- Will you consider this?

How is it that I personally have been in central Illinois for over 40 years and only five years ago heard about this fantastic festival in Utica.

I'm Christine Zak-Edmonds, and many of us are going to get the low down on Burgoo.

(instrumental music) LaSalle County's Historical Society is keeping a tradition alive now entering its 52nd year.

It's the Burgoo Festival.

So what exactly is burgoo?

Well, while I looked it up, it's much easier for Amanda Carter to explain all the details.

Please welcome Amanda, from the LaSalle County Historical Society.

- Well thank you for having me, Christine.

I'm really excited to let you know about Burgoo today.

- Yeah, so burgoo.

- [Amanda] Yes.

- What in the world is it and how did it come up with that kind of a name?

- Well burgoo is actually a stew that kind of originates in Kentucky.

And it's basically at the end of the harvest, you would gather what you had in your area, whatever vegetables, whatever game, whatever meat.

And they would put it all in one pot and they would cook it and they would have a celebration.

We started our Burgoo 52 years-ago, or actually it'd be 53, 1969.

One of our, the secretary we had at the museum at the time had went to Arenzville, Illinois, and they had had a festival called Burgoo that they started in the early 1900.

And it really drew a lot of the communities together.

They were able to, they all brought, all different types of vegetables from their garden.

- Kinda like stone soup.

- [Amanda] Correct.

- Okay.

- Yes.

And she just thought it was so neat and it fitted with the museum because we are kind of like a settlers, or pioneers museum and to have the game and the wild, wild game and the fresh vegetables.

So, we had some of the people from Arenzville come up in 1969 and show us how to start this festival.

So, we've taken it from there and in 52 years we've really grown it.

And the unique part about it is we actually use these huge kettles.

I mean, they are, they're massive.

They're a hundred-- - [Christine] Are they iron or are they copper?

- Yes, they're iron.

I mean we have these special stands that they sit on and we use firewood to heat the kettles and we actually stir them with boat oars.

That's the only way you're able to get down to the bottom.

- [Christine] How many big, huge kettles do you have?

- We have a total of six.

- [Christine] Wow.

- Yes.

- And how many did they feed?

I mean... - I couldn't, usually each one's about a hundred gallons.

So, I think it's about 200 bowls of soup.

Probably a little bit more.

- [Christine] Per pot?

- Yes.

I think we ended up getting about six or 700 gallons out of the ones we have, 'cause we have smaller ones and we have bigger, we have different sizes, 'cause as you can imagine, it's kind of hard to obtain a kettle.

So, when kettles come up, we usually buy, we'll get ahold of 'em, build the stands for them.

- And where do you buy them?

I mean, where do you find this kind-- - People know we do it, so they'll reach out and they'll say, "Hey, I've got this big kettle."

"Would you like it?"

We're like, "Yes, please."

And the ones we have, we have to maintain.

And we usually, they get cracks in them, something like that.

We'll send them off to a machine shop.

They'll fix them and they'll bring 'em back.

So... - All these worries.

- Yes there, yes there is.

- But you've grown, you said, oh let's get back to the Burgoo and what's in it.

So I know that there's meat and game and a lot of vegetables, but I did read that there's some secret special spices.

What are those?

- Yes, so every year we actually choose a Burgoo-meister that's who we call is head of the recipe.

- [Christine] Okay.

- And there's certain specific things that we have in it every year, like we'll have potatoes, carrots, peas.

We always have three different types of meat.

It's chicken, pork and beef, but-- - In the same pot or?

- [Amanda] All in the same pot.

Okay.

- Yup.

And so, we'll have our set spices and then we let the Burgoo-meister kind of tinker with the other ones.

And we've had the same Burgoo-meister for about eight years.

And every year he tweaks it just a little bit more and it seems like every year it gets better.

It is a tomato based soup.

But again, it's got the, it's very hearty.

It's got the potatoes, it's got corn, it's got beans.

Couple of years ago we threw some okra in there.

So, it's just all-- - So from the local harvest?

- [Amanda] Correct.

Yep.

- Just crazy.

- [Amanda] It is.

- Crazy that you've been able to keep that tradition alive.

Do you know exactly where the name came from though?

