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Broken Hill Mine and town. The Barrier Ranges were discovered by Captain Charles Sturt in 1844 but it was not until 1876 that silver was discovered at Thackaringa near Silverton by Paddy Green the storekeeper of Menindee. Sturt had taken samples of mineral rocks back to the SA governor in 1844 but they were lost! The silver rush at Thackaringa did not begin until 1880. At that time the NSW government sent a police officer and magistrate to Silverton. In 1883 Silverton was surveyed as a town and its own silver rush began. A year later it had a population of 1,745 with 3,000 near the town. There were dozens of silver mines and mining companies within thirty miles of Silverton. Then in September 1883 Charles Rasp an employee of the Mount Gipps sheep station saw a part of the ranges that looked promising for minerals so with other employees James Poole and David James he pegged off the Broken Hill mining lease as it looked like almost pure tin. Once aware of this mining claim George McCulloch, the leaseholder of Mount Gipps, held a meeting of all his station men. The seven men formed a syndicate pegging 7 more mining leases in the ranges covering all that is now Broken Hill. The syndicate was: Rasp boundary rider, McCulloch station leaseholder, George Urquhart sheep overseer, George Lind station bookkeeper, Philip Charley station hand, David James contractor and James Poole offsider of James. Within a year others took out the North Broken Hill blocks and others the South blocks. Early returns were poor and the lodes not rich but all lodes showed both silver and lead. By the end of 1884 chloride ores of lead and galena ores of silver and lead and some zinc were being mined. The first smelters were built at the mine. The Broken Hill Proprietary Company was floated in August 1885. Only four of the original group of seven in the Broken Hill Mining Company were in the new BHP Company. The shares that were sold from the old syndicate for around £110 were worth one million pounds six years later! The new company offered 1,600 shares at £20 each in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne. New shafts showed the lode went down almost vertically and was over 20 feet thick in places. The head office of BHP was located in Melbourne and the town of Broken Hill emerged around the BHP mines. Within days of the share release some shares were foolishly being sold for £13 a share. But in the first two months of operation the big mine produced over £44,000 worth of silver and lead. The first share dividend was given out three months after the company was formed! The first Broken Hill Post Office opened in 1885 as Silverton town and mines declined. The BHP mine shafts were over 200 feet by January 1886. By April BHP shares were worth £47 each. The BHP smelters opened in May 1886. In the next four months £67,000 worth of ore was obtained. By the end of 1886 shareholders had received over £4 for their initial share price of £20. The completion of the Peterborough to Silverton to Broken Hill railway set up BHP for more production in 1887. Original shareholders were going to be wealthy for at least the next 100 years or more. But the BHP mine was not the only mine- the other main ones were the South, Central, British, Block 14 and Block 10 mines. In 1888 BHP £20 shares reached £417 and their mine produced over £900,000 worth of ores including tin. In 1888 BHP was paying a regular dividend of £2 per share. In its first six years to 1891 BHP paid out £3,320,000 in dividends and produced over £7,000,000 worth of minerals. In its first four years BHP spent £175,000 on land, buildings, its smelters and machinery. By 1906 BHP had paid nearly £12,000,000 in dividends. By 1908 BHP employed 4,850 men and they were just one of several major companies in Broken Hill. BHP miners received a minimum of 10 shillings per eight hour shift in 1908. Three shower and bath rooms able to accommodate 500 men each were provided for those ending a shift. A major decision made by BHP in its early years was to end its smelting in Broken Hill in 1892 as there was not enough water there. Instead BHP developed their smelters at Port Pirie and railed the ores to that city from 1890 onwards. The British Broken Hill Company had established a smelter at Port Pirie in 1889 and BHP took this over and enlarged it. Eventually the smelters at Port Pirie smelted for five major Broken Hill mining companies. SA salt was required for the smelting of zinc in the Pirie smelters.
