Editing Spring Valley, Illinois (section)

==History==
[[File:spring-valley2.gif|thumb|Map of Persons per Square Mile]]

===Coal===
Spring Valley was founded in 1884 in the heart of the [[History of coal mining|coal]] fields of Northern Illinois for the express purpose of mining of coal.  The building of Spring Valley was the enterprise of Henry J. Miller, one of the first settlers of this area, and his son-in-law, Charles J. Devlin. Charles Devlin had lived in [[Peru, Illinois]] as the manager of the Union Coal Company in [[LaSalle, Illinois|LaSalle]].<ref>Pianceti, Jim (2011). The Promise of a Better Life: The Coal Mines of Eastern Bureau County, Illinois. Ladd, Illinois: Locust Street Publishing.</ref> They conceived the idea of establishing a coal metropolis, in the Valley and on the slopes of the bluffs bordering Spring Creek, in the southeastern corner of Bureau County. They acquired the mineral rights of {{convert|5000|acre|km2}} and purchased {{convert|500|acre|km2}} on which to build the town.  They secured the financial aid and cooperation of coal and railroad capitalists, E.N. Saunders of [[St. Paul, Minnesota]], a director of the [[Chicago and North Western]] railroad, Mr. Taylor of [[What Cheer, Iowa]], and [[William L. Scott]] of [[Erie, Pennsylvania]].  Scott was a United States Senator from Pennsylvania during the administration of President [[Grover Cleveland]].  Most of these men are remembered in the name of the streets of the town.<ref>{{cite book|author=John H. M. Laslett|title=Colliers Across the Sea: A Comparative Study of Class Formation in Scotland and the American Midwest, 1830-1924|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fbAJtEeU0rIC&pg=PA128|year=2000|publisher=University of Illinois Press|page=128ff|isbn=9780252068270}}</ref>

[[File:Route 89 Bridge in Spring Valley, Illinois.jpg|thumb|left|The Route 89 Bridge in Spring Valley, Illinois  This bridge is outdated as it has since been replaced in the summer of 2018.]]

Two companies were formed, the Spring Valley Coal Company in partnership with [[Alexander Campbell (Illinois politician)|Alexander Campbell]], and the Spring Valley Town Site Co.<ref>Pianceti, Jim (2011). The Promise of a Better Life: The Coal Mines of Eastern Bureau County, Illinois. Ladd, Illinois: Locust Street Publishing.</ref>  Backed by the almost unlimited resources of the coal barons, these two companies spent over $2{{frac|1|2}} million in less than four years in the building of the town.

The boring of the mine commenced in 1884 and the town surveyed and platted.  Spring Valley did not grow from a crossroads country store or framehouse, it was planned with the hope it would grow to be a large city. Space was set aside for churches, schools and public buildings and broad streets were laid out.  St. Paul Street became one of the widest streets in the state and in 1984 made even wider.  In the residential section of the city property line, lies {{convert|25|ft|m}} from curb and ample room for expansion.

Spring Valley was a boom town, its growth was so rapid that it was called the "Magic City."  In less than four years, by 1888, the Chicago North Western railroad had laid a line from [[DeKalb, Illinois]], four mines had been sunk and the town had 3,000 people.

===Violent strikes===
There were large-scale violent strikes in the late 1880s.<ref>Henry Demarest Lloyd, ''A Strike of Millionaires Against Miners: Or, The Story of Spring Valley. An Open Letter to the Millionaires'' (1890)</ref>  Italian coal miners in the 1890s brought in anarchism, and the violence escalated during the [[Panic of 1893|depression of 1893-96]]. The strikes were failures but the angry miners voted for the Populist ticket in 1894.<ref>Gianna S. Panofsky, "A View of Two Major Centers of Italian Anarchism in the United States: Spring Valley and Chicago, Illinois." in ''Italian Ethnics: Their Languages, Literature, and Lives'' (1987)</ref>

In August 1895, Spring Valley experienced the state's most destructive race riot to date, out of which came major legislation prohibiting companies from bringing in squads of men to replace existing workers. Tension between mine owners and union agitators led to a lockout in 1889. Many Italian immigrants arrived to cross the picket lines but eventually staged their own strike in 1894, encouraging the industry to bring in African Americans to break the strike. Relations between the races rapidly deteriorated, leading to the riot that ended the use of Black strike breakers. Governor [[John Peter Altgeld]]'s response to the August 4 attack on the black community by displaced Italian miners ultimately revealed his support of fellow immigrants over African Americans.<ref>Felix L. Armfield, "Fire on the Prairies: The 1895 Spring Valley Race Riot", ''Journal of Illinois History'' 2000 3(3): 185-200</ref>  Another riot erupted in 1895 when recent Polish, Lithuanian, Italian, and Belgian immigrants raided, burned, and looted the Black section of town, leaving fourteen Black townspeople injured.<ref>Caroline A. Waldron,  "'Lynch-Law Must Go!' Race, Citizenship, and the Other in an American Coal Mining Town", ''Journal of American Ethnic History'' (2000) 20(1) p. 60 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27502644 in JSTOR]</ref> Black victims of the riot took their attackers to court and used their status as citizens to win the case against the new immigrants.<ref>Caroline A. Waldron,  "'Lynch-Law Must Go!' Race, Citizenship, and the Other in an American Coal Mining Town", ''Journal of American Ethnic History'' (2000) 20(1) pp: 50-77 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27502644 in JSTOR]</ref>

Spring Valley remained a brawling, boisterous place until the competition from cheaper Southern Illinois coal fields forced the mine to close in late 1927.

===Ethnicity===
Spring Valley like every other coal town came to know almost every nationality in Europe.  These people came from LaSalle, Peru, Braidwood, Braceville and all mining camps of Northern Illinois.  The English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and Cornish from the Coal fields of Great Britain, from Northern France and Belgium.  Polish, and Germans, Swedes and Lithuanians from opposite shores of the Baltic Sea, Slavish peasants from Central Europe and immigrants from sunny Italy.   Many arriving here attired in their native dress tagged and ticketed from their port of entry.  The town also developed a black section known as the "Location."  In 1905, the Bureau County Republican Newspaper stated that there were 32 distinct nationalities groups in Spring Valley.

[[File:Spring Valley Police Station.jpg|thumb|right|The Spring Valley police station]]

===Institutions founded===
By 1888, two years after the incorporation of the town, February 8, 1886, two churches, the Congregational and the Immaculate Conception, had been built, two schools erected, the Immaculate Conception Parochial and the Lincoln Public School, which includes a two-year high school course, a newspaper (the Spring Valley Gazette), and a public library.

This library, an institution for which all towns wait many years, was established by the "Knights of Labor", the Coal Miner's Union in 1885 before the town was a year old, before even a city government was formed.  This early interest in education culminated in the establishment of two schools believed to be the first of their kind in the state.

The Hall Township High and Vocational School training in shop, carpentry, printing, drafting, cooking, sewing, typing, shorthand, bookkeeping and banking.  This school was constructed in 1914.