Let's Talk Kankakee County History

Kankakee insurance man Albert Schneider and his family enjoy a drive in the country, probably about 1915. They are riding on an...

Debris from the tender and the engineer's cab is piled in the foreground of this wreck photo, probably taken on the afternoon of November...

The studios of WKAN and its sister station WKIL (which began broadcasting later in the year) were housed in this building on N. Schuyler...

By Jack Klasey August 16, 2025 At 3:15 a.m. on January 29, 1938, a car “driving aimlessly through the business district” attracted the...

By Jack Klasey August 9, 2025   Before being allowed to come indoors in the 1970s, "Indian Chief No. 53" survived more than a century of...

By Jack Klasey August 2, 2025 On Friday evening, October 12, 1945, fire raged through five buildings on the grounds of the Lowe Hybrid...

By Jack Klasey July 26, 2025 On the evening of April 1, 1955, a traffic jam spread along Washington Avenue north and south of the...

By Jack Klasey July 19, 2025   In late January 1938, fame (of a sort) was “in the cards” for the tiny Kankakee County village of...

By Jack Klasey July 12, 2025 When you mount your penny-farthing and set off on your century, be careful not to take a header…it could end...

By Jack Klasey July 5, 2025   “Drunkenness is a disease, and I can cure it,” was the motto of the man who made the small Livingston...

By Jack Klasey June 28, 2025 _____________________________________________________________________________ NOTE:  I recently discovered...

City National Bank (now the Kankakee County Administration Building) was located at the intersection of Court Street and Schuyler Avenue....

Armstrong Cork Company’s asphalt tile plant is nearing completion in this aerial photo, probably taken  in 1946. The manufacturing...

The Hotel Riverview is shown in August, 1887, shortly after it opened. The crowd on the grounds consisted of more than 1,600 members of...

The Jaycee “March ofr Dimers” pause for a rest at Momence on January 22, 1956, before heading onward to Kankakee to complete the group’s...

The cannons at the courthouse were removed on December 17, 1942, during a WWII scrap metal drive. Loading one of the mammoth guns onto a...

This damaged, sepia-toned photograph from the 1880s shows a Fourth of July parade on Court Street looking eastward from Dearborn Avenue....

On April 1, 1967, this photo appeared on page 1 of the Kankakee Daily Journal. It purported to show a crashed “flying saucer” being...

The new Montgomery Ward store, viewed across Schuyler Avenue in 1938. The Kankakee store of Ward’s major competitor, Sears, Roebuck &...

This towering dragline crane strips off overburden, 30 cubic feet at a time, to expose the coal seam at a Peabody Coal Co. strip-mining...