Good Friday welcome to this first on the road edition of Prairie Fire.

I'm Sarah Edwards.

We're at the Great Pumpkin Patch in Arthur, Illinois.

It's a wonderful place to celebrate all things harvest and cucurbit what's Cucurbit you might ask, well, it's a fancy word for pumpkin squash and gourds.

They grow nearly 300 varieties of pumpkin squash and gourds hear the Great Pumpkin Patch.

It's been in operation since about 1977.

It also has a large Amish bakery on site lots of fun activities to do for kids, amaze and live music when it's operating.

Work hard every day.

But first, the prairie fire team and I were invited by Illinois First Lady MK Pritzker to take a tour of the newly renovated governor's mansion in Springfield.

Mrs. Pritzker has documented the history of the house and the great renovation in her new book called a house that made history.

What's really interesting about the history of this house is that it was Abraham Lincoln who first proposed the appropriation to build the governor's mansion here in Springfield.

So this house was actually built as a governor's residence.

It was completed in 1855.

This is one of the oldest governor's mansion and the largest governor's mansion in the United States.

The first governor to live here was Joel Madison, in he lived here with his wife and his, I think three children.

And they lived here for approximately two or so years.

And then there was a change of Governor to Governor Bissell, who was a very close friend of Abraham Lincoln.

In the 1970s, under the Ogilvy administration, they decided to save the house, the house really had almost been torn down several times, there was a lot of problems with this house with the plumbing and the septic system.

I was so lucky.

And I'm so grateful to Diane around her and the committee of people and the architects that really worked on this house, she did an amazing job in four years where she replaced the roof and the windows and the HVAC and did a major remodeling to this house.

And so when my husband was elected, we got to move into this, you know, house that was almost brand new.

Basically what was left here was to do the decorating.

So I got right to work on that.

I went to school, the University of Nebraska and I studied historic decorative arts and interior design.

And then I went to the Art Institute in Chicago for preservation architecture.

So this was kind of like a duck to water.

I think maybe I worked with Michael Smith, who actually worked on the White House with the Obama administration.

When you arrive at this house, it really becomes your home.

And it is a public space.

And it does take a little adjusting, getting used to it because you know, you don't have people taking tours of your living room at home.

Right.

And but it's, it's really an honor to live here.

And that that supersedes everything.

I mean, it really is.

And I know my time here is limited, and it's such a special place to call home.

You also have to be really mindful that you know, you're only here for a short time.

And I was I tried to be really respectful of the people that lived here before me, and also fix it in a way that would be helpful to the next person.

Much like what Diana did for me.

I really felt I had the mission for my husband who loves people and he loves to entertain and he really wanted people to be here in the house and he wanted to have parties and events whenever he's in town and he does that.

So my mandate really was to make this place fit his personality and what he wanted to do to get his job done.

Right now we're sitting in the Lincoln parlor and a lot of these items here are on loan from the Al PLM and they're portraits of Abraham Lincoln.

This is Part My favorite piece in the entire house.

This is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln that was painted by Reverend Lewis clover in 1860.

And Reverend Clover knew Abraham Lincoln personally.

And this painting is really special because first of all, it was painted from life, which a lot of the portraits of Abraham Lincoln are not.

So it's one of the very few, and he obviously doesn't have his trademark beard.

I just love this, this portrait of him because he just looks so kind.

And he said, you know, he's a young man.

And you can just see the kindness in his eyes.

So I think Reverend Clover did an amazing job.

The music room, we have the Steinway piano that was donated by my friend Linda Johnson.

And that piano belonged to her father, John Johnson, who had Johnson publishing with Ebony and Jet magazine.

And as you know, they're credible contribution to our history here in Illinois, and really, to the Black History of the United States.

Here we have this this beautiful, Carl were some piece, who was Carl was a Chicago image just member of the Harry who group.

And I thought this, this painting would look really great here because it's, it's it's very classical.

And this is a classical interior.

As you can see, if you divide it up, it's very symmetrical.

This is quite a spectacular staircase.

It's like dangerous for a child to be zipping down, you know, dangerous or fun, depending on your perspective.

I, I think I actually think it could be fun.

I haven't I haven't tried sliding down.

But you know, I might take my chances.

On move out, maybe I move out.

Yes.

This used to be a hallway right here.

And in the 70s.

They made this room on the second floor.

We call it the Kankakee room, because the women have Kankakee donated the money in the 70s renovation to purchase that wallcovering.

The factory that makes this wallcovering in France is still in existence.

And it's all they use.

It's called woodblock printing.

And so they they remade it, and it's depicts scenes of early America now goes all the way around the room.

