Note: The following account was written with the intention of providing maximum information on the area to someone who's never been there.  My hope is that it will help other travelers plan their visit, and maybe give some flavor of the place to those who will never have the chance to see it.  As such, it is a long, sprawling piece.  Sorry 'bout that...  If you have any comments for me, or any information about Vishnu Springs, I'd love to hear from you.  My email is at the bottom of the page.
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"Dude, I found an old place we have to visit.  Call me."

Now my friend Dave, unlike me, is not given to historical flights of fancy; so when I got that message I perked up immediately.  Turned out Dave had stumbled on a ghost town west of Macomb, a place with the whimsical name of Vishnu Springs, that had fallen through the cracks of Illinois history.

After researching the place as well as we could, we decided to skip the crowds on an incredibly nice Black Friday and make the drive.  There are advantages to spending the day after Thanksgiving sneaking across cornfields instead of fighting lines.  (Specifically, we visited on Nov. 24, 2006).

We'd realized after some mapwork the previous night that the directions floating around the internet aren't exactly correct, and we rolled up in front of the turnout around 2:30pm without any problems locating it.  We knew WIU owned the land, and we'd spent a lot of the drive discussing whether it'd be posted or whether they didn't mind visitors, so it was depressing to park in front of a prominent "No Trespassing" sign on the gate.  We talked about it, checked the map, and decided to take the gravel road down the west side of the adjacent field, and cut over to the south side of the valley hoping we could come in from there and not have to blatantly ignore a "No Trespassing" sign.  No dice.  The road on the south end is hilly, curvy, narrow, wooded, lined semi-regularly with houses, and presents no convenient parking.  Retracing our route back to the "main" Vishnu entrance, we debated.  Park in the turnout as others have done and blithely ignore the sign, and just hope for the best?  Park in a field drive on the north-south road to the west, cut straight east to the valley, and hope no one minds us in the middle of their field?  Eventually, we settled on parking in the turnout, and taking a half-assed route into Vishnu I won't share, in case I need to use it again.  ;-)  The upshot is, we managed to stay off posted property until out of sight of the road.  We came out the same way, to guard against the possibility of marching down a posted trail into view of a cop waiting by our car.

The "road to Vishnu" is nothing but a rutted trail today.  Realistically, it was probably never more than that.  Apparently it was overgrown and just a shadow of a path for many years, but today there are a few people connected to the university that have keys to the gates, and they keep it passable to vehicles.  Of course, without a key driving in is not an option, but the walking is easy enough.  Around a quarter-mile from the turnout, we passed the remains of a small shed in the woods on our left.  It looked old enough to be Vishnu-era, but who knows?  After a mile or so of following the field just inside treeline, the road Y's.  One branch gets fainter and continues on top of the ridge - this was the original road to the portion of town located on the western valley rim.  The 108 stairs down to the valley floor were located this way.  We didn't go there as we'd heard there's nothing left, but we've since been told there are fragments of the staircase remaining, so maybe next time. 

The other road is blocked by a second locked gate.  It turns left and descends the valley wall on a forty-five degree angle.  About three-quarters of the way down, the blue roof of the Capitol Hotel comes into view.  It was around this time we first heard voices in the valley, and that froze us.  We wandered over to the side of the road, crouched down, and conferred.  Harmless curiosity seekers like ourselves?  Kids partying (at 3 in the afternoon?)  A backwoods IL farmland drug deal?  Or university folks, liable to wonder who the hell we were?  We watched the hotel for a minute, and two guys emerged from the back door.  They looked to be early twenties, and had cameras.  We glanced at each other, shrugged, and started walking again.  They saw us soon afterwards, and looked nervous.  This, of course, made us feel a whole lot better.  We talked a bit with them; turns out they were working on a school project about Vishnu.  After an awkward bit of discussion, we wandered our separate ways, and they eventually climbed up the western valley wall (near where we later learned the 108 stairs were).  At the time we wondered what they were up to, but were mostly just glad to be left alone at the site.  Glancing around, with the sun nearing the western valley wall and slanting through the branches to pattern the hotel, I thought I felt a bit of the magic that has drawn more than a century's worth of explorers here. 