By the end of 1888 Broken Hill was the third biggest city in NSW after Sydney and Newcastle. It had a population of over 10,000 people by the beginning of 1889 but in April 1886 there had been only 34 inhabitants! The first building there was the mine manager’s house for the Day Dream mine in 1885. The town was surveyed in April 1886. The first church as the Wesleyan Methodist church built in 1885. The Customs House was an important early structure levying goods from South Australia but mainly collecting revenue from ores produced. The first hotel, the Bonanza was licensed October 1885. More followed. Hotels, houses and hovels had been built all over Broken Hill by the end of 1888 and in 1908 there were 61 hotels in Broken Hill. The town was declared a municipality in 1888. By 1890 many stone shops and offices in Argent Street had been completed and the town had a population of 26,000 by 1891. But progress had not been smooth. Strikes had closed mining operations for short periods, a major fire had destroyed wooden buildings in Argent Street in 1888, a water famine was experienced in 1892 and a bigger strike occurred in 1892 and in 1893 several banks had failed as depression and crisis hit all of Australia. The first of many serious mine accidents occurred in 1895 when nine men were killed and many wounded followed by another accident killing three men in 1897. But early in the 20th century the city was well endowed with churches, halls and government buildings. In 1905 there were wooden Anglican, Salvation Army, Baptist, Congregational and four wooden Methodist churches in the town. There were also three stone Methodist Churches, the stone Catholic Church (now the Cathedral), the stone Presbyterian Church in Lane Street and a stone Anglican Church in Railway Town. The Town Hall was built in 1891 as was the current Post Office. The Courthouse was finished in 1889 and the Police Station was built in 1890. The first Trades Hall was built in 1898.
St Michael, Woolverstone, Suffolk
It was a crisp, bright morning towards the end of November 2016, a perfect day for a bike ride. I headed out of town onto the Shotley Peninsula, the first stretch of my journey necessarily along the horrid main road which runs along the south bank of the Orwell. I soon came to Woolverstone, which you can see at once was rebuilt as a late 19th Century estate village. A narrow lane runs between fields and copses northwards to the church of St Michael sitting on its mound above the river.
The setting is idyllic. The great pile of Woolverstone Hall, today home to Ipswich Girls High School, stands beside it, and above me the jackdaws chattered in the skeletal trees, the fields were full of sheep, the damp woods full of the cries of pheasants. Woolverstone Hall was built in the 1770s by John Johnson for William Berners. Johnson had been the main architect of the Berners Estate, an area of London known more commonly today as Fitzrovia, and the fabulously wealthy Berners family took up residence in this remote Suffolk spot above the Orwell. They paid for George Gilbert Scott's restoration of the 1860s, which is pretty much all that can be seen of the church from the south apart from the tower, but in the 1880s they did rather more. James Piers St Aubyn, one of the most famous architects of the day, was brought in to expand the church massively towards the north, and when you enter you see that the effect is really that of two churches side by side, separated by a fairly low and rounded arcade. The new part was designed to be used for shadowy, incense-led worship, and although that tradition has long gone it is still the main part of the church today.
The wealth of the Berners family means that the restoration was overwhelming, but the quality of it is high. And in any case, there are few medieval survivals anywhere on the Shotley Peninsula. The only old object here is the font, and it is a curiosity. On the face of it, the style is that of a typical East Anglian font bowl, lions alternating with angels, but the carving is quite unlike anything I've seen elsewhere, the crouching lions shown in profile. Pevsner calls the carving 'crude', which is not untrue. Was it done by a local hand, perhaps? It has been reset on a modern stem with upright, alert little lions, 19th Century but much more in the East Anglian medieval style.
The glass is also generally of high quality, or at least expensive, and to various members of the Berners family. Heaton Butler & Bayne's rather alarmingly yellow Saints Martin, Agnes, Margaret and Augustine, installed as a memorial to Archdeacon Henry Berners and his wife, stand proudly in an overwhelmingly wide south nave window which works externally as a kind of optical illusion, making Scott's nave appear wider than his chancel, which it isn't.
The same firm provided the east window in St Aubyn's north aisle to John and Henrietta Berners, which depicts the crucifixion flanked by Joseph of Arimathea, the Blessed Virgin, St John and St Mary Magdalene. It is interesting to note, given the not uncommon conflation of their imagery in medieval times, the similarity between the figures of St John and St Mary Magdalene. The studio might almost have been working from the same cartoon. Both the windows were installed in the 1880s under St Aubyn's direction.
