Random City, USA

Most of us despise where we live, if your looking for a new city to move to, this page is for you.  Each week a new city will be selected at random as our Random City of the week, we will give you the upsides and downsides to living in Random City, USA.

 

Click here to view previous Random Cities.

 

This Weeks Random City . . .

 

 

 

Population (2000) – 26,443

 

 

 

Located in Stephenson County, Illinois, Freeport is a historic city just south of the Wisconsin border.  The city was originally called Winneshiek but was later changed since most of its residents couldn’t pronounce or spell the name.  Freeport was connected to Chicago via an illustrious stagecoach route.  This route is still in use today and on Sunday’s throughout the summer month’s visitors can take a stagecoach trip from Freeport to Chicago just like in the olden days.

 

Freeport was the location of the infamous Lincoln vs. Douglas debate in 1858.  Stephen Douglas won the debate and in turn won back his U.S. Senate seat.  However his reply to a question about slavery alienated much of the south and basically split the Democratic Party allowing Lincoln to win the Presidency.  We can only hope something like this happens in the upcoming Democratic election.  A monument was placed to commemorate this debate; it currently sits near a parking garage and barn as seen in the picture above.

 

Freeport is known today as Pretzel City because it has quite the German heritage and had numerous pretzel bakeries in the mid-1800’s.  Sadly in the early 1900’s fire broke out in downtown Freeport causing nearly all of the pretzel bakeries to burn down.  The great Pretzel fire of 1912 is remembered even today.  Some of the older Freeport residents will tell you tales of the good old days when pretzels flowed like water and the air was always sweet.  America’s 6^th oldest man happens to be a local resident that was one of the original firefighting crew that helped quench the fire.  He cries every time he talks about that day and has never been able to eat a pretzel since.  Currently On January 14^th every year residents celebrate the pretzel and diet almost entirely on the delicious treat.  Rumor has it that President Bush was celebrating this very occasion five years ago when he choked on a pretzel and fainted in the White House. 

 

Famous Freeportians include Straw-like actress Calista Flockhart, BET founder Robert L. Johnson, and of course Charles Guiteau who assassinated President Garfield.  To be fair to Guiteau, medical science never proved that it was the two shots Garfield took to the chest that killed him.  Most experts believe that Garfield died from the doctors poking and prodding his chest with unwashed hands and unsterilized equipment.  Guiteau could possibly have won his trial if he had plead insanity but refused to admit he was insane.  A later search of his home in Freeport turned up quite a bit of evidence to prove the contrary.  Most notable of the evidence was a large box containing various large pretzels dressed up to look like people and arranged to portray the battle of Gettysburg.

 

For more information on Freeport, visit their homepage.

 

*** Some of the above information may not be factualy acturate, we apologize for any misconceptions we may have brought to the city of Freeport, it really is apperently a beautiful city, we don’t know though we’ve never been there. ***