History
See also: Eagle's Nest Art Colony425 million years ago the Trenton Sea formed the rock base of the area around Lowden State Park, stretching north into Wisconsin. The Galena-Platteville Aquifer's spring water in the area travels south from Platteville and Glenwood, Wisconsin through layers of rocks into northern Illinois. Native Americans inhabited the region prior to European settlement and they kept the trees burnt off the stone bluffs to keep their roots from splitting the rock. When the earliest European settlers arrived they found groves of trees in the hollows, ravines, and lowlands near the river, which was where they built their first homes.
Chicago attorney and patron of the arts Wallace Heckman purchased the land that would eventually become the Eagle's Nest Colony and Lowden State Park in 1898. American sculptor Lorado Taft and his peers were searching for a location for their summer retreat, first locating in Bass Lake, Indiana and then looking toward Wisconsin, but Heckman invited the group to his home in Ogle County for the Fourth of July. Heckman offered to let the group set up camp there and they signed a lease for the site the same week. The Eagle's Nest Art Colony was then founded in 1898 by Taft on the bluffs flanking the east bank of the Rock River, overlooking Oregon, Illinois. The colony was populated by Chicago artists, all members of the Chicago Art Institute or the University of Chicago art department. The colony remained at the site from its founding until 1942, six years after Taft's death.
Lowden State Park was founded in 1945, a few years after the Eagle's Nest Art Colony vacated the land. In 1943, a year after former Illinois Governor Frank Lowden died, the Illinois House of Representatives Appreciation Committee authorized the purchase of 273 acres (110 ha) as a memorial to the former governor. The appropriation of $25,000 was matched by the citizens of Oregon, Illinois and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) to help purchase the former Eagle's Nest Art Colony. The 63rd Illinois General Assembly designated the 273-acre (110 ha) tract, including the former art colony, Lowden Memorial State Park in 1945.
On August 7, 1951 Illinois Governor Adlai E. Stevenson II signed a bill into law which transferred ownership of a 66-acre (27 ha) section of the park to Northern Illinois Teachers College, now Northern Illinois University (NIU). The land encompassed the former Eagle's Nest Art Colony and its buildings, the Black Hawk Statue was not included in the land transfer. The area is now known as the NIU Lorado Taft Field Campus.
Read more about this topic: Lowden State Park
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