Just under 50 miles south of Chester, 8 miles east of the GRR via Hwy-146, is the small town of Jonesboro, whose Dixie Barbecue (618/833-6437), at 205 E. Broad Street, is definitely worth a side trip. In September 1858, Jonesboro hosted the third of the seven senate campaign debates between challenger Abe Lincoln and incumbent Stephen Douglas, who tried to portray Lincoln as being out of touch with the people over the issue of slavery. Although Illinois was a designated free state, this area had strong sympathies with the South.
Hwy-146 roughly marks the route of the Trail of Tears, the 1838 winter death march of the Cherokee nation. Six years after wiping out Indians of the upper Mississippi in the Black Hawk War, President Andrew Jackson ordered the “Five Civilized Tribes” of the Cherokee removed to the arid plains of Oklahoma from their lands in the fertile Tennessee River valley. Some five thousand Cherokee died along this thousand-mile journey, which passed through the state near here. On the Missouri side of the river, 10 miles north of Cape Girardeau, the 3,400-acre Trail of Tears State Park (573/334-1711) preserves one scene along this marathon tragedy, with a two-mile section of the historic “trail” and interpretive plaques marking the wooded, riverside bluffs.
Back on Hwy-3, just north of I-57 and the town of Cairo, the GRR passes Horseshoe Lake Conservation Area, an example of what happens when the river shifts to a new channel and leaves an oxbow lake behind. Now prime winter habitat for over a million migrating geese and ducks, its tupelo gum trees, bald cypress, and swamp cottonwoods foreshadow the scenery found downstream among the bayous of the Mississippi Delta.