Burgoo is kind of an odd name?

- It is.

They use it in the south a lot.

So, I'm not a hundred percent sure where the name comes from, but Kentucky is, I think the birthplace of Burgoo.

So, I think that's the origins of the name.

- Well now why haven't, I've been here for a long time and I was in the news business, last year I think is the first time I ever heard a radio ad for it.

How did I miss it?

- I don't know.

Well up until probably about 2013, we just kind of did local advertising and it was almost like word of mouth.

And usually for a festival, we were getting about 20 or 30,000 people on the Sunday to come eat.

2013, they decided to add Saturday as well, make it a weekend festival.

And we really started to advertise outside of the area.

We did Peoria, Quad Cities, Bloomington, Chicago.

And we started getting an influx of people.

So, we're trying to reach it out in here.

So, I'm glad you heard the radio ad, but.

- Well, I found out about it at a wedding-- - Oh did you?

- 'Cause we had a wedding guest and they had to leave, the wedding was on Saturday and they had to leave, because she had, she's the hometowner LaSalle County area-- - [Amanda] Yes.

- And she needed to get to the Burgoo Festival.

And I went, "What in the world is that?"

- Oh yeah.

Yeah.

- Pretty exciting.

- Yes.

- And you expect to feed how many people then?

- With the burgoo we'll probably sell maybe three or 4,000, depending on how many kettles we do, every year it's kind of weather dependent.

We will shift up or down depending on, if we're gonna be expecting rain, but three or 4,000 bowls of soup will go out of there.

- Okay, and then you gotta get there early.

It cooks for hours.

You start it up on a Saturday night, right?

- Yes.

So, we light the fires about 7:00 PM on Saturday night.

And that is always my favorite time.

It's quiet down there.

It's serene.

We actually cook the stew right along the Illinois Michigan Canal.

So, the kettles are all set up down there.

It's the campfire smell.

They light the fires at 7:00 PM and they start browning the garlic and the onions.

And by 9:00 PM it smells delicious down there.

- I bet it does.

Those are some of my favorite smells.

- Oh yeah.

That's how we start getting people excited about it.

And usually, I mean, they stay up all night.

So they go from 7:00 PM.

We have got about, dedicated team of about five or six that actually stay overnight.

And again, we have to stir 'em with the big boat oars, so nothing sticks to the bottom, but they will cook it all the way up until, usually about 7:30, 8 o'clock, it's just about ready to serve.

So, then once it's ready to serve, we actually do start serving.

So, sometimes it's a little before nine, we give ourselves a little bit of cushion room, because cooking that much stew could take a little bit longer than you expect, but usually we're ready to go right at nine.

- Have you ever been one of the stirrers.

- I have, in fact, I sent you a picture.

My husband and I actually got married on Burgoo weekend out near, my parents live near where that, and they've been involved with the historical society for years.

So, after our wedding reception, we actually decided to go down and stir the stew.

So, it's my husband and I and my wedding dress and his tux.

- You didn't didn't get any splatter though, did you?

- No, no.

Although every year now that I'm the head of that, he's like, why did we get married on this weekend?

Happy anniversary.

I'll see you next week.

You know?

- Right, exactly.

Now it's always in October.

- Yes.

It's always Columbus Day weekend.

- All right.

So that's this year?

- [Amanda] Yes.

- October 8th and 9th.

- [Amanda] Correct.

- All right.

And how did that come about?

It was just the best harvest time?

- It was the best harvest time.

And because of usually people having that sun or the Monday off, that was a lot, because we could get some volunteers to come in and help us after the festival to kind of clean up.

- Cleanup always, well, it always takes a little bit longer.

- It does.

And with kettles that big, we need big machinery to move them back and forth, so-- - Oh, I bet.

Where do you store those then?

- We're lucky enough to have a large building right next to where we cook them.

And we kind of have like a drive down location that we can tuck them away in the back of our basement.

- All right, so this is all set up in Utica.

- Correct.

- Which is just a small town?

What's population, do you know off hand?

- I think right around a thousand, 850 to a thousand people.

- And to bring that many thousands of people in for the burgoo itself.

- [Amanda] Yes.

- And then the festival itself, what all is involved with the festival?