In the Lincoln Bedroom, I hung the Colonel Edward Baker portrait, which was a gift to Abraham Lincoln while he was president.

Colonel Edward Baker was a very good friend of Abraham Lincoln, and he was killed in the Civil War.

So if you can imagine how horrible President Lincoln felt that this war that he was commanding, and part of that his dear dear friend had perished in this war.

And another friend of theirs had this portrait painted and gave it to Abraham Lincoln after he was assassinated, married to have Lincoln gave it to the state of Illinois, and it has hung in this house ever since.

So here we have the China that I designed with Auntie Picard.

We have a picture here of an of an oak tree, which is the state tree of Illinois.

I use this room a lot.

If I receive visitors and have tea, we sit here and have tea.

And then I have more China on display here in these two cabinets.

This is from a company from Alton, Illinois called Mississippi mud.

And he catches bluegills and then cast them and fires them and paints them.

He's a potter out of out of Alton, Illinois, and I just think they're so fantastic.

And of course the bluegill is the state fish.

So I had to I had to have these.

These I found in the house.

They were in a cabinet.

And yeah, I just I thought they were interesting.

So hang them up there.

I don't know where they came from.

Maybe Jim Thompson bought them that's when I when I can't figure out or who would guys I bet big Jim bought those because, you know, he, he loved antiques.

So I think the game when I look at these smile This is the governor's office when when JB is here, this is where where he works, you know the capitals that are under renovation now.

So we actually spent a lot of time and you're working and taking meetings and zoom calls and that kind of thing.

When he's here in Springfield.

This is Governor Horner I hung this here because I think he was such an important governor and well regarded governor he steered our state through, you know, the Great Depression and was really much beloved.

He was also the first Jewish governor of Illinois.

Farming is you know, very, very important to the state of Illinois.

It's our drives our economy.

Farmers are very important and I thought it was really important to represent the farmers through the art.

I felt it was really important to honor the history of this house and then try to to honor that with my redecoration and live in a modern way but honor history.

I love old houses and I love history.

I think it's very important to preserve this for the future and for our children.

I'm just so honored to be the steward of this great house.

For more information about MK Pritzker, his book, a house that made history, check out our website at will.illinois.edu/prairie fire.

Now as I mentioned, we're here at the Great Pumpkin Patch and they have a wonderful bakery.

And when I think of bakery and eating stuff on Prairie Fire, I think of I can't I can't eat without my good friends.

They called me back in the sample some of the local fair.

So what do they have here?

Which is their specialty?

Tanisha is their icing covered pumpkin cookies and they have pumpkin, pumpkin actual pumpkin cookies.

And I got a soda from two miles sweetshop.

Cheers.

Cheers.

See what this tastes like?

I don't think I've had it.

Why?

Wow, shabby.

Very good.

Very good.

You know, when I found out you were coming out here.

I had to come to because it was seemed like if it was going to work for Prairie Fire, we could definitely find some great content for a Mid American gardener.

And we've talked all things pumpkin today with the one of the owners here, Matt Kondo.

So, and he was telling me how many hundreds of varieties of pumpkin do they grow here?

303 100 plus, so we're probably chances are eating a homegrown pumpkin and one of these cookies.

Let's see what we get here.

I'm gonna try this one.

It's been a really incredible day.

This is the first time I've been here.

I understand you've been before, right?

I'm taking my kids.

Yes, yeah.

Cuz I think I'm gonna be a regular.

Oh my gosh, oh, my gosh, this is good, fresh, delicious.

We were walking around.

I caught up with Matt earlier.

And he walked us through some of the grounds showed us the patches.

And we really got to talk about why this is just so much more than a pumpkin patch.

Okay, so our last stop here on our grand tour of the pumpkin oasis.

Is the Children's Garden.

Love this, actually.

And we've seen a ton of kids, lots of school groups out here today.

Why is it so important to get these kids out here and get them hands on?

Well, I just think they don't get an opportunity to be like hands on a farm, like we used to back in the early 1900s, over 80% of the US population had a direct connection to the land.

So 80 out of 100 people grew up on a farm, grandma had a farm, grandpa, whatever, now less than 2% of the US population.

So two out of 100 even know where one is or what it looks like or any so we have 98 out of 100 people out there that have no connection.

And I think that one, it's reality.

And two, I think there's still something longing.

I think there's something I think you're seeing at this today.

People kind of relax when they come on the farm.

Right.

And we are a legit production farm.

Right?

We're sixth generation now with my kids.

You know, we're still production based.

Everything's grown here.

We've got, you know, a little nod to the animal diversity.

We used to grow corn and soybeans as well.

But now it's just cucurbits.

So we're all cucurbits of the whole time.

How did your family make that transition?

Okay, yeah.

