Marathon Pundit: Ronald Reagan Trail: Fulton

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Ronald Reagan Trail: Fulton

Fulton's De Immigrant Windmill

In Ronald Reagan's first autobiography, Where's the Rest of Me, the 40th president recounted his birth in Tampico in 1911. "For such a fat little Dutchman," his father Jack quipped at the time, "he sure makes a lot of noise."

Jack knew a lot of Dutchmen in Fulton, Illinois. When I drove through the town last month, I encountered a plethora of Dutch names among the businesses there. It was heavily Dutch when Reagan's parents were born there in 1883 and it is today.

Downtown Fulton

After Jack was orphaned in 1889, he lived with his Aunt Margaret in tiny Bennett, Iowa. He returned to Fulton as a young man, working as a salesman at J. W. Broadhead's dry goods store, where he met Nelle Wilson--they married in 1904.

Reagan had this to say in An American Life about her mother: "She always expected to find the best in people and often did." It was always morning in America for Nelle. "I learned from my father the value of hard work and ambition," he wrote in the same book, "and maybe a little something about telling a story." Perhaps more importantly, from Jack he acquired the gift of telling people it was morning in America.

Birthday greetings are in order today. Nelle was born 128 years ago today.

Fulton's Lincoln Highway mural

Like Pella, Iowa, which I visited last year, Fulton has an authentic windmill, which appropriately sits on a dike. And just as the Iowa town has a May Dutch festival, so does Fulton. But Fulton got its windmill in 2000, two years before Pella built their iconic Dutch symbol. It was late in the day when I arrived in Fulton, so I was not able to visit its Heritage Canyon.

Fulton is a Lincoln Highway town, and like many other Illinois towns it honors the early highway with a commemorative gazebo. The road also passes through Dixon, which will be the subject of my next post.

Across the river from Fulton is Clinton, Iowa. And just eight miles north of the town is Thomson, home of the prison that President Obama wanted to transform into "Gitmo North."

Here is the Ronald Reagan Trail Fulton video:

Related posts:

Iowa I Opener: Pella
Iowa I Opener: Wyatt Earp (Pella)