We nosed around the southern exterior of the hotel first.  We could see the duckweed-covered "Lake Vishnu" to our southeast, with the ruins of a small shed on the NE corner.  There was a trickling sound coming from that direction.  Past the pond was a large round brick tower.  Wanting to explore the hotel while there was adequate light, we walked up to the SE corner of the foundation, heading for the basement doorway.  When Dave reached the foundation he stopped, looked down, and pointed.  "Hicks."  I looked.  Carved into the foundation at the exact spot Dave approached it was Darius Hicks' signature, dated 1889, the year the Capitol opened.

 We both hovered around the basement doorway for a minute, then ducked inside and flicked on a flashlight.  The basement looked to have been a parlor of some sort, with a nice brick fireplace.  One can picture the Victorian elegance it must have originally radiated, but now it's a jumbled patchwork of colors from graffiti and generations of repainting.  A couple smaller rooms, with attached bathrooms, extended off either side.  They were almost completely trashed, though we found an old claw-footed bathtub in one.  We also found a narrow stairway up to the first floor.

We ascended cautiously, but all the stairways in the hotel are very sound.  There's an occasional bad step, and these look like vandalism and not natural damage.  The first floor was dominated by one large room, with baseboard heating installed.  We guessed it was a dining room.  There was vandalism everywhere, both in the form of graffiti and actual structural damage.  Courtesy of holes bashed in the walls, we were able to see the walls in one hallway were drywall, with electrical wiring inside.  Hard to believe anyone actually ran electricity out here!  The walls of the main dining room were also damaged, and we could see they were older (probably original) plaster over lathing.  Here we saw the first example of a disturbing vandalism trend we were to find over and over in the hotel: on the original walls, someone had broken out large chunks of plaster.  The edges of these holes showed bits of handwriting, in old dark pencil.  From an occasional partial date, we could see that these destroyed panels had once contained areas of "original graffiti", the scrawls left by the first travelers to the Capitol.  Guests were encouraged to sign the walls, and the tradition continued after abandonment in the 1920's.  Today, it's clear that someone has been intentionally destroying the old marks, or trying to cover them with patches of modern spray-paint graffiti that somehow aren't as interesting.

Finding the next stairway, we continued up.  The second floor was a series of hallways lined with guest rooms.  They were extremely small by today's standards!  We found much more evidence of original graffiti destruction, as well as some remaining examples.  The oldest we found was here, reading "Frank Shepard - Macomb, ILL - June 3, 1923".  We've heard the oldest graffiti was from 1893, but we never found it.  We could have just missed it... or it might really be gone. 

One interesting feature on the second floor was the door out to the top level of the old veranda, on the south side.  The veranda is long gone, but the door is still there, hanging crooked on its hinges.  I'm surprised none of the drunk frat kids have decided to open it and step out by habit.  It'd be a hell of a trip to the bathroom.  Judging by the holes existing in almost every wall, this level is all original plaster-on-lathing.  There are holes in the floor here too, so watch where you're stepping!  I had to consciously remind myself to look away from the camera at times, and pay attention.  None of the holes looked like water damage, and the roof is still sound, so this is obviously all intentional destruction.  The kids had better tone it down or they're going to destroy their party spot, one whack at a time.

Continuing up, we finally reached the third floor, what was reportedly a ballroom.  The roof eaves were originally walled off, leaving a large empty space in the center that could have served as a dance floor.  Hopefully there were some railings to keep tipsy couples from falling down the stairs, which enter straight up from a hole in the floor.  Almost all the original plaster - and hence the old graffiti which covered it - is gone here, with just a bit remaining on the ceiling.  The walls hiding the eaves are completely bare, just slats of lathing.  This did, at least, allow us to inspect the eaves for water damage.  We found just a couple spots that looked damp, but this roof is still 95% sound, somehow.  The floor here is still nice and solid, though I wouldn't want to touch it.  Judging by some recent graffiti, this is a good place to bring coeds.

We wandered around here for a while, looking out at the valley from windows on either end.  I'd studied the plat map of Vishnu Springs the night before, and relative to the hotel and Lake Vishnu I could easily see where houses, shops, the livery and blacksmith's forge had stood, but it was impossible to picture a community in that wild place.  There were no remaining signs - no debris, crumbling foundations, depressions in the ground, nothing but forest.

