Totem Poles of Illinois

When you think of the greater Chicago area, scenes like this might be the first thing to come to mind. Then again, maybe not.

Still, you can find this totem pole in Will County, Illinois, which stands without a nearby explanation. I should have asked the woman behind the counter inside the building behind the totem pole, but I only thought of that now. The building isn't a lodge of any kind but the Pilcher Park Nature Center in Pilcher Park, Joliet.

When chancing across a totem pole in northeastern Illinois -- as we did on Saturday -- the kind of thing I wonder is whether anyone's done a census of totem poles in the area. The Field Museum has some, I think, and there's a replica of one at Belmont Harbor and Lake Shore Drive (an original that stood there was returned to the Indians who made it). And there must be others tucked away here and there. But as far as I know, no complete count exists.