Towns hope for tourism boost

Many stops along the trail have seen increased tourism since Reagan's death.
GALESBURG, Ill. (AP) -- Ronald Reagan took a side trip down memory lane when the 1980 presidential campaign brought him back to the tree-lined streets he had roamed as a kid, long before he reached Hollywood's back lots and the Oval Office.
Harold Wilson remembers riding along as the soon-to-be president scouted his first school and his old neighborhood, which had seen far less change than the boy who would later be credited with ending the Cold War.
"He looked everything over real close, noticed every little thing that was different and even remembered some of the other kids he used to play with," said Wilson, who coordinated Reagan's first presidential campaign in Knox County.
Officials hope thousands of tourists and history buffs will soon retrace the late president's footsteps through Galesburg and Monmouth, neighboring cities that were officially added Oct. 15 to a historical trail through about a dozen central Illinois towns with ties to the only Illinois-born president.
Reeling region
Local leaders say Reagan's legacy could pump tourism dollars and new energy into a region reeling from the demise of a Maytag refrigerator plant in Galesburg. The factory was closed in September and 1,600 jobs were moved to factories in Mexico and Iowa.
"Ronald Reagan's message was always one of optimism, that better days are ahead. He made you believe in yourself, and that's exactly what we need right now in this community," said state Rep. Don Moffitt, R-Gilson, who spent two years pushing legislation to expand the trail.
Other stops along the Ronald Reagan Trail have seen a tourism surge since the 93-year-old actor-turned-president died June 5.
Reagan's boyhood home in Dixon had more than 15,000 visitors in June and July alone, about 1,000 more than it normally draws all year, said site coordinator Marla Tremble.
His birthplace in nearby Tampico used to have days when no one stopped by, said Lloyd McElhiney, a volunteer at the restored second-story apartment. But he said the landmark has attracted 15 to 35 people a day since Air Force One tipped its wings over the tiny town as it flew Reagan's body from his state funeral to California for burial.
At Eureka College, where Reagan graduated in 1932, attendance is on pace to triple to 30,000 visitors this year at the largest Reagan museum outside his presidential library in California, said curator Brian Sajko.
"It's hard to say right now, but I think Galesburg and Monmouth will also do well because for both towns it's yet another reason to visit," said Jan Kostner, director of the Illinois Bureau of Tourism.
Monmouth also boasts the birthplace of frontier lawman Wyatt Earp. Galesburg has poet Carl Sandburg's birthplace and museum, along with a railroad museum and the only remaining building that held one of the historic 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.
Presidential landmarks
Now, dozens of signs with Reagan's profile direct tourists to presidential landmarks in both cities.
Monmouth has a boyhood home where Reagan lived from 1917 to 1919, and it hopes to open a downtown exhibit early next year.
Galesburg has an apartment and house where Reagan lived from 1915 to 1917, the school where he began his formal education and an exhibit at the city's visitor's center.
The city also will highlight its link to Nancy Reagan, who spent summers there with her adopted grandparents.
Trail officials fear the recent burst of interest in Reagan could ebb, so they are trying to raise money for a traveling promotional exhibit similar to the animated presidential display at Disney World. It would feature a life-sized Reagan giving speeches and touting his Illinois ties, said Amy Trimble, a former trail board member and consultant.
Other presidents
Trimble thinks the exhibit and trail marketing effort could expand presidential tourism in Illinois that already draws on Abraham Lincoln -- who was born in Kentucky but moved as a young man to Illinois and launched his political career here -- and Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War general whose home near Galena has been a tourist attraction for a century.
"I think we'll probably always be in Lincoln's shadow because he's been around a lot longer, but I think we could come a lot closer to being No. 2 in Illinois as a tourist attraction," she said.
Susan Trevor, a member of Monmouth's trail committee, thinks the city's Reagan ties will pay off even if they never raise a dime.
"The real focus is education," Trevor said. "There's a good lesson here for kids that you might live in a very small town, but the values you learn here can take you all the way to the president of the United States."
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