Postcards from Home

---

Bill's Tourist Park
Camp Ground
4600 9th Street
Rock Island

by Diane Oestreich

In small towns, motorists were often permitted to set up their tents in the town square. But Rock Island was a bit more sophisticated. In the mid 1920s, the Park Board established a municipal tourist camp on eight semirural acres near the Rock River at 46th Avenue. Our circa 1930 postcard shows the Rock Island Municipal Tourist Camp soon after it became the privately owned Bill's Tourist Park. Thanks to Shannon Hall for sharing it with us.

Descriptions of the municipal facility in 1924 noted the presence of toilets, benches, and a Dutch oven. We're not quite sure what a Dutch oven was or how a single one could accommodate the needs of many campers. There was also a pavilion that originally had been built as the town hall of Sears. Sears was annexed to the city of Rock Island in 1915.

The camp was open from mid April through October at a charge was fifty cents per night per auto, for a maximum stay of six days. Rock Island residents could camp for free. Tents were to be pitched where caretakers, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Etzel, directed. Other regulations prohibited specific campground activities including basket weaving and scissors grinding. The same regulations stated that auto repair and clothes washing were permitted. From our modern perspective, this seems curious. It may have been that the first two activities were associated with transient or "gypsy" workers, while the latter two were crucial for the average traveler. Nonetheless, the fairness of this discrimination seems questionable to modern observers.

In 1924, it was reported that 1500 people from 24 states, traveling in 500 cars, used the facility. The following year, showers that drained to a nearby ravine were added to a shelter on the north side of the camp and a faucet was added to the Dutch oven. By 1927, plans were being made to build six cottages for the convenience of travelers.

In the late 1920s, there was a movement to disband the Park Board. This may have been one of the factors that caused the board to divest themselves of the municipal camp. By 1930 the site was owned by William and Daisy Hendrick, who renamed it Bill's Tourist Camp. This is when our "real photo" postcard was published. We believe the street in the foreground is 9th Street and that this main entrance is near 46th Avenue.

The signage is evocative of the 1930s as well. The arched gateway notes the availability of both camp sites and cabins, while the sidebars indicate that cold drinks, candy, ice cream, lunch, fried chicken, and groceries can be purchased. At the far right, locally bottled Huesing's Hydrox Ginger Ale rates a larger sign than does Coca-Cola.

The background of trees gives an indication of the pastoral nature of the original site, which slopes gently toward the Rock River and even has a small creek near its northern boundary. There's no evidence of the two buildings in the foreground today, but we did locate the small building on the left, looking much as it did on the postcard. It is now on 47th Avenue, just west of 11th Street.

The facility was called a Tourist Camp into the 1940s. By the 1950s, as travel habits and facilities relied less on tents and more homes on wheels plied the highways, the name was changed to Bill's Trailer Park. A later name change made it Michael's Trailer Park. And even as the small camping trailers grew to large not-so-mobile homes, a final renaming in the 1970s resulted in Michael's Mobile Home Park. It's still called that today.

(In 2006 the old tourist park was closed and the mobile homes were moved out, pending a future undisclosed use).