We Took the Dog to Pullman National Historical Site

I didn't actually know that this national park site existed? 

I don't know how I missed it, considering that once upon a time I literally put it on my very own map of national park sites that host Junior Ranger badges, AND it's right there in my national parks passport book as one of only two national park sites in Illinois, but still. That just meant that it was a fun surprise to notice it as I was planning our itinerary from Indiana Dunes to Chicago.

And once I've noticed it, of course we're going to go!

Alas that Luna couldn't actually go inside the Pullman National Historical Site's Visitor's Center, so thank goodness for nearby coffee shops with outdoor seating. My partner and one of the kids went off with Luna for lattes, while the other kid and I took our passport books inside for some learning!

This is probably one of the most educational national park sites that I've been to, as before we walked in I knew pretty much nothing about Pullman other than their train cars existed, and now?

I have OPINIONS.

So, the Pullman cars were cute and fancy, which is the one thing that I already knew:

But the Pullman GUY?!?

Just, whoah. 

So, okay. Pullman did his thing and got lots of money. And then he was all, "Hey, it sucks how when I pay these people money I no longer have that money. And it also sucks that for some reason I'm not in charge of every aspect of their daily lives, from what their houses look like to what they watch at the movie theatre. If only there was a way to fix both of those problems simultaneously..."

To solve all his problems of not having all the money and not being a megalomaniac, Pullman built himself a company town/utopia and got a bunch of his workers to live there. For the low, low price of rent that was vastly more expensive than rent in the surrounding neighborhoods, the Pullman townspeople got to have their living spaces legislated to fit Pullman's ideals. Rather than a utopian town, he basically invented the world's first HOA with him as its benign dictator?

Which sucked enough, but then when economic hardship hit and there weren't enough train riders to keep up Pullman's preferred level of profit, he instead made up the difference by reducing his employees' wages but NOT their overpriced rent. Things then proceeded as you might well have expected:

Who knows what might have happened if there hadn't been so much internal racism within the movement, and if Grover Cleveland hadn't trumped up a reason to force the strike to end and punish the leaders, but here were the good news/bad news results:

Look for the union label, Friends!

It also appears that I'm not the only person who came away from this history with the determination that I wouldn't spit on Pullman if he were on fire:

Concrete and steel rails and lead coffins, indeed!

But then there's also the thing where he hired formerly enslaved people as porters and waiters and valets, and that was actually really great because it paid decent wages (if you weren't also paying rent in his company town...), it utilized skillsets that translated pretty well from what many of the employees had been required to do while enslaved, so it lessened the learning curve while helping them transition into a better economic position, and most importantly in my eyes, it let the employees travel, giving them access to more cultural diversity and geographic options. 

So I dunno. It's complicated.

The kid and I did all the cool stuff in the museum-- 

That's a Polish-English dictionary on the left, and an employee's logbook on the right. It was interesting to see in several exhibits how the employees negotiated cultural and language differences. 

Then we went outside to check out the historical buildings, many of which are still in the process of being restored:

Along the way, we spotted some celebrities!

As everything did on this trip, our walkabout quickly turned into a Luna photoshoot:

She's just too photogenic not to!

It was a little weird that the Pullman National Historical Site doesn't own any actual, you know, Pullman cars, but it was cool how they had the old train tracks marked off and some of them turned into green spaces:

As far as the gift shop, I dragged myself away for the low, low price of just two passport stamp sets (the 2022 set features Pullman!) and a postcard with a Eugene V. Debs quote on it for the younger kid to put up in her dorm room. You're never safe from the insidious spread of socialism!

Now, onto our next destination!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!