I am the USRC. The USRC I am. Would you like to volunteer? Volunteering! Volunteering! I do not like to volunteer! Would you, could you with the USRC? I would not, could not with the USRC. I do not like to volunteer.  Would you, could you on a boat? This past year USRC members were on the river as […]

Two years ago on Labor Day weekend after an unusually heavy rain, a man from northwest Champaign County up near Foosland took a walk. He walked his usual route where he liked to fish near the spot where Lone Tree Creek joins the Sangamon River. Lone Tree Creek, a tributary to the Sangamon, originates in McLean County southwest of Foosland. […]

  “Eventually all things flow into one and a river runs through it.” – Norman Maclean Although Norman Mclean was writing about fly-fishing in Montana, he could just as easily have been referring to our own Village. As the Sangamon River Music Festival begins we should take time to ponder the fact that the Sangamon River is right there in […]

   “Look! Up in the sky!” “It’s a plane!” “It’s a bird!” “Well, actually, I guess it is kind of a bird…sort of…” “Yeah, I guess you could call it that…” “…y’mean those things can actually FLY??” “DUCK!” Wait, no, no, don’t worry.  I didn’t mean that. You can get up now.   While Olympians from around the world descend upon […]

While kayaking the river late one recent summer afternoon, I took a break in the shade on a sand bar. Tired from traversing log jams and portaging shallow areas, I laid back and started to drift away. It was then that a tall bearded stranger wearing a straw hat approached. He was carrying a strange package that looked to be […]

  Along the entire 246 mile length of the Sangamon River there is but one dam. And even it was a bad idea. Construction was complete on the dam on the Sangamon River that forms Lake Decatur in 1922. And problems with this dam were already apparent as early as 1936. The solution to Lake Decatur’s problems, first proposed by […]