There was once an earler 19th Century window at Gilbert Scott's east end, of which the upper tracery survives, but the main lights were destroyed by blast damage during the Second World War, a not uncommon fate for church windows on the Shotley Peninsula - indeed, the church in the neighbouring village, Chelmondiston, was completely ruined. The 1947 replacement, by AL Wilkinson, depicts Christ the Saviour of the World flanked by St Michael and St Gabriel.
The High Church, even Anglo-catholic, enthusiasms of the Berners family may be judged by Woolverstone House back in the village, which was built for a community of Anglican nuns based at St Peter, Kilburn. It was intended as their retreat house and school, and the architect was Edwin Lutyens. Today it is a private house, but the church is now open every day. When I'd first visited every Suffolk church in the late 1990s I had found it locked. Coming back in 2006, the interior was full of scaffolding, and I couldn't go in. Curiously, the avenue of yew trees which lined the path up to the south porch at that time have now been reduced to stumps. Despite St Michael being barely five miles from my house, it had taken until this idyllic crisp, sunny day in late November 2016 for me to get back there, discover this, and explore the inside for the first time.
It was time to head on to Harkstead. The view from the south porch back up the hilly lane was breathtaking in the low winter sunshine. I stepped out, wandering down to the east to look across to the Hall. The Berners family sold it as part of the Estate in 1937, assuming that it would be demolished for farming land, but after a period of requisition by the army during the War the Hall was bought by the London County Council for use as a boarding school. It was intended both for children taken into care and also for those whose parents were working overseas, an odd combination, but people seem to have happy memories of it. The writer Ian McEwan is a famous ex-pupil. The school closed in the 1980s; its massive library was broken up, and you still regularly come across items from it in Suffolk's second-hand bookshops. In a grand sale in the Ipswich Corn Exchange shortly after the closure, I bought the school's copies of McEwan's books for 50p each. The Hall lay empty for several years, until the Girls High School moved out here from central Ipswich, and restored it to something like its former glory. The jackdaws which inhabit the great 19th Century water tower which stands beside it wheeled above my head as I cycled back to the Shotley road.
Vritish postcard by Arcard. Photo: Sony Pictures. Kate Beckinsale in Underworld: Evolution (Len Wiseman, 2006).
English actress Kate Beckinsale (1973) started her career in British costume dramas during the 1990s. From 2001 on, she starred in such Hollywood blockbusters as Pearl Harbor (2001), Van Helsing (2003) and The Aviator (2004). After her role as Selene in the Underworld film series (2003–2016), Beckinsale is also known for her work in action films.
Kate Beckinsale was born in 1973 in Finsbury Park, London, or in Hounslow, Middlesex, England (the sources differ). However, she has resided in London for most of her life. Her mother is actress Judy Loe, and her father was actor Richard Beckinsale, who starred in popular British television comedies during the 1970s. He passed away tragically early in 1979 at the age of 31. She is the younger half-sister of actress Samantha Beckinsale. Kate attended the private school Godolphin and Latymer School in London for her grade and primary school education. In her teens, she twice won the British bookseller W.H. Smith Young Writers' competition - once for three short stories and once for three poems. After a tumultuous adolescence (including a bout of anorexia), she gradually took up the profession of acting. Her major acting debut came in the TV film One Against the Wind (Larry Elikann, 1991), about World War II. Kate began attending Oxford University's New College in the fall of 1991, majoring in French and Russian literature. She had already decided that she wanted to act, but to broaden her horizons she chose university over drama school. While in her first year at Oxford, Kate received her big break in the film adaptation of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (Kenneth Branagh, 1993). Kate worked in three other films while attending Oxford, beginning with a part in the medieval historical drama Prince of Jutland (Gabriel Axel, 1994), starring Christian Bale, Gabriel Byrne, and Helen Mirren. The film was shot during the spring of 1993 on location in Denmark, and she filmed her supporting part during New College's Easter break. Later in the summer of that year, she played the lead in the thriller Uncovered (Jim McBride, 1994). Before she went back to school, her third year at university was spent at Oxford's study-abroad program in Paris. This year caused her to re-evaluate the direction of her life. She faced a choice: continue with school or concentrate on her flourishing acting career. After much thought, she chose an acting career. In the spring of 1994, Kate left Oxford, after finishing three years of study.
