Illinois town highlights its historic roots

A church guards the small village of Maeystown, Ill., from the top of a hill, looking down on the stone houses that sit snug to the street. Visitors are greeted by a flowing creek and a stone bridge that opens to the winding roads of the village. In the distance, a landscape of the bluffs of the Mississippi River can be seen. The tiny town offers historical sites to see, a local bed and breakfast for festival goers to stay and a collection of community members ready to share the history of their town.
German immigrants founded the town in 1852. Sixty historical buildings still exist throughout the village, including the stone St. John United Church of Christ and the Corner George Inn. Maeystown is listed in the state registry of historical sites and has been listed as a historic district on the national register since 1978.

Cobden, Illinois

Five years ago Gerardo Jimenez was speaking at a conference in Illinois when his wife Carol fell in love with a nearby plot of land. The couple purchased the property, and today peppers of all different shades of green and red spot the land the Jimenezes named Rancho Bella Vista.

Gerardo and Carol Jimenez’s farm is located in Cobden, Illinois. The Jimenezes had always grown peppers as a hobby, but after retiring they decided to develop their pastime into a business, Darn Hot Peppers. Today, they grow 21 varieties of peppers that they use to make salsas, jellies and seasonings.

Gerardo Jimenez said he learned about agriculture as a child and his experiences helped shape the way he runs his farm.

Growing up in a family of migrant farm workers, Jimenez said he labored alongside his brothers and sisters. The fields were sprayed constantly with herbicides and pesticides. After watching the people he knew become ill because of the chemicals from the fields, Jimenez said he decided he would produce crops without the aid of harmful herbicides and pesticides.

“I wanted to be able to walk to the fields, see a good pepper, pick it up, take a bite and be comfortable knowing that the peppers have not been sprayed,” Jimenez said.

Growing peppers without chemicals is difficult work. Jimenez said he wakes up at 6 a.m. every morning to pull weeds and maintain the farm.

“You really have to love what you are doing,” Jimenez said.

In his efforts to maintain a natural farm, Jimenez uses techniques such as crop rotation. He also uses garlic and fish for fertilizer and to deter insects. He said a local high school boy’s soccer team works in the fields during the week and they always complain they can never get dates because of the smell.

Hotel Pattee, Perry, Iowa 

A suave young man in a uniform holds the door, inviting visitors to step from rural Iowa into a secret, plush utopia.

Inside the two sets of ornate double doors, a visitor may choose to relax by the roaring double-hearth fireplace or take time for brunch at David’s Milwaukee Diner. A little wandering leads to high-ceilinged ballrooms, elegant meeting chambers and even a fully furnished library. Visitors who choose to explore the basement will discover a bowling alley, a recreational center and a spa.

The experience will not be complete, however, until those visitors have checked into one of the 40 themed rooms on the upper floors of this establishment.
Welcome to the Hotel Pattee.

“It’s an unusual hotel,” said Phil Stone, a resident of Perry, Iowa, the hometown of the Hotel Pattee. “As you travel around the state of Iowa and you say you’re from Perry, people say, ‘Oh, the hotel.’”

Stone and his wife, Cathy, are frequent guests to David’s Milwaukee Diner on the Hotel Pattee’s main floor.

“It’s a really classy place,” Cathy Stone said.

The English Shop, St. Charles, Missouri 

A statue of a Buckingham Palace guard, complete with red coat and black bearskin hat, greeted the man at the door. Two shelves protruding from the guard’s stomach displayed a blue box of Jaffa Cakes, shortbread cookies and bottles of ginger beer – just a sample of the many food items The English Shop in downtown St. Charles, Mo., sells. 

The man refused what the guard had to offer. Brian Beardsley, of St. Charles, knew exactly what he needed and so did Eileen Prichard, owner of The English Shop.

“Kippers!” Prichard yelled when she saw Beardsley. She bustled out from behind the register to help him.

Kippers, or smoked herring, are something for which most Americans do not develop a taste, Prichard explained.