We descended to the first floor and exited the back door, on the north side.  The sun was still above the valley wall, and we just started wandering around.  One thing we were looking for was a grave, supposedly near the hotel, but we never did find it.  We turned up some cinderblock and wood debris that we later found out were part of the stage bands performed on, when Vishnu was a commune.  This is located near the hotel, on the west side, in a clearing.  The only other structure near the hotel was the remains of an outhouse, crushed by a falling tree long ago.

We gravitated towards Lake Vishnu eventually, feeling like we had to see the original source of "magic" here - the spring water.  There's a collapsed shed on the NE corner of the pond, that was either a well or springhouse.  We've gotten conflicting reports.  Just east of this shed, following the trickling, we found the spring itself.  The water originally seeped out of the hillside, but when the town was developed they put in a collector tank to ensure reliable supply.  It seems the water is collected by a series of drain tiles buried in the hillside, then trickles through a pipe into the underground collector.  From there it meanders to Lake Vishnu, possibly making an appearance in the spring house first.

The water looked clean, though the collector was full of forest debris.  We didn't notice any kind of mineral smell, but fearing parasites we didn't sample it.  I do regret not bringing a bottle home now, though.

Continuing south along the east side of Lake Vishnu, we passed the remains of a few old benches made from concrete and split logs.  Hard to say what era they were from.  Lake Vishnu these days is a duckweed-covered stagnant mess, but when it was maintained and not surrounded by underbrush, it was supposedly a sparkling little pond stocked with goldfish.  People have reported seeing goldfish in it up till the 1990's.  The population may still survive, but we've found no mention later than that, and we certainly wouldn't have been able to see any.  I saw several swirls under the matted weeds and couldn't help but wonder, though.

South of Lake Vishnu we approached the round brick tank.  This looks like a silo with no roof, and we don't know what it was for.  The one theory we'd heard was that this was a standpipe, possibly for the spring water.  It does extend several feet underground, and that dank environment wouldn't have been any good for storing dry perishables like grain.  On the other hand, it has an opening in the side, starting a few feet above ground and continuing all the way up, that would have made holding any large quantity of water impossible.  One of many mysteries here...

After inspecting the brick tank, we continued south, following the creek where it exits Lake Vishnu.  We'd read that it eventually disappears into an "unexplored cave", but after following for an eight of a mile or so, we heard an ATV on the west ridge.  It was getting darker and we were a little jumpy, still aware we were technically trespassing, so we decided not to push our luck and get the hell out of there.

We climbed back up the west ridge on the main road, and followed our circuitous route towards the car.  Looking across the cornfield at the sunset, I wondered if the residents of Vishnu Springs had ever farmed this ground.  Certainly it was originally part of Darius Hicks' family farm, and maybe it still is.

We were within a quarter mile of the main road and our car when we came in site of the gate.  There was a pickup parked there.

Shit.

We conferred and decided there was nothing for it but to hold to our original plan: we'd enter their sight in the cornfield, not on the posted Vishnu property, and claim we hadn't crossed any fences or "No Trespassing" signs.  Just as we started to walk, the truck backed up and we started breathing again, assuming they were leaving.  Nope.  They started down the old rutted Vishnu road, towards us.  We figured they had to be university folks, since they had gate keys, and were instantly twice as nervous as before.

When they saw us in the field, they slowed.  We waved and kept walking, but they stopped and yelled to us across the fenceline.  "Hey!  You guys been down to the hotel?"  We could see two middle-aged men in the truck.  Both looked like farmers and were dressed in work clothes.

"Naw," we answered.  "Just been walking the fenceline here, trying to see down the valley.  We didn't want to cross any fences or anything."

"Well shit, ya ain't gonna see anything up here.  We're headin down there now if you want ta jump in the back."

We looked at each other, telepathically agreed there was no easy way out of this, and nodded, starting towards the truck.

"Just climb on up in the back.  Hold on, it gets kinda rough."

Bouncing along on old tires in the truck bed, we discussed this turn of events.  We agreed they had to be from WIU, maybe caretakers hired by the school or something.  We'd read reports online of other visitors encountering someone clearing brush by the hotel, after all.  The important thing was that they didn't seem pissed.

