Driving Around Small Town Ottawa, Illinois in 4k Video

Filmed on Friday, July 7 2023, I drive around the village Ottawa, IL to see what's going on.

Ottawa was the site of the first of the Lincoln–Douglas debates on August 21, 1858. During the Ottawa debate, Stephen A. Douglas, leader of the Democratic Party, accused Abraham Lincoln of forming a secret bipartisan group of Congressmen to bring about the abolition of slavery.

Ottawa was a major stop on the Underground Railroad because of its rail, road, and river transportation. Citizens in the city were active within the abolitionist movement.

Ottawa was also important in the development of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which terminates in LaSalle, Illinois, 12 miles to the west.

On February 8, 1910, William Dickson Boyce, then a resident of Ottawa, incorporated the Boy Scouts of America.

In 1922, the Radium Dial Company moved from Peru, Illinois to a former high school building in Ottawa. The company employed hundreds of young women who painted watch dials using a paint called "Luna", which contained ionizing radiation. The young women, who had been told the paint was harmless, ingested deadly amounts of radium after being instructed to lick their paintbrushes to sharpen them. This was chronicled in the 1986 documentary "Radium City".

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began removing contaminated material in 1986. The work continues to this day.

Sixteen areas of Ottawa are still radioactive. The United States Department of Health and Human Services released a study, outlining areas where contamination by radium-226, as well as emissions of radon-222, are at or above normal levels. These areas include homes, public areas, schools, and even a car sales lot that is housed directly over the old Radium Dial Company site.

Because of numerous silica sand deposits, Ottawa has been a major sand and glass center for more than 100 years. One of Ottawa's largest employers is Pilkington Glass works, a plant which manufactures specialty glass and underwent a $50 million renovation in 2006. Ottawa sand continues to be extracted from several quarries in the area, and is recognized in glass-making and abrasives for its uniform granularity and characteristics.

As of the 2020 Census, there were 18,840 people living in the city.

The racial makeup of the city was 86.4% White, 2.5% African American, 0.4% Native American, 1.0% Asian, 2.5% from other races, and 7.1% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 9.5% of the population.

The median income for a household in the city was $53,544, and the per capita income for the city was $28,365. There were 16.8% of the population living below the poverty line.

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