- So, the festival we kick off Saturday morning, and again, that was 2013 we decided to add the second day, and we have somewhere near 200 vendors set up throughout town.

That's all the way, we have a little, cute little main street we cal Mill Street.

It's from Mill Street all the way down to the bridge, almost to the Illinois River.

So, there's vendors set up all throughout town and then Saturday, our local, the Utica Fire Protection District hosts its car show.

So, the downtown streets near Mill Street, they have a classic car show.

And then in the museum property and then further downtown there's vendors lined up and it's all different kinds of vendors.

So, Saturday there's the 200 vendors.

We always have live music.

Most of it's kind of bluegrassy and stuff like that.

- But it's definitely family oriented.

People of all ages can come and enjoy.

- Yes, correct.

And I mean, they've got other activities.

There's other business in town that cater towards having kids, kids things.

And plus, like I said, we have 200 vendors.

We actually have 400 vendors total on Sunday.

There's a bunch of different vendors that sell children's items.

We have the food trucks, the carnival food.

There's just anything you can imagine is down there that weekend.

- But not carnival rides.

Are there carnival rides too?

- No, we do not do, we don't have room unfortunately.

We pack it so full of vendors that we don't have room to do the carnival.

- All vendors and then guests.

- Correct, yep.

And I mean, it is, we've in the past have had little petting zoos.

We've had a little kids area where we've got bounce houses and trains.

And so there's a bunch of different activities to do.

One of the activities we do both Saturday and Sunday is we actually have the museum of, LaSalle County's Historical Society has blacksmith shop.

So we have live blacksmith demos that we do Burgoo weekend.

In fact, we do those all throughout the summer as well.

Up until Burgoo, we have our blacksmith shop going.

- What do the blacksmiths have to repair, the pots?

- No, we don't make 'em go that far yet.

We actually have a special place we take them, but they do do the demos where they explain it really, really well.

And it's a lost art form.

So, the festival itself really takes you back in time.

And it's very community oriented.

It's very pioneer feeling and it's just, you know, and it's fall.

It exudes everything of that.

So, it's just a great feel and I always have, a lot of my vendors have been back for years and years and they're like, "This is like our homecoming."

- Really?

- "We get to see all of our friends."

It's the end of the season for say the farming season, we're getting ready to go into winter.

It's like, everybody's final goodbye before we go in and freeze in the Illinois winter and then come back out in the spring.

- Right, right.

And you've been involved for years and years and years.

- I've been involved since 2014.

So it feels like a hundred years sometimes, but yeah, about eight, nine years.

They're right about there.

- Well, that's, as it being in charge, you said your parents had been involved so by proxy you were also involved.

- Yes.

So we went every year.

I mean, I grew up right, my parents lived right next to Starved Rock state park.

So, we went to church in Utica and every Burgoo weekend, we didn't have, we made sure we went to mass the night before, but we were down there cutting pies, shopping, helping out the museum.

So yeah, pretty much been involved, I'm 38, probably 30-- - At least 28 of these years.

- Yeah, 30 of those years I've had something to do with it.

Some small little portion.

- The money that you raise goes to the museum?

- Correct.

- Your pioneer museum.

- Yes.

- And other charities, tell me about that.

- No, so it strictly goes to the LaSalle County Historical Society.

We are a 501(c)(3).

We are located in Utica.

We represent the whole county of LaSalle and its history, but we do have six buildings to maintain down there.

We have a one room schoolhouse, which is open during the Burgoo, a blacksmith shop and a barn.

And we have our canal warehouse museum, which is 1900 history, 1900 and before, which for LaSalle county history, Joliet-Marquette, that was kind of the first point of native American and European contact.

So, we have a very rich history and we have our heritage center building, which stores 1900 and after which I'm sure you've heard of the Radium Girls.

- Yes.

- So that's part of the LaSalle county history.

So, we have a very rich history and basically this money helps us keep our doors open and pay for overhead costs and staffing and stuff like that.

- While we're talking about the Radium Girls, so for anyone who might not know about that, they were the clock painters, correct?

- Correct, yes.

- At the... - Radium Dial was, it was called and that's was the late twenties, early thirties.

