Crossing the Illinois River here — no matter which way you’re headed — feels like riding a ferry to nowhere. Both shores offer little more than scattered buildings and vacant waterfronts.
Reggie Fox has worked on the Miss Illinois for 25 years, so he’s well aware this place doesn’t bustle like Chicago. The ferry connects two of Illinois’ most remote and least populated counties; more people reside in your average Loop high-rise than live within 10 miles of this spot.
Fox also knows that this place is unlike any other in the state: Calhoun County, the western terminus of the Miss Illinois’ crossing, is a peninsula, with the Mississippi River to the west and the Illinois River to the east. Four separate ferries connect Calhoun County to various points in Illinois and Missouri, making Calhoun the Prairie State’s most boat-dependent county. More than any other place along the 273-mile-long Illinois River, Calhoun’s existence intertwines with the waterways.
Within the county, the Miss Illinois at Kampsville connects people with jobs, grocery stores and family members. Last year about 300,000 vehicles traveled on its 18-car deck, although that’s hardly an urban stampede. To compare, the Dan Ryan Expressway sees about the same amount of traffic every 24 hours.
Yet despite the area’s isolation — or perhaps because of it — the ferry is much more than a nautical conveyor belt across the 1,750 feet of water separating Greene and Calhoun Counties. The Miss Illinois creates a sense of community, a sort of mobile town square, for gathering and socializing, even if it’s just for the five-minute ride.
Everybody has a story about something that has happened on the ferry. Just consider that the closest hospital to Kampsville is 12 miles and a ferry ride away. For many a woman in labor, the Miss Illinois is the first step to the delivery room. “Praise the Lord,” Fox exclaims, thankful that he has never had to leave the pilothouse to help birth a baby.
“We’ve been close,” he says with a laugh big enough to fill his size 54 jeans.
Calhoun County, population 5,200, has long been considered out of sync with the world around it. In the 19th Century, newspapers wrote awe-filled dispatches about how the area had prized peach orchards but no trains, bank or telephone lines.
Of course there are plenty of telephones in Calhoun now, and even a couple of banks. The railroads never arrived, though, which makes Calhoun the only county in the state without train tracks. Not many roads exist either, and there is only one bridge spanning the Illinois River — one with a history of closing because of flooding and structural problems. Built in 1931, the Joe Page Bridge crosses the river at Hardin, about 10 miles south of Kampsville. The next closest bridge sits 28 miles north of Kampsville, in Pike County.
What Calhoun County has instead are ferries: two privately owned and two operated by the Illinois Department of Transportation, including the Miss Illinois and the one about 25 miles downstream in Brussels. The Miss Illinois connects Kampsville, population 302, with Greene County, which has no settlement on the riverbanks. The nearest town you’ll find in that direction is 4 miles from the river: Eldred, population 211.
The first ferry at Kampsville appeared in the early 1830s. At that time a crossing cost 12 cents a ride, whether you were a person, a horse or “cattle under one year.” Hogs traveled for 3 cents.
The state took over the ferry in 1941, and rides have been free — taxpayer financed — ever since.
These days, the ferry runs around the clock, as long as weather allows the pilot to see the opposite bank. In the winter, ice usually blocks the ferry’s path for at least a few days. During summers, tornadoes have been known to dart across the water. Once, on a Memorial Day, the crew watched a barn float down the flooded river.
Inside the pilothouse, the weather rarely varies. An air conditioner blows 68 degrees in the summer, and a heater warms in the winter. Sound is supplied by the rumbling engine room and a crackling VHF radio, which allows the ferry to coordinate with other river traffic.
The Miss Illinois docks, loads vehicles, runs the five-minute trip, then unloads and loads again, logging up to 10 crossings an hour. After a while, working as a pilot or a deckhand during the ferry’s endless loop is as repetitive as assembly line work, but no one is complaining, not much anyway. IDOT paid the 15 employees of the Miss Illinois $1.12 million last year.
Over on the other side of the river, past the trees and farms, Greene County, population 14,300, thrives relatively. Greene has jobs and it even has a grocery store, which Kampsville hasn’t seen in several years. If you live in Calhoun and you’re not a farmer, there’s a good chance you work somewhere in Greene County.
Roger Adcock is one such person. He lives out in the country in Calhoun and owns Thirsty’s Tavern in Eldred, across the river. He’d prefer crossing on a bridge, but he knows that without the ferry, life here would change — without the ferry, people would not gather to stop and chat.
“We cuss it, but we do appreciate it,” he said as he rode the boat. “This kind of keeps Calhoun County what it is.”
Brenda Johnson, who lives in Kampsville and works at the hospital in Carrollton, 12 miles away across the river, said that without the ferry’s employees, the trip would be a daily hassle.
“The guys are so great. I never get on the ferry without one of them taking the time to talk or say hello,” she said.
On a recent afternoon crossing, Kerby Suhling was that employee who said hello. Suhling grew up in Kampsville and always figured he would be a farmer like everyone else in his family. He joined the ferry crew 28 years ago and hasn’t looked back.
Suhling said most rides are uneventful and pleasant, but there are colorful exceptions. People have fought on the ferry. Drunks have fallen asleep after driving their cars aboard. (The crew rolls them and their cars into a dockside parking lot.)
Or how about the time a couple took the ferry east across the river and then robbed the bank in Eldred, 4 miles down the road? That happened decades ago, but people talk about it as if the police sirens still wail.
Then there was the day that lightning struck a car just feet from where Fox stood on the ferry’s deck. The bolt sent a hot flash down his spine that he still remembers today. “Crazy,” he recalls.
Of course these are but a few ferry stories — new ones get made every day.
Everyone here has one.
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jageorge@tribune.com
Next week: Working, playing and noodling on the Illinois.
Meet the explorer team
Tribune reporter Jason George and photographer Michael Tercha spent seven days motoring the length of the Illinois River in a (leaky) 16-foot johnboat that had a seating area the size of a bathtub. They never sank or flipped the boat, but they did get hit by a flying fish. Twice.
IN THE WEB EDITION: Take a video ride on the Miss Illinois as it travels across the Illinois River, one of the state’s most important waterways. At chicagotribune.com/illinoisriver.
