Two busloads learn of Trail of Tears journey
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[The Illinois Chapter of the Trail of Tears filled up two busloads Saturday for an all-day tour of the Trail of Tears historic route across Southern Illinois.
The group started in Golconda where 11,000 Cherokees crossed the Ohio River in 1838 on their forced westward trek from Georgia and North Carolina to what would later become the state of Oklahoma.
While their journey during the winter of 1838 and 1839 would cross through the county seats of Golconda, Vienna and Jonesboro, their route taken only roughly parallels the modern state Rt. 146 highway. Wherever possible, Saturday's tour used the old county roads that were once the major route from the Ohio to the Mississippi rivers.
Each bus had three guides, one for each county, that told about the sites passed and the history and oral traditions that have been passed down about the trail.
The buses started at the Golconda waterfront where Joe Crabb told of the Cherokee crossing. Later at the Theopolous Scott homestead at Root Lick Branch on what's now the Trail of Tears Road, Crabb told of the stories still passed down in Scott's family of their ancestor sitting on his front porch watching the Cherokees trek past by his house.
In Johnson County the groups stopped at the Gambit Golf Course which was the McCorkle homestead where the Cherokees were allowed to camp. At the Vienna City Park Illinois Chapter President Sandy Boaz gave an overview of the Cherokee journey.
After lunch the group toured the historic Bridges Tavern site on Rt. 146 near West Vienna which has the only structure still standing that dates back to the Trail of Tears era. Saturday was the first time one of the bus tours had been allowed to tour the site.
Gary Hacker, a chapter board member and one of the Johnson County guides for the tour thanked the new owners for wanting to preserve the site. There inside an 1890s barn still stands a log cabin that dates back to the 1820s.
The structure served as the store or storehouse for the tavern at the time.
In Union County the group stopped at the Campground Cemetery, the only cemetery certified by the National Park Service as a site on the trail that has been confirmed as used by the Cherokees as a burial site along the trail.
Boaz, a seventh-generation descendant of the land owner there in the 1830s, told the history of the site and the modern era research that has been conducted to confirm the site of the graves.
Demand was so great that the chapter has scheduled a second bus tour the last Saturday of April which has already sold out.
More about the Trail of Tears can be found at http://illinoistrailoftears.blogspot.com.
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