Several years ago a friend of mine from Freeport gave me a box full of random Mount Carroll items that he got along with something he had purchased from an auction.  He knew I was interested in Mount Carroll history and passed them along. Among the items he gave me were a number of photographs related to Shimer College along with many copies of Shimer’s alumni news booklet. A few of these photographs are real treasures to me, not so much because they are well done, but because they have a unique perspective.  One I had never seen before.

Around the spring of 1955 a couple of buddies from Shimer decided to climb the tower at Point Rock Park. (Did you know there was a tower in the woods behind the rock?)  Was it a dare? Did they get in trouble or did they wave to the people below at the baseball diamonds? It’s possible no one would have ever known about their shenanigans, except that they photographed it. And I’m glad they did.

To my knowledge these are the only photographs taken from the top of that tower.  With these images you get a broken panorama view of town that includes Moshure’s Garage and Creamery Rd. westward.  And my favorite, a view of West Market St. that includes the Clifton Hotel, the Wachtel & Sons building (later Florence Motors), and Bert’s.  All three of the latter have been torn down.

Unfortunately, since the tower at the park fell down in the mid-1970s, I could not capture a repeat image of that scene for quite some time.  Thankfully, Norm Wallgren of NW Drone Dynamics, LLC, helped me out and together we were able to get a similar image to compare by flying a drone up there.  The trees at Point Rock Park have had another 65 years of growth since the original photos were taken and we didn’t want to get the drone too close to the branches so this image is not from the exact same spot, but close enough to see the differences.

Later we took the drone up to nearly 400 feet, which is the legal limit, and captured another fun image of downtown that includes all of Market St. up to Bridgewater Inn (Glenview  Hotel) as well as the Courthouse, City Hall, the Library, and the Emmert House (Stone house) at the far left.