Kaskaskia is the only community in Illinois West of the Mississippi. Which is particularly ironic given that this now small, unassuming village was once dubbed ‘the metropolis of the Mississippi Valley’, a bustling center for Illinois trade during the French colonial era, was later the Territorial Capitol of Illinois (1779), and, in 1818, was the first (if short lived) Capitol of the newly constituted State of Illinois. The history of Kaskaskia is one of shifting political and natural alliances: it’s story involves a founding by renowned French explorers Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette (1690s), adamant anti-British out-migration during the French and Indian War (1763), a resounding welcome to Revolutionary troops (1778), and a complex series of erasures and reconstructions due to the volatile and ever changing course of the Mississippi River (1785, 1844 whole town inundated up to 7’, finally 1881 washed it away).

To get to this once capitol, you must now enter from the Missouri side of the river. Crossing an elevated causeway from the small but active town of St Mary, MO, you pass through the wide and wild expanse of a swampy slough that was once the main channel of the River. Once crossing the levee beyond, this wide, empty, and particularly flat quasi-island carries the traces of its once-royal founding—as you make your way along roads with names like ‘Kings Highway’, ‘La Grande Rue’, and, more prosaically, ‘Common Field Road.’

There are few structures left to distract from the central cluster of brick buildings in what was once the center of town. The still-active Mission of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church doubles as the local (and excellent) historical society/museum, but the real treasure is housed in a small, gazebo-like structure next door. In 1741, King Louis XV of France gave as a gift to the Church and residents of Kaskaskia a large brass bell—inscribed on one side with the words “POUR LEGLISE DES ILLINOIS PAR LES SOINS DU ROI D’OUTRE L’EAU (For the Church of the Illinois, by gift of the King across the water) and on the other with royal lilies of France and the now-iconic fleur de lis. The bell was shipped from France (where it was cast in La Rochelle) to New Orleans, then brought up the Mississippi on a flat-bottomed boat arriving Kaskaskia in 1743. Originally housed in the church belfry, the bell was rung by villagers to celebrate their July 4, 1778 liberation from the British—and remained a common practice for 200 years. Now housed in an open-air structure, the bell is no longer rung owing to a growing crack in its side caused by numerous topplings in flood events over the centuries. For this, and other reasons, the bell is commonly known as “The Liberty Bell of the West”. And while guests are no longer allowed to touch the bell, a small button at the barred entry of the gazebo triggers a curious audio program of the bell’s history.

On your return to St. Mary, you might consider taking Cemetery Lane, which takes you past starkly abandoned playgrounds, houses braced for the next flood defiantly built atop tall stilts, and ultimately a localized high point of gravestones and the ubiquitous cedar trees of rural cemeteries.