Chester is a couple of miles downstream from the site of Fort Kaskaskia, which the French halfheartedly built sometime in the mid-18th century. If you don't feel like squinting to read it, the lesson of the plaque below is: most useless fort ever.
The French thought about building the fort for thirty years before they got around to it, it played no part in the Seven Years' War, the British decided to build their fort somewhere else, and the Virginians/Americans went for the village and ignored the fort during the Am. Revolution. The village of Kaskaskia, across the river, was home to a church that began as a Jesuit mission in 1675 (or 1703, or 1714, depending on who you ask--it moved a few times). The original village, however, washed away beginning with a flood in 1881, when the Mississippi changed course.
So now the village is entirely gone, and the fort is a bunch of grassy hills with a flagpole in the center.
They also have a big, new Lewis and Clark sign at every available spot (L&C recruited some people from the town of Kaskaskia). This makes me understand why people get their chronology mixed up.
It's a really interesting site, but the problem is that nowhere do the signs tell you who lived in Kaskaskia, why they lived there, what they did, why Kaskaskia was such an important village, what happened to the inhabitants when the village/fort changed hands, etc etc--basically all the interesting historical stuff. This is always my beef with historical markers, though. I'm just picky.
It's pretty, though, and there's quite a view--you start to understand why the fort was built on the bluff.
Oh, and today I learned a fun new word: freebooter!
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So I linked to that Wikipedia page on Chester, the third sentence of which originally read, "Chester's mayor is Marty Bert, who is a horrible mayor."
One of my faithful readers subsequently got so angry at this piece of editorializing that he went in and took out the offending phrase. Hence I am indirectly doing my part to improve the objectivity of Wikipedia.
But of course, now my original post doesn't make sense. Ah, well.
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