Beardsley agreed, but he wanted to buy them anyway for his mother. He said his mother loves kippers, but she is not like most Americans. Beardsley’s mother is from Bath, England. 

Outside the Steiger Haus Bed and Breakfast, the cobblestone streets of St. Genevieve, Missouri, are silent. Late afternoon sunlight filters through lace curtains onto hardwood floors, illuminating an antique buffet and several bright landscape paintings.

The stillness is broken as the door opens and a small crowd of people filter in, filling the front room and moving back into a dining area with separate groups of tables and chairs. Dave Thompson, one of the first to enter into the sunlit sitting room, laughs and gestures to the staff, saying, “I’ll give someone 100 bucks to tell me who done it.” A few mysterious smiles light in response, but no one can answer.

Within the next few hours, he and the other guests at the bed and breakfast will take on different personas, enact a fictional art auction and witness deception, drugs and murder. By lunchtime the next day, they will have explained it all.

For the last 18 years, more than 55,000 guests from around the world have taken part in one of more than 72 murder mysteries written by the owner of Steiger Haus, Rob Beckerman, who writes under the alias J. Masterson.

Beckerman, who grew up in the original Steiger Haus location (at its peak, the murder mysteries were run out of three separate houses), converted the house into a bed and breakfast and was searching for a way to increase winter reservations when he heard of another hotel running murder mysteries for guests. So he wrote a mystery and tried it.

Other than a clever pun, it’s hard to decide what to call All Fired Up. To potential patrons, it seems to be a store, art studio and alternative Friday night destination rolled into one. Teddy Wright, All Fired Up’s creator and owner, has a quick solution.
“I would call it a paint-your-own-pottery studio,” she says.

All Fired Up’s environment is hard not to love. Vividly colored handprints cover the right-hand wall, evidence of the children who have enjoyed a birthday party here. Shelves upon shelves line other walls, stacked from floor to ceiling with both finished and unfinished pottery. Every imaginable creation is on display, from a mug bigger than a person’s head to a clever plate with ridges designed to keep tacos upright.

Set up like an old railroad station, the Depot Inn and Suites signals its customers with its friendly atmosphere just as the trains that pass through signal their presence with a blow of a whistle.

The Depot Inn and Suites, located off Highway 63 in La Plata, Mo., first opened its doors in May 2006. Kelly and Thomas O. Marshall, owners of the Depot Inn and Suites, said they discussed the possibility of starting their own hotel for quite some time before actually acting on it.

“Kelly and I, for a number of years, have always talked about how owning a hotel would be kind of fun,” Tom said. “Then when the new highway development started and we knew there was a new restaurant going in and all this new development, we decided that this spot was really good. We’re just a nine-minute drive from Kirksville.”

Nostalgiaville, USA, Kingdom City, Missouri

Somewhere over the rainbow, where tomorrow is another day, Nat King Cole and Dean Martin serenade customers as they shop for poodle skirts and saddle shoes. Inside an eye-catching pink and blue building, tin signs commemorating “I Love Lucy” and “The Andy Griffith Show” decorate the walls, and cars pull away with hula girls or fuzzy dice displayed in the front windshield.

Martha Doyle pulled into the parking lot of Nostalgiaville, USA, two blocks north of I-70 in Kingdom City, Missouri, and asked to borrow a phone book in 2000. She spoke with owners Ron and Judi Dunwoody, who offered her a phone book and a part-time job in the store. Now, after nine years, Doyle is a veteran with her own small collection.

Main Street Inn, Ste. Genevieve, Missouri

Among the historic shops and houses of Ste. Genevieve lies a charming bed and breakfast — the Main Street Inn. With its classic architecture and respect for tradition, the Main Street Inn encompasses much of the colonial spirit of its location.

In its early days, Ste. Genevieve was established as a French colony. This explains the names of most streets in the downtown area, such as La Fleur, Moreau and Le Compte.While much of the area has developed along the same lines as the rest of the country, Old Ste. Genevieve intentionally has preserved its colonial style and attitude.