So we started in 1989.

Well, in the mid 80s, I was just a little guy with three brothers, and farming this bad, really bad in the 80s, several droughty years very low prices.

That's when a lot of people lost their family farm in the 80s.

So people either went even more into debt and tried to get bigger to cover, they had to sell the farm or then diversify or find some way to supplement right.

So my parents went back to work in education subbed and things like that.

And we started this pumpkin patch.

What is now the Great Pumpkin Patch.

So we always grew pumpkins, we had them in the backyard, you know, and there's a fascination with kids and pumpkins.

Yeah, I don't know what it is.

I don't know how to describe it.

But you still see it to this day.

Big kids turn into little kids.

You know, I saw a woman yesterday as ad plus, and I've never seen so many pumpkins in my life, you know, such a fun reaction to this vegetable.

And then when we can open people's eyes to the diversity, then all of a sudden, I think this connections and these experiences can get a little bit deeper and can kind of put a perspective on what it is that is still reality.

It's still seasonal.

There's still some truth to agriculture and how these things are produced because you go and think of other places you can buy a pumpkin, you know, they're in a cardboard box on the sidewalk of a great big box store, right?

There's no experience there, right the product is maybe there but the experiences not.

So you know, we pride ourselves on providing a safe place for everyone to experience the harvest season and to connect to the land and each other.

This is kind of a scary looking Kircher but very weird, which kind of reminds me it is spooky season.

And so we had our producers DJ and Taylor traveled down to Alton, Illinois, which is one of the most haunted small towns in America.

They interviewed a man named Troy Taylor there who gave us the history and the spooky history of the mineral springs Hotel.

Legend has it that Mark Twain once called Alton the dismal little river town, and it's very possible that he could have because by the time that Mark Twain was traveling up and down the Mississippi River as a riverboat pilot, Alton had already seen a pretty grim history over the years.

olton is a town that has a long background of murder, death, disasters, floods, the Civil War epidemics.

You name it, it's probably happened here.

And it was probably bad.

So Alton has all of this history in its background.

Plus, it's a town that is built right on the Mississippi River, which seems to attract a lot of weirdness.

Some people say it's because of the water some people say it's because the town is built on limestone bluffs.

And that has somehow soaked up some of the energy of the things that have happened.

I think what it all boils down to is our history.

I think the events of the past have created all these hauntings that we talk about today, and the description of Alton changed from a dismal little river town to one of the most haunted small towns in America.

The mineral springs hotel officially opened in 1914.

But it actually got it started a couple of years before that the property was owned by a couple of German immigrant meatpackers August in her Herman lure who made a lot of money here in the area with their business and got involved in banking and real estate.

And so they were probably the wealthiest men in town.

Well, they had started a butcher shop on this property where the hotel would be, and they decided to expand it into an ice manufacturing plant.

But when they did, they uncovered a spring on the property.

And it was a had a lot of minerals in it, the water did and it had a very distinct odor to it of sulfur, so they really weren't sure what to do with it.

So they left the property city.

A couple of years later, a manager at another hotel here in town, the alumni, his name was August rats, and he came to them with a proposal to take advantage of what they'd seen as a detriment and use the mineral water to open a European style Spa on the property.

Now, mineral springs at that time, were pretty popular, especially across the Midwest, at a time when people really couldn't always go to the doctor with all their ailments.

And even if they did, there wasn't a lot of treatments for things like that, especially people with rheumatism and arthritis who were in a lot of pain, it was thought and really known that bathing in mineral water would ease your ailments and ease your pain.

So they started to open up all over the Midwest, and Alton became the next location for one of these spas.

He convinced them to spend about $250,000 to build this hotel, which was the equivalent of about 2.6 million today.

So it was a lavish and very luxurious place.

He took advantage of the, you know, magical curative powers of the water by also bottling it and shipping it out to about 12 different states.

The biggest use for this water though, would be what they would call the drunk cure, and it was supposed to be able to instantly sober up a drinking man and cure your alcoholism.

Needless to say it didn't do any of those things.

And that would become a problem after the hotel opened especially because of all of the advertising they did in advance.

But when it did open the hotel became an amine He had success.

It wasn't until after World War Two that the FDA said you can't keep telling people this will cure them because it doesn't really do anything.

And that really kind of started the downward slide of the hotel, which finally ended in the late 60s When it shut down for good history sort of passed, not only the hotel by but often to the major roads, bypass the town, a lot of our industry left and an old place like this just didn't fit into a new, faster generation of people.

And it was thought they were probably going to demolish it until a real estate developer came in and turn it into a downtown shopping mall.

He fixed it up started to move in a lot of businesses, they did what they could to try to bring back the economy.

