Pioneering the Prairie

When the Illinois Central Railroad reached Kankakee in 1853, there were a number of small settlements, such as Bloom’s Grove and Rockville, that had been established on the edge of the prairie.

By Jack Klasey

October 18, 2025

“In the early days, the silence of the prairies was awful, especially in the autumn,” wrote H. S. Bloom, a pioneer settler who arrived in what is now Kankakee County in the spring of 1837. His detailed reminiscence of pioneer life was published in the 1883 Illustrated Historical Atlas of Kankakee County. “I have been in what is now the town[ship] of Norton, then known as the Grand Prairie, and camped there when hunting, out of sight of timber, when the silence was profound. No sound of insect, no song of bird, no sighing of the wind. You could feel your pulse throb, and hear your own heart beat. I have been in the Rocky Mountains of Nevada and on the deserts of the great West, but nowhere did I ever feel and witness such awful solemn silence as on the prairies before settlement.”

The eastern portion of what is today Kankakee County was heavily wooded. West of what would become the city of Kankakee was the beginning of a vast grassland that stretched to the Mississippi River and well beyond. Except for lands along creeks and rivers and scattered groves, trees were scarce. Instead, grasses—varying in height from a foot or two to giant stalks taller than a man on horseback— dominated the scene in every direction.

Bloom’s reminiscence went on to describe some of the plentiful prairie wildlife: “Deer and prairie chickens were abundant; of the latter, tens of thousands filled the prairie. We also had an unlimited number of sandhill cranes, ducks, and geese. Deer banded in groups of from 50 to 120; I once saw near [what is now] Essex, 110 in one herd.

“The cranes would flock in groups of around fifty and engage in a dance. They would form in an irregular circle; two would commence circling about each other, and all would follow, jumping over one another, frequently jumping from twelve to fifteen feet; by the time all were joined in, it presented the most grotesque sight imaginable. I have actually laughed until my sides were sore for days, at witnessing one of these festivals; it beat a circus or a bear dance.”

Another aspect of the vast prairie was, however, no laughing matter: Each fall, the “silence of the prairie” was replaced by the roaring flames of prairie fires. “The annual fires commenced about the middle of October and continued until rain or snow fell to stop them,” wrote Bloom. “Every night, for weeks at a time, the heavens were lit with the lurid glare of the flames. Sometimes these fires would spread with great rapidity, and at other times, would spread very slowly. If the wind were quiet, it would take days for a fire to travel but a few miles; while  if the wind were strong, the fire traveled with wonderful speed—I have seen fires in a dry time travel as fast as a horse could go at full speed.”

Many of the prairie fires were caused by lightning strikes or accidental causes, such as camp fires that had escaped their bounds. A significant number of blazes, however, were deliberately set by hunters. Bloom recalled one such incident: “A brother hunter and myself set fires on Horse Creek, in the Fall of 1840 or 1841, to drive out some deer that we were hunting. We set fire first in a large circle, which at the start burned very slowly. The wind soon struck it, and we had a terrific blaze. We were inside the circle. The game soon started and there was soon a lively time; several deer were killed. Some made their escape to the leeward of the fire. We cut off the retreat of one fine buck, who plunged into the flames inside the circle. We afterward found him, blind as a stone… [and] put him out of his misery.

“In our eagerness for game, we had lost sight of our own safety. The fire was raging on either side and in our rear, and traveling much faster than we could go. We therefore set fire in front of us, and as soon as a small space was burned, we leaped into it, and followed the retreating flame, half-suffocated with the dense smoke and heat. It was a narrow escape. After recovering from our fright and when the  fire had burned away from us, we went back and secured our game as best we could, preparatory to coming the next day to take it into camp…When we returned the day following, in spite of our efforts to protect the game, the wolves by then [had] already devoured the most of it.”

Before the coming of the Illinois Central railroad in 1853, transporting farm products to market in Chicago was a long and arduous journey. Bloom described one such trip to market: “About 1840 or 1841, I made a trip overland to Chicago. I left home with a load of wheat, late in November, with an ox team of two yokes to draw my wagon. I drove first to Twelve Mile Grove, ten miles from home; that was the first day’s journey. The next day, I made Cooper’s Grove, seventeen miles. On the third day out, I reached the flats near Blue Island.

“The roads were very bad. It had frozen quite hard during the night, and the sloughs were covered with an inch or more of ice. I made very good progress by driving where the slough grass was thick and formed a bed on the ice on which my oxen could walk, but I had not proceeded very far before my wheels broke through into the soft mud; my chain broke, and I was stuck in the mud. A two-mile journey had to be made to the nearest house, where after much parley, a chain was borrowed. Taking a rail from the fence, I again went to my wagon, and by dint of much prying and some hard talk to my oxen, managed to get back onto terra firma. First, however, [I] carried part of my load on my back to safe ground.

“I was not long to journey quietly, for I soon came to a lake of ice, where no friendly grass remained to help my oxen keep a foothold. I had, therefore, to take my rail and break a road through the ice, no very pleasant job, I can assure the reader. This day I made ten miles. The next, I reached Chicago, where, disposing of my wheat at 50 cents per bushel, reloading with salt and provisions after one day’s rest, I started homeward. It was just seven days from when I started till I got back, fifty-five miles each way. The usual time consumed was five days.”

H.S. (Henry Sterling) Bloom, a native of Pennsylvania, came to what is now Rockville Township of Kankakee County along with his parents in 1837, at the age of 17. He was the oldest of nine children (four boys and five girls) in the family of David and Mary Alma “Polly” Bloom. In 1853, he was appointed as one of the commissioners who oversaw the creation of Kankakee County from portions of Will and Iroquois counties. H.S. Bloom and his wife, Elizabeth Anne, were the parents of eleven children, He lived in the family settlement of Bloom’s Grove until his death in 1899 at the age of 78, and is buried in the Bloom’s Grove Cemetery.

Jack Klasey is a former Journal reporter and a retired publishing executive. He can be contacted at jwklasey@comcast.net.