Kate Beckinsale appeared in the BBC/Thames Television costume comedy Cold Comfort Farm (John Schlesinger, 1995), which later opened in American cinemas to spectacular reviews, grossing over $5 million during its American run. It was re-released to U.K. cinemas in the spring of 1997. Acting on the stage consumed the first part of 1995; she toured in England with the Thelma Holts Theatre Company production of Anton Chekhov's 'The Seagull'. After turning down several mediocre scripts, she waited seven months before another interesting role was offered to her. It was the horror film Haunted (Lewis Gilbert, 1995), starring opposite Aidan Quinn and John Gielgud. In this film, she wanted to play "an object of desire", unlike her past performances where her characters were much less the siren and more the worldly innocent. Then followed a TV adaptation of Jane Austen's novel Emma (Diarmuid Lawrence, 1996), and the crime comedy Shooting Fish (Stefan Schwartz, 1997), in which she played Georgie, an altruistic con artist. She started film work in the United States in the small-scale dramas The Last Days of Disco (Whit Stillman, 1998) with Chloë Sevigny, and Brokedown Palace (Jonathan Kaplan, 1999) with Claire Danes. In 1999, she had a daughter, Lily Mo Sheen, with actor Michael Sheen with whom she dated from 1995 to 2003. They met when cast in a touring production of 'The Seagull' in early 1995 and moved in together shortly afterwards. After their separation, Beckinsale and Sheen remain close friends.
In 2000, Kate Beckinsale starred in the costume drama The Golden Bowl (James Ivory, 2000) with Edward Fox and Anjelica Huston. The screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is based on the 1904 novel of the same name by Henry James, who considered the work his masterpiece. Then she landed the lead female role in the Hollywood blockbuster Pearl Harbor (Michael Bay, 2001) after Charlize Theron pulled out. She played a nurse torn between two pilots (played by Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett). The film was a box office success, earning $59 million in its opening weekend and nearly $450 million worldwide, but received generally negative reviews from critics. A little gem was the romantic comedy Serendipity ( Peter Chelsom, 2001) with John Cusack. The film has grossed over $77 million at the worldwide box office. She played a vampire in Underworld (Len Wiseman, 2003), a surprise box-office hit that gained a cult following. Director and star fell in love, and the following year, she married Wiseman. The success of the film led to four more films between 2006 and 2016, The Underworld series, which follows a war between vampires and werewolves (called 'Lycans' in the films). Despite receiving generally negative reviews from critics, the five films have amassed a strong fan following and have grossed a total of $539 million, against a combined budget of $212 million. Normally slender, Beckinsale gained twenty pounds for roles in 2004 - ten pounds for her role as a vampire hunter in Van Helsing (Stephen Sommers, 2004) opposite Hugh Jackman, and another ten pounds to portray the voluptuous Ava Gardner in the Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, 2004), starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In 2006, Beckinsale reprised her role as Selene in the successful vampire sequel Underworld: Evolution, directed by her husband. Her daughter had a small role as the younger Selene. Beckinsale's second film appearance of 2006 was opposite Adam Sandler and Christopher Walken in Click (Frank Coraci, 2006), a comedy about an overworked family man who discovers a magical remote control that allows him to control time. It grossed $237 million worldwide from a production budget of $82.5 million. She replaced Sarah Jessica Parker after she dropped out of the horror-thriller Vacancy (Nimród Antal, 2007) with Luke Wilson. Then followed the family drama Everybody's Fine (Kirk Jones, 2009), starring Robert De Niro. It is a remake of Giuseppe Tornatore's Italian film Stanno tutti bene/Everybody's Fine (1990).
