On Wednesday, February 17th, I left for Illinois. Today, Wednesday (March 1oth) I returned home. I spent most of these three weeks, traveling throughout the state of Illinois, from Chicago to Cairo to Champaign, photographing and documenting the Sears Homes among us. To read more about Sears Homes, click here.

In a few months, I’ll be finishing up this new book titled, The Sears Homes of Illinois.

Traipsing around Illinois was a lot of fun, but also a lot of intense effort. I started each day around 5:00 am, and mapped out a detailed plan of where I’d travel and what I’d do. Then I’d hit the road between 6:00 am and 8:00 am and stay gone until 4:00 pm or beyond. In my three weeks in Illinois, I put 2,500 miles on my little rental car. That doesn’t include my travels around Chicago, where Rebecca Hunter was kind enough to drive me around.

When I’d enter a city, I’d take a look at my Garmin and find the railroad tracks and find the cementery and find the streets marked “McKinley” and “Elm” and “Pershing” and “Third Street.” You can usually find Sears Homes on streets thus named. And then I’d drive through these areas, looking for Sears Homes. When I found a Sears Home, I’d make a note of the address and then I’d use my reference books to find how the house originally appeared in the old catalogs. Then I’d take a photo of the house from the same angle that it appeared in the 1910s or 1920s catalog.

In those three weeks, I took 1,500 photos of 200+ houses. That’s a lot of photos.

And then I returned home. I’ve never been so glad to get on an airplane in my life!

Here are a few of my favorite photos:

Nice Sears Corona in Central Illinois

Sears Ashmore in Central Illinois

Model #196 in Southwestern Illinois

A nice Westly in Metropolis, Illinois (Home of Superman!)

Sears Hollywood in Southern Illinois

Sears Edgemere in Central Illinois

Sears Puritan in Southern Illinois, near the mill in Cairo

Recently, I traveled to southern Illinois to re-visit the site of the old Sears Mill.

In late 1911, Sears spent about $1 million to build a state-of-the-art mill just outside of Cairo, Illinois. The mill was actually located in a tiny burg called Urbandale. The Sears Mill was an impressive operation, covering 40 acres and employing about 80 full-time workers. About 20 acres were “under roof.” In other words, the site had 20 acres of buildings.

That’s a lot of buildings.

Each day, the railroad cars brought enormous quantities of yellow pine and cypress into the mill, right out of the virgin forests in Louisiana and Mississippi. Each day, those workers turned those logs into 10-12 kit homes. You read that right:  Hard-working men, using powerful saws and planers and other massive machines, carved those trees into kit homes. Kit homes with 30,000 pieces. That’s a lot of lumber.

In 2003, when doing research for my book, “The Houses That Sears Built,” I traveled to the site of the old mill. Not much to see there, but a couple little Sears Homes and a lot of woods and a couple bean fields.

Fast forward seven years to 2010.

Now I’m writing a new book about Sears Homes, and I decided it was time to dig a little deeper.

This time around, I contacted Richard Kearney, a local historian, long-time Cairo resident and all-around Smart Cookie and good man.

I asked him if he might have time to spend a day with me, helping me navigate the back roads of southern Illinois. To my delight, he readily agreed. Our day together could not have been any more delightful. With Richard’s fantastic knowledge of the area, I learned so much more about the old Sears Mill and its connection to local history.

One small example:  Soon after entering Urbandale, we turned onto “Sears Road” (the site of the old mill), and Richard spoke up and said, “You know, this used to be known as ‘Sears Roebuck Road.’”

I replied, “You’re kidding!”

He said, “It’s true. This road went all the way through, and when the Interstate came through, it cut the road right in half, creating two dead end streets on either side of I-57.”

This is the kind of quirky history that I just adore. I was enthralled.

“On the other side of the interstate,” Richard said, “you’ll find the other half of this road. It’s now called “Roebuck Road.”

Now I’ve been writing about Sears Homes for many years and I’ve been to Cairo many times and I’ve spent many hours learning more about Sears and Cairo and the mill, but I’d never heard any of this.

I asked Richard to show me where Roebuck Road was. He gladly obliged.

And there it was - Roebuck Road. And there was yet another bonus! Behind the Roebuck Road sign was a perfect little Sears house. It was a Sears Wexford.

A Sears House on Roebuck Road. Or maybe it’s a Roebuck house on Roebuck Road?

Either way, Garmin apparently never got the memo that Sears Roebuck Road had been sliced into two pieces.

Sears Road - in Urbandale

Note the little Sears Wexford in the background!

Someone needs to tell Garmin that Sears and Roebuck are now divorced - thanks to the Interstate!

Richard - thank you so much -  for sharing your knowledge and being such a good sport and giving up an entire day of your life to help me find my way around the southern-most tip of Illinois. You’re a real trooper and a treasure-trove of knowlege!