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Utica Area | Marseilles
Native
American LegacyFor thousands of years before explorers, settlers and immigrants arrived, native people lived and traded here. Illinois, Miami, Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Kickapoo tribes settled along the banks of the river where rapids (now submerged by the lock and dam) required a break in river travel.
West of Buffalo Rock where cornfields stand today was once the Grand Village of the Illinois Indians. French explorers Marquette and Jolliet, returning to the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River in 1673, reported a village of 73 cabins. In 1675, the Mission of the Immaculate Conception was established here as the first Catholic mission in present-day Illinois. By the 1680s, when LaSalle and Tonti established a fort at Starved Rock, the village had grown to more than 400 cabins housing over 6,000 native people. Learn more about Native Americans in the canal region.
Stagecoach Stop
On the south side of Dee Bennett Road is an impressive
stone building that was once a stagecoach stop known as the Sulphur Springs
Hotel. There is no public access to the hotel or the Grand Village archeological
site at this time.
