Very nice! I recall digging near here when I was little. In Downers Grove there was an Indian artifact museum that was owned by the Timke family and has since closed but fostered our love of similar finds. Dad helped build the underground tunnels at the accelerator lab, other nuclear plants and the John Hancock (at this site, welding and their work had to be X-rayed there due to the seriousness of the whole endeavor).
Thanks for watching and commenting! And thanks for sharing your experiences, both your Father's connection to Fermilab, as well as your family's artifact collecting in the area. Interesting to learn about the Timke's Downers Grove Museum - we did not know of that institution.
I live within walking distance of NAL and have hike the prairie path many times. This information is very valuable. I look forward to reading more. Thank you!
Thanks for the comment and for watching! Yes, it is really a remarkable resource, right in the backyard of DuPage and Kane counties - and it's easy to forget that it's there. But it has much to offer to visitors. Just hope that they reopen their visitor center at some point in the future. Thanks again!
@@MrMetalminded Yes, visitors are still welcome - and the trails are still open, at least they were a few months back. Of course, only the publically accessible areas are open - and there is much area that is not available to the public. To our knowledge, the visitor center in Wilson Hall is still not open - although the best resource on that would be the Fermi website.
Thanks for watching and supporting the channel! Yes, we realized that all of the info that we wanted to convey would be too long for a single vidoe and so looked for a natural division in the story. This seemed to be about as good as any - and the Mier story extends even to the present days, as we'll try to show. Thank you again!
As I recall there was construction of a park district golf course in Warrenville that led to the discovery of a complete Mastodon Skeleton, that's now on display at a local museum.
Thank you for commenting! We have not heard that particular story. Do you recall the timeframe? The Blackwell Mammoth was found in the DuPage County Forest Preserves just outside of Warrenville in the 1970s - and is now on display at the Fullersburg Woods Nature Center. We published a video on that topic about 1-1/2 years ago. Is that perhaps the same story?
I had a friend in the 90s that worked at fermilab he had a frame of projectile points that he collected during his lunch hour he would walk the fields around fermilab had a few nice pieces he passed away in the later 90s rip George
Thanks for sharing that! Yes, many of the Fermi employees, as well as local amateur archeologists, would spend hours field walking the site and picking up mostly lithics and projectile points. When Ann Early studied the site in the 1970s, one of the first things that she did was to examine all of the collections made by Fermi employees and local collectors. That is ultimately how she came into contact with August Meier. Thanks again for the comment - and thanks for watching oru video!
Thank you for another informative video. This video presented some interesting information about Native America Sites on the Fermi Laboratory's property. However, your introduction of August John Meyer (I am guessing on the spelling of his surname.) near the end of this video has me anxiously awaiting Part #2 of the Native American Sites at Fermi Lab. I cannot wait to find out what secrets August John Meyer is going to reveal.
Thanks for watching and for the continuing support of our channel! We very much appreciate it! Yes, August Mier was a very interesting person. His part of the story continues to the present, as we hope to show. Stay tuned!
This is the closest i've ever seen to what i've experienced almost my entire life in Kenosha, WI. Started finding artifacts with at age five - i'm 42 now. Have found artifacts from every age Paleo-Mississippian, but mainly of the archaic age. Recently i've been presenting assemblages and working on documenting sites - at least sixteen potential sites in all, nine of which are definite. Watching this has given some helpful insights going forward. Looking forward to part 2!
Thanks for watching and glad that you are finding this interesting and useful! Are you tied in at all with the UofW at Milwaukee? They may be interested and helpful regarding the sites that you are documenting. Thanks again!
@@BeHistoric, not with UWM, but am currently having site forms processed with professionals. Will see about if they could help further. This Spring i'll be doing test digs with other professionals i'm in contact with. What's interesting about where i've searched is there's overlap from southern and northern type points. A crossroads type of place in history.
@@BeHistoric made an incredible discovery today. Found a hammerstone that matches a similar hammerstone found about 80 yards SE at what i thought was a different site. I believe the two sites now to be linked one in the same
Interesting program. I grew up in the northern Chicago area but have never been to the FermiLab site. Love learning more about pre-European history. We now live in southern NH. Interesting factoid about New England, archeologists have discovered evidence of human habitation almost immediately as the glacier retreated. I find that fascinating as the last ice age striped off top soil here down to bedrock around here.
Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment! Thanks too for sharing your experiences, both here and in NH. Yes, FermiLab is a huge and interesting resource available to the public. They check your IDs (which you'd expet) at the gates - but otherwise allow access to the publically accessible portions of the site. Multiple natural trails are available to hikers and nature lovers. And they have the herd of buffalo, of course. Overall, a very nice place to visit if you are in the area.
Beginning to read the news as a high schooler, I followed the dismantling of Weston and the construction of the NAL. My friend and I ride our bicycles out to the site after a visit to Cantigny. A few years later, I drove there to the visitors center to see what their early research was producing. I took keen interest in images that resembled X-rays, taken at the meson berm target area. Photographed collisions of particles splayed out from their target like fireworks, many of which formed perfect spirals as their energy decayed. From these images, the researchers named one particular type of particle a "Quark". Since that time, further research from colliding particle streams with beams of protons, have produced close to a dozen different types of Quarks, making the term commonplace in our lexicon.
I had no clue that the NAL site had been host to indigenous people for many thousands of years. Thank you both for opening up the very old, to new discoveries through your research and reportage.
Thank you for watching and for the thoughtful comments and sharing! FermiLab is a fascinating place to visit, not only for its high-energy physics, but also for its natural beauty, the history and archeology, and the buffaloes, of course. Thanks again for sharing!
Thanks for commenting! That's very interesting - so the area along Butterfield/State Road to the south was owned by the Brummel family. Thanks for providing that additional information!
UPDATE: After publishing this video, we realized that we mispronounced Stuart Struever's surname. We pronounced it as "STROO-ver". We now believe that it should have been pronounced as "STREE-ver". Our apologies for any confusion.
Are there documented habitation sites outside of the NAL property? Hunters can walk a long distance hunting, indeed, are more likely to hunt away from habitations as wildlife avoids people generally. A hunter or small band of hunters might well work flint while waiting, and discard broken points and tools wherever they happened to be.
Thanks for watching and commenting! Very good question. The documented habitation sites that we are aware of are along the Fox River valley and the DuPage River Valley. This goes along with one of Ann Early's hypothesis (stated in the video) - that these habitations were temporary encampments for extended families moving out from their seasonal occupation sites along the Fox River valley. The river systems afforded a means of travel/trade, along with food resources. As you point out, most of the Fermi sites appear to be more of way stops or encampment sites, perhaps while out foraging or hunting. The presence of ceramics at a few of the sites (Mississippian) suggests places where habitation occured, but likely only for short intervals. Thanks again for the comment.
Excellent! Thanks for this. I remember mentioning FermiLab awhile ago and you stating that the topic was already on your list to explore. I've always been curious about the location of the artifacts. Great investigatory skills and videography! I look forward to Part 2. I am wondering if you both would you be interested in exploring the history of the Big Woods Cemetery and Historic School in Aurora, off of Eola Road, near Butterfield Road?? There are a few soldiers buried in that cemetery who fought in the Revolutionary War. I heard that church adjacent to it was used in a movie in the 80's or early 90's, but unsure what movie? I feel like it might have been in the movie _The Road to Perdition?_ Thanks for your informative videos. I like and of course subscribe!
Thanks for watching and supporting the channel! Yes, we remembered that suggestion. :-) We started recording this video back in early summer of this year - and had had it on our list for some time prior to that. A few things needed to come together for us to finalize the story and to publish, however - which is why we are publishing several months later. That is often the case with many of our videos, we start recording months in advance - and then return multiple times to the location, as the research and story evolves. Thank you for the suggestion regarding the Big Woods Cemetery in Aurora - we will look into that and add to our list. There are literally so many interesting places to explore, and so many stories to tell. Thank you again!
Thanks for watching and commenting! No, not as yet. We have reached out to various regional Native American organizations in the past, so as to get their perspective, but they haven't responded as yet. We would love to have their input/perspective, but also understand that we are a relatively small TH-cam channel - and so perhaps not worth their time. We nonetheless endeavor to provide as balanced a view as we are able in our videos.
This is a Masterpiece.
Very glad that you enjoyed the video! Thanks for watching and for taking the time to leave a comment!
I LOVE these videos!!!
Glad that you are enjoying them! We enjoy making them! Thanks for commenting, watching our videos, and supporting our channel!
