GRAND DETOUR, Ill. — Time seems to stand still during a visit to the John Deere Historic Site, located near the banks of the picturesque Rock River in tiny Grand Detour.
The site, located near the Lee County town of Dixon, is recognized as a National Historic Landmark as the location where Deere, freshly transplanted from Rutland, Vt., perfected the steel, or "self-scouring," plow that changed the agricultural landscape of America.
"Grand Detour is located on the only peninsula on the Rock River," said Brian Holst, John Deere Historic Site manager. "It is said that the Indians thought the river so beautiful here that they had to turn back and look."
Today Deere & Co. enjoys an international presence, but it all started here in a tiny burg established by Deere family friend Leonard Andrus, who came to Illinois from Vermont shortly before Deere.
Arriving in 1836 to open a blacksmith shop, Deere built the house at 8334 S. Clinton Street in three phases. He sent for his wife and five children in 1838, about the same time he sold his first plow to neighbor Lewis Crandall.
While in Grand Detour, John and Demarius "Mary" Deere would produce three more children (another daughter would be born in Moline after the family left Grand Detour in 1848). In the early 1840s Deere added a modern kitchen, followed by a larger expansion to the house, and constructed a carriage shed.
The original blacksmith shop where Deere perfected (some prefer to say invented) the steel plow was excavated in 1963 by an archaeological team of students from the University of Illinois.
The dig site is now preserved beneath a building known as the Pavilion, where short films about Deere’s life are shown.
Today the site – which is comprised of five components including two acres of prairie restoration, a replica blacksmith shop and visitors center – is frequented by school groups, green iron enthusiasts, history buffs, day-tripping families and others wanting to hear the creaky floorboards underfoot in the Deere home or feel the heat of fired steel in the blacksmith shop.
By 1848 Deere was selling upwards of 1,000 plows per year from his growing Grand Detour compound. The entrepreneur needed more space for his burgeoning manufacturing plant and better access to transportation, explained tour guide Archie.
"He needed the infrastructure available to him in Moline; the river access and the railroad, which did not come through Grand Detour where the raw materials left by steamboat," said Archie, who, like other guides at the Deere Historic Site, is employed through a temporary agency by the John Deere Foundation, owners of the site.
"Here, the Rock River is not really navigable, so a lot of materials came in and left by wagon."
The John Deere Historic Site was designated a National Historic Landmark on July 19, 1964, by the U.S. Department of the Interior. It was among the first properties to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places on Oct. 15, 1966.
It is open to visitors May-October, Wednesdays-Sundays from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission is $5 for those 12 and older. Contact a spokesperson at 815-652-4551 for further information on the site, group tours or calendar of special events.
