Hit-and-Run on the Lincoln Highway

Two accounts of a serious accident that happened on July 8, 1923, along the Lincoln Highway just west of Randolph Street.


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Hobart News, July 12, 1923.


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Hobart Gazette, July 13, 1923.

Donald was the son of Edward and Tillie Niksch, who had turned the former Deep River schoolhouse, on the northwest corner of Randolph and E. 73rd Avenue, into a dance hall.

I find that casual hospitality interesting: strangers from Gary traveling along the Lincoln Highway just happened to stop at the Niksch place for water, and for the lady to amuse herself playing the piano in the dance hall, though no dance was going on. Then she got thirsty again and gave the little boy a dime(!) to fetch her another glass of water. That's when everything went bad.

But little Donald recovered from his injuries and went on to live a full life.

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Below that story in the Gazette we find another accident, caused by drunk driving, involving Charles and Etta (Sohn) Kisela, who were a few weeks short of their first wedding anniversary.

The story in the News about camping along the Deep River mentions Camp 133, which we know about, but also some other camps that I've never heard of. The early summer's hot weather probably helped drive people out of their stuffy homes and into tents by the river.

Hot Weather

The last two weeks of June 1923 were so hot that the strawberry crop withered and the M.E. church held its services in the basement. The Gem Theatre in Hobart enticed its patrons with "12 big fans" to cool them off. (The movies had not yet become the talkies so there was no spoken dialogue to be drowned out by those fans.) When sundown brought a little relief, you could go dancing at the pavilion just north of the old Liverpool schoolhouse, on the northeast corner of the Old Ridge Road-Liverpool Road intersection. The brave young people playing tennis on Stommel's lot did so early in the morning or late in the afternoon, I hope.

Nothing much was planned in Hobart for Independence Day, but on its eve Camp 133 promised a big fireworks display. If you didn't care for fireworks, you could go dance at the old Deepriver schoolhouse to music "with real pep" played by Perry's Big Six (I have no idea).


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Hobart Gazette, June 29, 1923.

Still, work had to go on. Planning for the future Roosevelt Gym building was going forward, and our favorite plumbers, Lee & Rhodes, as the only bidders for the plumbing work, were awarded the contract.

Some unpleasant business involving tuberculosis-testing of cattle occurred on "the big farm of Roper Bros." (and even more unpleasant business later at a Chicago slaughterhouse). I don't know where that farm was. I can't find any land owned by a Roper in Union Township on the Lincoln Highway in the 1921 or 1928 plat maps.

Tent to Tent in Three Generations

Maybe Grandpa George Earle did not actually sleep in a tent when he first came to the Liverpool area in the mid-1840s, but I'm sure he "roughed it" to some degree out of necessity. Here's Grandson George Earle, visiting the same area and roughing it for fun in 1923.


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Hobart Gazette, May 18, 1923.

Does anyone know where Pine Street was (or is)? I can't find it on the present-day map.

Over in the right-hand column, we see that the campgrounds on the Yellowstone Trail (Cleveland Avenue) were open for another tourist seasons.

The Old Fire Truck Again

I have a couple more photos of the old Camp 133/V.F.W. fire truck, last seen on July 4, 1947.

This one was taken in August of 1957, during Eldon and Norma Harms' housewarming party on the old Fox-Harms place.


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Images courtesy of Eldon Harms.

At left you can see the fire truck's steering wheel, and the worn upholstery of driver's seat. As to who Bob, Jane and Buck were, your guess is as good as mine. From the looks of it, that housewarming party was a whole lot of fun.


In this photo, the fire truck is a little girl's playground.

Independence Day Parade, 1947

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Image courtesy of the Eldon Harms family.

Here we have the V.F.W.'s fire truck in a parade. At the wheel is Eldon Harms. No one else is identified.

While the date of the photo above was not recorded, I think it looks enough like this one, taken in Hobart in 1947, that we can safely say they were both taken at the same place on the same occasion — most likely the parade on July 4, 1947, during Hobart's big centennial celebration.

Eldon himself once told me that the fire truck had belonged to the fire department of Camp 133 before the Hobart V.F.W. bought it.

Camp 133

Here's a little map from the Gazette of June 2, 1922, showing where Camp 133 was.


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So, where present-day Liverpool Road crosses the Deep River, Camp 133 was on the west side of the road and the north side of the river.



A Calumet Region Historical Guide compiled as a WPA project and printed in 1939 devotes one short paragraph to Camp 133, explaining that it was "so named because 133 was the number of the local theatrical employee's union whose members established the camp in 1913."