Unable to find a script she felt passionate about, kate Beckinsale kept a low profile in 2010 and 2011, opting to spend time with her daughter. Beckinsale returned to acting in 2012 with appearances in three action films. The first was the action thriller Contraband (Baltasar Kormákur, 2012), starring Mark Wahlberg and based on the Icelandic film, Reykjavík-Rotterdam (Óskar Jónasson, 2008) starring Baltasar Kormákur. Beckinsale next reprised her role as Selene in the fourth installment of the vampire franchise Underworld: Awakening (Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein, 2008). The franchise was initially conceived of as a trilogy and Beckinsale was not "intending to do another one" but was convinced by the quality of the script. Beckinsale also appeared as the wife of a factory worker (Colin Farrell) in the Sci-Fi action remake Total Recall (2012), directed by her husband Len Wiseman. The film received mainly negative reviews. In 2014, Beckinsale starred in the psychological thriller The Face of an Angel (Michael Winterbottom, 2014) alongside Daniel Brühl. The film was inspired by the case of Meredith Kercher. In the romantic comedy Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman, 2016), Beckinsale reunited with her Last Days of Disco collaborators, Stillman and Chloë Sevigny. Based on Jane Austen's 'Lady Susan', the film revolved around her role as the title character, a wry and calculating widow, as she pursues a wealthy and hapless man for marriage originally intended for her daughter, though she eventually marries him herself. The film was universally acclaimed by critics and found commercial success in arthouse cinemas. She was among over 80 women who accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment or assault in October 2017. She acted in the British film Farming (2018), written and directed by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, based on his own childhood. The plot is about a child whose Yorubá parents give him to a white working-class family in London in the 1960s, and who grows up to join a white skinhead gang led by a white supremacist. Kate Beckinsale lives in Venice, California because it reminds her of London. She divorced Len Wiseman in 2019. Beckinsale will next star in the upcoming American action film Jolt (Tanya Wexler, 2021) from a screenplay by Scott Wascha.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
37479 (YX68 UUG) is seen at Stagecoach's Barnstaple depot while out of use.
36241, 37474 and 37479 were all visiting Barnstaple this weekend as they were swapped the previous day with 15790, 15885 and 15892 due to the 5B route having to take a diversion on a narrower road due to a World War 2 bomb being discovered in the centre of Exeter.
According to my four-year-old granddaughter, this ancient stone tablet, dicovered by she and Grandma on their journey back from the frog pond, is laced with gold and inscribed with secret, mystical symbols that can make you invisible if you can crack the code. We're working on that now!
Rushworth. Gold discovered there in 1853. Population 1,400.
Rushworth is one of those gracious old gold mining towns with faded charm and great interest. Its very wide main street with a central median strip has many historic buildings. As a gold rush camp in August 1853 it was known as Nuggetty but this was soon changed by the Gold Commissioner to Rushworth. Alluvial gold was plentiful in the gullies and where needed underground shafts were sunk up to 270 metres deep. In some places gold reefs were 2.5 metres thick and provided great success for diggers. At its peak Rushworth had 26 mines operating as well as alluvial diggings and it had a population of 40,000 people, mainly men. The town was quickly surveyed in 1854 and by 1858 it comprised a police camp, a wooden courthouse, five hotels, two breweries, a school, seven large general stores, two banks and a range of other shops including, butcher, baker, blacksmith, saddler etc. All were concentrated at the southern end of High Street. When the gold petered out in the early 1870s the town began to contract and decline. But a decade later it had reinvented itself as a timber milling town. The forests around the town were felled for railway sleepers and the eucalyptus tree leaves were used for a eucalyptus distillery. In the Main Street look for the former newspaper offices (1888) near the railway line. Also look for:
•Across the street the Post Office and the former Mechanics Institute building. Built in 1913 and now the local museum.
•The Glasgow building was erected 1858 as a wooden general store by a Scottish trader. His son rebuilt it in 1911.
•The band rotunda 1888.
•The Criterion Hotel 1856 the single story part on Wigg Street. The section on High Street was built in 1883. It has been a private residence since 1952.
•The Bank of Victoria. Built in 1883. Replaced a wooden bank erected 1866.
•The Commercial Banking Company of Sydney 1883, their second banking building.