I think there was actually a Netflix film out recently.

- [Christine] Yes.

- Kate Moore did a book called Radium Girls.

It was at the New York Times best selling list.

They were the girls that worked at the Radium Dial.

They actually licked the tips of their paint brushes.

And the company was telling them that it was okay when in fact they knew it wasn't, because they've had a factory in New Jersey and the girls all got very sick and a couple-- - Tongue cancer, throat cancer.

- Throat cancer, yes, they would have, their bones would just break, 'cause radium makes your bones-- - [Christine] Brittle, - Almost like a honeycomb, it honeycombs them out.

But that was a real tragedy here in-- - And that was in Peru.

Was that where that plant was?

- No, Peru is where Westclox is.

- [Christine] Okay.

- That's was a different kind of associated, but not with that.

It was actually in Ottawa, the Radium Dial.

- Ottawa, okay.

- Yeah.

- Well and then the radium was because they would paint the watch dials so that they would glow in the dark, right?

- Yes.

And they encouraged them to do the point.

So they wanted them, they were putting radium in their mouth.

And I mean, they hired all young girls and they made very good wages and being girls, teens, twenties, they would actually sit there and paint their cheeks and they told them that it, "Oh, it's good for you."

"It helps your skin glow."

Well they found out that that was not the case.

- Maybe it did glow, but for all the wrong reasons.

- Yes, correct.

Correct.

- So, you do have a special section devoted just especially for that.

- Yes.

In fact, we have a, Kate Moore actually mentioned our museum in the New York Times, which was pretty exciting, because we have the Pearl Payne letters, which is, she was one of the Radium Girls.

They called them the Living Dead Society, because when they were going through the courts here, the girls were actually very sick.

In fact, one of them, Chris Donahue is her name.

She actually died during the trial.

They brought her in on her deathbed to testify.

But the Pearl Payne letters are letters that she wrote to the other girls.

She also saved a lot of her artifacts, because after they realized, you know, the company through the court cases was made to pay for their medical expenses.

And one of the medical expenses was taking them to the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago every year.

So, she saved all of her ticket stubs and her reimbursements.

So, it was everything that she had-- - Documented.

- Documented, and she did a very good job.

They actually, the family actually donated to us.

- What a great gift.

- It was, we have many of those gifts.

We have a Abraham Lincoln carriage that he rode to the Lincoln-Douglas debates in Ottawa.

I mean, there's just so much.

Wild Bill Hickok was born in LaSalle county.

- I didn't know that.

- [Amanda] Yes.

- Really?

In Homer, which is now Troy Grove.

Yeah, every year we have a Wild Bill festival too.

- Well now, when is that?

How come I haven't heard about that?

- That's always in May.

We just got done with that and that's live reenactments, well, we've got a lot going on in Utica.

- Yeah.

I need to pay a little bit more attention or something, or get on an email list at least.

- Yes, yes.

- At least.

Well, how much is it for to get in or just for a bowl of Burgoo?

I imagine that's how you serve it in bowls, right?

- Yes, we do bowls.

We do have takeouts.

It is price dependent.

We wait to see kind of the food cost, but usually I wanna say last year was about $6 or $7 for a bowl of soup.

- [Christine] And it's really filling.

- It is, it is.

And I will say, even if you go in, you've got a group of people or it's, you know, you and your significant other buy a bowl, just try it, just to say that you've had it, you know?

It took me a couple years just because I was always like, I don't know.

I don't know.

Should I try?

I did and I was kicking myself, why didn't I start eating this long ago?

You know, but... - Well, it has an odd name.

Maybe that put off-- - That is some people do get put off by that, 'cause they're like, what's in there?

It's like, oh, it's everything.

Well, when you say that they start, imaginations run wild.

- Now do you use local produce though?

So, from local farmers or-- - Yes.

- [Christine] Do you have to order bulk from someplace else?

- A little bit of, some things 'cause like cans of tomato, tomato sauce, or I'm not even sure exactly what we use, but some of it comes from a food distributor and then some of it's local.

- [Christine] All right.

- But most of the meat is all, we do local meats and what we can get at local vegetables, then we supplement what we can't from food distributor.

- All right, well, now you have a wine festival too.