And for a while it worked.

But eventually, time caught up with that too.

And over the last 30 years or so it has had a number of different owners and has been open and closed at various times.

It's open today.

But it was back in the 70s when they reopened, that a lot of the ghost stories here got started.

When the hotel opened, the swimming pool was sort of the heart of the building.

It's what people came here to see they came to take in the waters, they came to see what was built in as the largest indoor swimming pool in the state of Illinois.

And it was an active and busy spot.

It was also a beautiful spot.

Today, it's hard to tell that but at one time it was painted.

There were potted palms, tables, chairs, even a grand piano to provide music for a pool that had chandeliers above it.

But it wasn't just the hotel guests there were also people in the community who use the pool as well.

Schools, orphanages, hospitals, they open it up for swimming lessons, anybody who wanted to learn how to swim could come here and do it, which is what got the attention of a sheetmetal worker from Granite City Illinois, named Clarence Blair.

He had never learned how to swim this seemed like a perfect opportunity came here and took some swimming lessons that he did not do well at In fact, he drowned during those swimming lessons.

And that became the only recorded death that we know of that happened here in the pool.

But you know the song goes into you can check out anytime you like bench can ever leave.

Well, I think that's what's happened with Clarence.

I think he's still around and it's possible it's because he wants to be.

Over the years there have been a lot of activity reported in the tool from the sounds of water splashing water pouring footsteps, strange noises, but more than anything probably is the ghost of the man who's often been seen in tan pants, white shirt and a tie.

He seems to show up out of nowhere and disappears just as quickly.

Here was a guy who spent the first 21 years of his life living in Granite City, Illinois, probably didn't do a whole lot probably hadn't gone a lot of places maybe even never even left Illinois.

And then came here and drowned while trying to learn how to swim.

Now we come into this building all throughout the year we bring 1000s of people in and maybe Clarence likes listening to his story being told he likes being remembered.

And maybe that's why he shows up here.

Maybe he just wants to listen to somebody talk about him after all these years now there is one other resident spirit here and she's probably the most famous Her story is the oldest it goes back to right after they opened up the hotel as a as a downtown Mall.

It was the ghost they started to call the Jasmine lady.

Now the Jasmine lady haunted the main staircase in the hotel.

That's where sometimes people would hear they would hear footsteps on the stairs.

rustle of a dress.

Some people claim that they saw her walking down the stairs.

But the one thing that everyone noticed, most of all, was the smell of her Jasmine perfume this flowery strong perfume.

Even people who don't know the history of the building, don't know anything about it being haunted, would talk about coming in and smelling that perfume around those stairs.

So a legend grew up around the staircase that a woman had died on the stairs that she'd fallen to her death and had broken her neck at the bottom of the stairs.

But unfortunately, there's no record of that.

When we tried to track anything down.

There's no one that ever died on this staircase.

So for years, the identity of who the Jasmine lady might be remained a mystery.

I was contacted by the owners of the building and they asked me to show this older man around the building he had come there to visit.

The reason he wanted to see it is because his aunt had died here in the building.

In fact she had committed suicide in the hotel When I knew about his aunt's death, his aunt's name had been Pearl sons and she had checked into the hotel in July of 1965.

And she had chosen this place for some reason, as the place where she wanted to end her life.

She checked into what had been this room here on the second floor, she bolted the door and then proceeded to take an overdose of a number of prescription pills.

They didn't find her body for a couple of days, they couldn't get in, she bolted the door.

So when they finally did get in, they still didn't know who she was.

She checked in under an assumed name.

Well, I explained all this to him everything that I knew about her death and brought him here to where it had taken place.

And he sat down here and reminisce about how important his aunt had been in his lifetime and how much time he'd spent with her and how, you know, heartbreaking it had been when she was just gone one day and wasn't coming back.

Then he sort of laughed, and he said, you know, there was one funny thing though, I remembered is that every day after I had spent the entire afternoon without parole, and then would go home to have supper, before I could eat, my mom would always make me go and take a bath.

And I said, Well, why?

And he said, well, and then he laughed again.

And he said impro would spend all afternoon hugging me.

And then when I would come home, my mom hated it because she hated and pearls perfume.

She said it gave her a headache.

And so she'd made me go take a bath and I said, What kind of perfume was it?

And he said something flowery?

I think Mom said it was Jasmine.

Now here was a guy who didn't know anything about the history of the hotel other than his aunt died here, but had somehow managed to solve a mystery that we've been looking into for years trying to find out the identity of the Jasmine lady and I think after all this time, we finally had for more Illinois ghost stories, visit our website, we'll dot illinois.edu/purifier I'm Sarah Edwards.

Enjoy the harvest season.