again last night without causing as much alarm on the part of the volunteer fire department and nervous citizens as it did on Saturday night, when its solemn notes were tolled for the first time by the old town bell. 

To guard against any further misunderstanding the night police force of Naperville made it his business yesterday to make a house to house canvass of the members of the fire department and carefully explained to them how to distinguish between the dignified tolling of the curfew and the wild, riotous note of the bell when employed in informing the community that a fire was in progress.

...

“Where's the fire?’ demanded the breathless boys who have the proud distinction of “running with the machine.”

"It hain't no fire,” responded the night police force, as he danced up and down on the bell rope. "It's for curfew.”

The man whose duty it is to open the engine house door and yell, "Look out" when the start is made and who had just come from a barber's chair, looked blank. Then he wanted to know who Curfew was, why he died, and when he was to be buried.

The night police force got red in the face. There came near being a fight.

“Say,” said the force, “you're a beaut.” Then he proceeded to explain that curfew was rung according to an edict of the Common Council as a notice to youths of tender years to immediately hie themselves to their respective homes or be imprisoned in the town gaol.

It made the volunteer firemen so mad they put in the next half hour trying to entice George Alonzo Betts, the only descendant of a member of the Town Council amenable to the curfew act, to come outside the yard. Then they were going to get the night police force and have him carry off George Alonzo to the dungeon keep.

But George Alonzo was crafty. He staid right in his own back yard and will continue to stay there every night after the sounding of the curfew.

Thomas Betts was an alderman in 1885, 1891 and 1892 as well as Mayor 1901-1902. He had two sons:  Thomas H. and Charles who was alderman in 1896 when the curfew ordinance was passed. But Thomas H. and wife Cora had no children, so who “George Alonzo Betts” is remains a

mystery.