•The Imperial Hotel partially rebuilt in 1868 after a fire. Some parts date from 1854.
•Waranga Shire Hall. Architects were Vahland and Getzschmann of Bendigo. This Shire Hall was built in red brick in 1869 with additions to the west and south sides in 1883.
•The Courthouse built in Italianated style in 1877. The government architect William Wardell designed the Courthouse.
•St Pauls Anglican Gothic style Church 1871 and parish hall.
Discovered under a grandstand at a fairgrounds in Canada in the 1970s
Particiapated in the Great America Race
Crevier Classic Car Company, Costa Mesa, California, USA
For my video; youtu.be/3wGMwgko7rM
As I stepped off of a train from Cobh, I heard the unmistakable sound of an EMD SD50 idling. I walked over to discover Irish Rail InterCity JT42HCW 234 Abhainn na hEatharlaí (River Aherlow) ready to head out at the Cork City station in 2024.
I did just a little railfanning while in Ireland on a vacation with the wife.
P40 Femme Parmi Les Fleurs/Woman Among The Flowers, c.1900.
This image is part of a Mucha-dedicated album here on Flickr. Discover over 100 high quality scans of the same quality by viewing the album this image belongs to!
The gigantic ass-end of the Shuttle Discovery.
I feel very fortunate to have been able to see it. Thanks, Jimmy!
Discovering a whole new world.
Cisco, our 8 week old Red Merle Australian Shepherd male puppy. Home today for the first day in his forever home!
Today is 15 April 2019 - such unfortunate news from Paris, France. Historic Notre Dame Cathedral has been heavily damaged by a devastating fire today. Such an icon for that city/country, and so beautiful.
I am finding it so difficult to tell which Terns are Royal Terns and which are Caspian Terns! I know I saw both species, and I think I have a photo of each kind.
Tonight, I have added another 9 photos, again from Day 3 of our 13-day birding trip to South Texas, 19-31 March 2019. This was our second full day there, a day on a tiny boat, called Lady Lori, watching Whooping Cranes and other species. Having posted so many images from basically our first full day, I rather think I will have to be somewhat more 'disciplined" in my choices, or I will never finish : ) Mind you, I had a quick look through Day 3 photos last night, and discovered that a good many of them, especially of the Whooping Cranes, are very blurry - one disadvantage of taking photos from a little boat that is bobbing up and down. Thankfully, enough of them seem to be sufficiently sharp.
The previous morning, Day 2 of our holiday, 20 March 2019, after our drive to The Big Tree and then along the Lamar Beach Road area, we went to the Connie Hagar Cottage Sanctuary. This is a small, 6.25 acre nature sanctuary that exists in Rockport itself. Such a peaceful place to wander, watching for plants and butterflies as well as birds. There is a small pond, where we watched a young White Ibis, a Great Egret and a Snowy Egret all feeding together. Lovely to see their reflections in the water, too. A couple of nights ago, I was Googling and came across an article from 19 March 2019, telling about a group of students who chose to spend their Spring Break week helping to tidy the Sanctuary. Good for them!
After spending some time at this Sanctuary, we went to the Aransas First Cove Harbor Wetlands Sanctuary, followed by eventually finding the Newbury Park Hummingbird Garden. This was definitely not what we were expecting - just a small area of grass and trees with picnic tables. However, we did see a beautiful Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly and a small, purple Winecup flower. Afterwards, a repeat drive along Cape Velero Drive and area turned up some nice birds, too.
Day 3 was a very different kind of day, spent on board a small boat with just my four friends (and the captain/guide) on board. This private tour was arranged in Calgary beforehand. I would definitely recommend this trip to anyone!
Aransas Bay Birding Charters:
texasbirdingphotos.net/cgi-bin/p/awtp-home.cgi?d=aransas-...
It was a very early start to the day, before sunrise, as we had a lot of water to cross in order to reach the area where the Whooping Cranes were. When we first arrived at the location, the Cranes were either asleep or just beginning their morning preening session, before becoming active. Too dark to get any decent shots of them in the dark, though I did post one yesterday morning. The sunset was absolutely gorgeous! I couldn't make up my mind which one or two photos to post yesterday, so I ended up adding a number of them.
