Trivia Winners The winning team from the Galena Trivia contest January 16 at Turner Hall, Mike Casper, Katey Casper, Mike Steinhoff, Janet Steinhoff, Janet Eggleston, Jon Clingman, John Cox, and Bonnie Cox

December 27th saw us celebrate the beginning of our Bicentennial year with a mayoral proclamation and toast!

Ely Samuel Parker, only man to hold the ranks of Sachem and US General, was posthumously admitted to the New York Bar, 130 years after his death and 160 years after he penned one of the most important legal documents in US history.

Imagine living in Galena in 1860.

April 27, 1918, was Ulysses S Grant’s 96th birthday.  Kenesaw Mountain Landis delivered a speech for the occasion

Waanįk Šuuc, known to us as “Red Bird,” was a Ho Chunk leader who resisted the white incursion into Wisconsin.  He was eventually surrounded and surrendered, expecting to be honorably executed.  Instead he died imprisoned at Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin, in 1828.

At the Galena Fair in 1911, the big attraction was an “airship,” a bi-plane piloted by Harry Powers.  

In just two weeks time, a team of lawyers set up two corporations, bought a farm, built a stage and all the accompanying structures, and put on a festival for 30,000 – 50,000 people.

And it could have happened in Galena…

Galena is the Latin name for the highest quality of lead sulfide from which lead is produced.  It was lead that brought people to the Galena area by the thousands during the early nineteenth century.

The first Corn Boil took place at Hughlett’s Bottom, at the end of Dewey Avenue.  The Gazette reported an “estimated 800 persons” attended.