Watching the ruts unreeling behind us, Dave remarked on how lucky we were to get a guided tour.  I took another look at our surroundings - the gloomy woods flowing by, the beat up pick-up and the two good 'ole boys in the cab - and asked Dave if he'd ever seen "Deliverance."

Well, that was unfair.  Once we reached the hotel, we asked them if they were with the university.  The driver told us he had retired from WIU, and they let him keep keys to the Vishnu gate since he lived right up the road.  They were both real helpful, gave us a tour through the hotel again (it was almost dark this time, and fun to crawl through by flashlight.)  We wandered the grounds again with them, asking questions, and they told us a few things we hadn't known previously that I've already included in this tale.  When I asked the driver about the grave, he laughed and said, "yeah, there used to be a gravestone under that cedar over there."  He gestured to the cedar northeast of the hotel.  "The stone disappeared around five years ago.  We always figured it was just a joke to start with."  Him and his buddy laughed, but I noticed neither Dave nor I walked directly under that tree again.

They also told us about WIU's current attitude towards the valley.  The driver claimed he'd started stabilizing efforts such as clearing brush, only to be told by school officials to stop.  According to him, they want the site left alone, abandoned, and forgotten.  I could see real regret on his face when he told us this.  He said he didn't care who did the work, but someone needed to take an interest soon or, between time and vandalism, there'd be nothing left to preserve.  They told us the vandalism continues; when we walked through they were both pointing out destruction that hadn't existed when they were last there.  We also asked them about the school's attitude towards visitors.  The driver told us that he personally has never heard of anyone getting in trouble for visiting the site, including the destructive frat kids.  He said some nights there'll be 15 cars parked at the turnout, but local law enforcement doesn't seem to care (who drives to the middle of nowhere and hikes two miles through overgrown brush in the dark, drunk, just to party?).  However, he stressed that, since he didn't own the land, he couldn't give us permission to be there.  Please note that the school could change their policy on trespassing at any time, so if you choose to visit, you do so at your own risk.  Don't come crying to me if you're the first one arrested.

By the time we left, it was pitch dark.  We thanked our guides at the gate, and crawled in the car, exhausted.  It took half a box of donuts between the two of us to make it home.

After reviewing our visit, I've come to realize we accomplished most of what we set out to.  We found Vishnu Springs, got a good feel for the place, and learned several things we hadn't known.  We took away a nice photographic record.  We witnessed more thoughtless vandalism than we'd expected (spray paint is one thing, but eradication of history is something else).  We got to meet some nearby residents and hear the local Vishnu lore from them.  And we didn't get arrested.  All in all, not bad.

But we can't help pondering a return visit.  Next time, we'd like to poke around on the western ridge, where the upper part of the town was located.  Supposedly this is where the carousel crushed its operator to death in front of the children.  The locals told us there are still remains of the 108 stairs; those would be cool to see.  Reportedly there are several caves in the area, and caves tend to be collectors of history as well.  We know the hippies used them a bit, and there are legends of gangsters hiding money in there.  Plus there's the cave Vishnu creek supposedly disappears into.  All worth a look.

I imagine a place like Vishnu Springs leaves everyone with their own questions.  I'd like answers to the following:

1.  Was the grave really under that cedar?  Who's buried in it (Hicks or Ira Post maybe)?  When were they put there?  Who would steal a gravestone and lug it two miles through the woods?
2.  What exactly is that big brick tower?
3.  And the biggie:  Where the hell did the rest of the town go?  I mean, the Capitol is perfectly sound (minus the vandalism).  Yes it's undergone a couple renovations, but enough of the structure is still original that we can infer it wouldn't have completely vanished without attention.  But absolutely nothing remains of the other structures that once stood in that valley, or on the hill.  No houses, no shops, no barns, no outhouses.... nothing.  How is it possible for one structure to remain, but all the others to have completely vanished into the earth in just over a century?

Anyone who has questions (or answers!) about Vishnu Springs, please feel free to   

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Today the Capitol Hotel and surrounding valley are owned by Western Illinois University.  The university is apparently uninterested in preserving the site and wants it decayed and forgotten.  We've been told they instruct would-be caretakers not to effect any restorative or stabilizing efforts.  If you feel this is improper treatment of an historical site by an institution of higher learning, I'm sure WIU would be interested in hearing your thoughts.  You can email your comments to WIU's History Department Chair:
    

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