So, we'll get a little away from Burgoo, but you have so much going on up there.

Tell me about the wine festival.

- It's called Vintage Illinois and the Illinois Grape Growers Association puts it on every year.

They used to do it out in Matteson.

They actually do it now in downtown Utica, which is fun because again, Utica's-- - [Christine] It's compact.

- It's all walking, and all the stores.

So it's real cute, real touristy, but I believe that's September 17th and 18th, but they bring in, I wanna say 25 to 30 Illinois wineries.

And it is a ticketed event for that.

But they have live music.

You get the wine tasting tickets, it's kind of a full day.

You actually get to bring your picnic, or your chairs, your tables, you could bring your snacks in and kind of chill out.

Do your wine tastings, listen to the music and stuff like that.

Oh, and Burgoo is free to get in.

I was gonna say that.

- All right, had to get back to that.

Okay, well that's good.

And then the wine festival, those are wineries from all over the state and it's sponsored by the Illinois-- - Grape Growers-- - [Christine] Grape Growers Association.

- Yes, correct.

- Which is a nice tie-in.

- [Amanda] Yes.

- And it's nice that the area's being utilized.

Do you think gas prices would impact you this year?

Do you think more people will be carpooling?

- I still say it's such a draw that I don't think we're gonna see too much, I mean, most of the traffic we receive for Burgoo, a lot of locals, that's kind of the local thing that's been going on for 52 years.

But we do receive a lot of people, Quad Cities, Bloomington, Peoria over, even as far as Iowa, Wisconsin, it's-- - It's an adventure.

- It is.

And we're located in a good location.

We're right off of 39 or Interstate 80.

And it's easy to get to.

And I think with gas prices, they would, the way they are, if you're within driving distance, it's worth a drive.

I mean, you might have to pay to park.

Sometimes parking's a little issue where you might have to pay five bucks or 10 bucks to get outta your vehicle, but it's all free.

I mean, it's up to you if you wanna buy anything, but even just walking around and taking in the experience is well worth it to me, I think.

- It's good to listen to you.

And then I ask almost everybody, I'm pretty sure just about everybody, bucket list.

What do you foresee in the future for the Burgoo festival on a bucket list?

- Oh, I hope to only grow it.

I mean, we are limited into how many vendors we can have, space dependent, but we are working on maybe building up the music portion of it, 'cause we do a lot of bluegrass.

That's kind of what we tie in with the festival.

- Because it's pioneer sounding, right?

- Yes.

And like I had said that Saturday was the day that we added in 2013 and by 2013 we might have had a thousand people coming.

Last year in 2021 I wanna say there was 20, 25,000 people in town.

- [Christine] Incredible.

- And Sunday we get right around 50 to 60,000 people in town.

And I think it's just that, it's a tradition.

Like I said, I think there are people that are, they book their hotel rooms when they leave from Burgoo that year, they're booking them for the next year.

- And where do they stay?

- There's a couple of Airbnbs in town, Starved Rock Lodge is only about a mile and a half, two miles from us.

Grand Bear Resort is another one.

And really, Oglesby has a couple of hotels, Peru and Ottawa.

And they're really, we're again centrally located.

They're about 15 minutes away from Utica.

So, there's quite a few options to stay and they have Holiday Inns and Best Westerns.

- Well what about shuttles running back and forth?

Would that be bucket list.

- Yes, well we do have some shuttles, right now we have, there is construction on our roundabouts.

So, we're waiting to see how we're gonna work that, but usually we have a shuttle that shuttles from near Interstate 80, from a parking location and it runs continuously both Saturday and Sunday.

- [Christine] Great.

- So, you can park your car.

You're dropped off right at the start of the festival.

And then you are, the shuttle every 15 minutes comes back, takes you right back up to your car.

- Awesome.

- If you need to drop off some shopping that you've done and come back down, you can do that.

- [Christine] You're set.

- Yes.

- Well, thank you very much for enlightening us.

- You're welcome.

- All about Burgoo and everything going on in LeSalle County.

- Thank you for having me.

- Well, thanks Amanda.

Hope you enjoyed it.

I learned a lot.

Stay safe and healthy and hold happiness.

(instrumental music)