Louis Philip Trutter Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

was put out there and they even designed a great big club house and stuff becaqse they were
going to be on Lake Springfield and Carl Meyer even had designed the club hopse for them He
had the picture in his office there but of course the club house. . .they already lpd the golf course
and they took a long look at what had happened in Decatur and Lake Decatur vas formed by
darmning up the Sangamon River over there. The Sangamon River's got the Hod fork and
South fork and so on and they were having trouble with the silting, As a matw of fact I thipk
they had already put three or four feet on top of the dam and of course that m$te all kinds a€
trouble with the shore lines and stuff. But over there, the people owned their Qwn shore lines and
in Springfield, as you know, they lease them so Springfield tried to control. . .$in= it was a water
supply. Well then they went to the other creeks where they have it now. They abandoned the
idea of having it on the Sangamon River and so & fifty years now, they've sp$t a few million
dollars ~rying to dig this silt that's washed into it.
Q. And with the hope that they can maintab aesthetic surroundings, it's very difficult isn't it?
A. Yes.
Q. Was the Electric Power Plant built before or after the lake was built?
A. Before the lake. The Electric Plant and Water Plant were built at the same the as the lake.
Springfield got their water from out North of the Fairgrounds. If you go Sanpon Avenue,
beside the Fairgrounds, you go Sangamon Avenue and it swings around. If pu go straight on
that road, you go down and run into the river, and down there they had deep weUs for water and
they had a pumping station down h re and that's where our water supply comes kom.
Q, Did they have a filter system?
A. They probably had some kind of a filter system. I remember some of the great pumps they
had down there with fly wheels to pump it out of the ground.
Q. Did you go down and swim there ever?
A, In the Sangamon River? Oh God.
Q. That was a popular place.
A. If you want to write a history of tragedy, it's the Sangamon River. To chase down all the
people that have drowned.
Q. That's been kept very quiet.
A. Oh, every once and a while so you'll find somebody. .,but they don't swim in it like they used
to. Before Lake Springfield, there was no place to swim
i. They had a. . .