It has been a while since visiting the Mississippi river town.  It is close enough for a short road trip, a get-away from the day to day routine of home base.  Everyone benefits from adventure.   Travel brings different scenery, others whose way of life differs from our own.  Who doesn’t desire to tell their story when afforded opportunity by the right question? 

Walking Main Street, we enjoyed the same sunlit vista of a wide boulevard curving into the distance, lined with two and three story substantial brick buildings, — as did Abraham Lincoln, U.S. Grant, and Senator Stephen Douglas.  When Galena was a up and coming prosperous “city” deriving wealth from it’s geographical location, with the means to manage the paddle wheel steam boat transport of people and goods from the upper Mississippi, all three visited Galena.  We plan to visit Grant’s house here this morning.  General Grant retired to Galena and was given a home at the conclusion of the war.

Galena’s rise to prosperity, displayed to this day by the architecture of Greek revival homes, grand mansions was due to location by the Galena river which is gateway to the great Mississippi a short distance away.  Galena benefited from the modern technology of steam which powered the paddle wheel steamboats.  Fortunes were made by organizing capital and founding corporations that essentially controlled the commercial transport of people and goods along this section of the river from Minnesota to St Louis.  Galena was a “boomtown” in 1828 with a population of around 10,000, rivaling Chicago.  Galena’s star began to fade with the application of the steam engine by the railroad.  Railroads are not obstructed by ice bound waterways in winter.  Once built the railroad moves people and freight efficiently, economically.  Thus Chicago supplanted Galena as a center of commerce and wealth. 

One more note on Galena’s falling arc from a powerhouse of trade and influence, to a small farming community  — the Galena river became shallower and shallower due to silt, no longer able to accommodate the paddle wheel steamers.  Flooding of the city was common in the early 19th century.  Pictures in the old DeSoto Hotel picture Main Street under water.  Nature also played a role in the decline of Galena.

What can I take away from consideration of our past, the story of our ancestors habitation, the lives lived, the achievement of Galena?  Galena’s rise and fall was caused by a tool, the application of human reason to metal forging and to understanding how to transform heat energy to linear, motive force.  The shift of steam power from the paddle wheel steam boat to the locomotive shifted the center of influence from Galena to Chicago.  So now —  the advent of solid state electronics and globally networked communication is transforming the focus of power from the West, the victors of WWII, to other countries and blocs of influence.  And Nature as always, is the joker in the deck; the unpredictable “wild card” that we are too busy or too distracted by our success to notice: climate catastrophe.

The photos were taken in a wine shop on Main Street.  Yes, we did purchase a bottle.  I was taken by the creativity, the sensual flamboyance of the labels on the bottles.