After a while, the Whooping Cranes starting slowly walking and eventually took flight. A bit later in the day, we came across three of them, in the sunshine, busily feeding. This little family consisted of Mom, Dad and junior (their colt). Junior was hungry and eventually, Dad found a crab, which the colt was determined to snatch and eat. Dad was wearing a numbered leg band on one leg; on the other leg was a tracking device. A delightful family group, that was so fascinating to watch from the boat. My photos taken of these three are nicer that the ones I've just posted.
As well as seeing these amazing, endangered Cranes, Lori found all sorts of other bird species for us, including a pair of Oystercatchers (female was on a nest), Whimbrel, Long-billed Curlew, Belted Kingfisher, Pelicans, Great Blue Herons, Royal Terns, Caspian Terns, Ruddy Turnstone, Skimmers, and Cormorants, to name just some of them. One area, which was a rookery, had been badly destroyed by Hurricane Harvey, Wooden nesting platforms have been built to replace most of the original nests, and it was great to see Herons nesting on them.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that we saw a family of three Dolphins, too.
From dnr.state.il.us/lands/landmgt/parks/r4/siloamsp.htm
Originally part of the "military tract" of western Illinois (land set aside to be given to combat veterans), the area was acquired in 1852 by George Meyers for his service in the Black Hawk and Mexican wars. He died in 1882 at the age of 102. Legend has it that spring water in the area had a medicinal effect, thus the name Siloam Springs from a Biblical reference, so-called by the Rev. Reuben K. McCoy, who had discovered the springs following the Civil War.
After Meyers' death, Quincy Burgesser, a local businessman and stock dealer, became aware of the springs and their "curative value." He had the water analyzed and discovered it had more "strength" (a higher mineral content) than water from the famous Eureka and Waukesha springs.
Burgesser touted the water's ability to cure almost all ailments, even drunkenness and drug addiction. By 1884 he had erected two spring houses, a bathing house and the Siloam Forest Home Hotel, and the area became a popular and fashionable resort. Water from the No. 2 spring was bottled and distributed as far west as Kansas City and bottling became a flourishing business for several decades.
In 1935, the Siloam Springs Recreation Club purchased the site in an effort to restore it and provide a place of recreation for the local population. Citizens of Adams and Brown counties raised money to match state funds and by 1940 an agreement was reached to make it a state recreation area. Eventually, the old hotel and bath houses were torn down, the swimming pool abandoned and the springs no longer were used. The No. 2 spring house was rebuilt in 1995 and contains the most popular spring.
In 1954 and 1955, an earthen dam was constructed across a deep ravine and the 58-acre lake was created. In 1956 Siloam Springs was dedicated as a state park, and efforts began to develop its recreational facilities.
Thanks for the visit and have a great day!
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vacationrentalsexperts.pennistonemedia.com/discovering-af...
Some of these activities include:
• Walk with the lions – This rare opportunity lets you get close to lions without worrying about being attacked as these lions are rehabilitated and are ready to be reintroduced to the wild.
• Bungee jumping at the iconic Victoria Falls Bridge that lets you plunge right into the bottom of Bakota gorge the raging Zambezi River.
Perhaps the most remarkable bungee jump site that promises an exhilarating bungee jumping experience you can ever find.
It is particularly recommended for adrenaline junkies.
Discover outstanding nasturtiums for your garden: www.swallowtailgardenseeds.com/annuals/nasturtium.html
From the Swallowtail Garden Seeds collection of botanical photographs and illustrations. We hope you will enjoy these images as much as we do.
Es war fast schon dunkel, als ich diesen Rosenbusch entdeckte. Eine perfekte Beleuchtung zum Test meines neuen Auto Rikenon 1:1.4/55mm unter schwierigen Bedingungen :-) Mir gefällt‘s ;-)
(R030340)
It was almost dark when I discovered this rose bush tonight. Perfect light-conditions to test my new Auto Rikenon 1:1.4/55mm at widely open aperture :-) Enjoy! I did...