Very nice! I recall digging near here when I was little. In Downers Grove there was an Indian artifact museum that was owned by the Timke family and has since closed but fostered our love of similar finds. Dad helped build the underground tunnels at the accelerator lab, other nuclear plants and the John Hancock (at this site, welding and their work had to be X-rayed there due to the seriousness of the whole endeavor).
Thanks for watching and commenting! And thanks for sharing your experiences, both your Father's connection to Fermilab, as well as your family's artifact collecting in the area. Interesting to learn about the Timke's Downers Grove Museum - we did not know of that institution.
Great video thanks
Glad that you enjoyed the video! Thank you for watching and commenting!
I live within walking distance of NAL and have hike the prairie path many times. This information is very valuable. I look forward to reading more. Thank you!
We are glad that you enjoyed the video and foound it informative! Thank you for taking the time to watch and comment!
Great video! Thanks for sharing and I can hardly wait to see the next part! Bravo!!
Thank your for watching and for the kind words! Hopefully, Part 2 will be as interesting as the first!
Thank you for another great video! I've only been through the Fermi Lab site once but used to work just a few miles away.
Thanks for the comment and for watching! Yes, it is really a remarkable resource, right in the backyard of DuPage and Kane counties - and it's easy to forget that it's there. But it has much to offer to visitors. Just hope that they reopen their visitor center at some point in the future. Thanks again!
@@BeHistoric Agreed. I'd like to visit again and walk some of those trails, if they still allow it? I've only been through in a car and never stopped.
@@MrMetalminded Yes, visitors are still welcome - and the trails are still open, at least they were a few months back. Of course, only the publically accessible areas are open - and there is much area that is not available to the public. To our knowledge, the visitor center in Wilson Hall is still not open - although the best resource on that would be the Fermi website.
@@BeHistoric thank you!!
Thank you for taking the time to put together these informative videos of local historical value.
Thanks for commenting and for watching our videos! We very much appreciate it!
Great use of the teaser at the end. Looking forward to the next one!
Thanks for watching and supporting the channel! Yes, we realized that all of the info that we wanted to convey would be too long for a single vidoe and so looked for a natural division in the story. This seemed to be about as good as any - and the Mier story extends even to the present days, as we'll try to show. Thank you again!
This is a lovely video, thank you for taking the time to pull it together.
Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment! We very much appreciate it! That makes it all the more worthwhile.
As I recall there was construction of a park district golf course in Warrenville that led to the discovery of a complete Mastodon Skeleton, that's now on display at a local museum.
Thank you for commenting! We have not heard that particular story. Do you recall the timeframe? The Blackwell Mammoth was found in the DuPage County Forest Preserves just outside of Warrenville in the 1970s - and is now on display at the Fullersburg Woods Nature Center. We published a video on that topic about 1-1/2 years ago. Is that perhaps the same story?
I had a friend in the 90s that worked at fermilab he had a frame of projectile points that he collected during his lunch hour he would walk the fields around fermilab had a few nice pieces he passed away in the later 90s rip George
Thanks for sharing that! Yes, many of the Fermi employees, as well as local amateur archeologists, would spend hours field walking the site and picking up mostly lithics and projectile points. When Ann Early studied the site in the 1970s, one of the first things that she did was to examine all of the collections made by Fermi employees and local collectors. That is ultimately how she came into contact with August Meier. Thanks again for the comment - and thanks for watching oru video!
@@BeHistoricthank you sir
Thank you for another informative video. This video presented some interesting information about Native America Sites on the Fermi Laboratory's property. However, your introduction of August John Meyer (I am guessing on the spelling of his surname.) near the end of this video has me anxiously awaiting Part #2 of the Native American Sites at Fermi Lab. I cannot wait to find out what secrets August John Meyer is going to reveal.
Thanks for watching and for the continuing support of our channel! We very much appreciate it! Yes, August Mier was a very interesting person. His part of the story continues to the present, as we hope to show. Stay tuned!
Always informative! Looking forward to #2.
Thanks for watching both of the videos in the FermiLab series! And thanks too for commenting and the supportive words. Much appreciated!
This is the closest i've ever seen to what i've experienced almost my entire life in Kenosha, WI. Started finding artifacts with at age five - i'm 42 now. Have found artifacts from every age Paleo-Mississippian, but mainly of the archaic age. Recently i've been presenting assemblages and working on documenting sites - at least sixteen potential sites in all, nine of which are definite. Watching this has given some helpful insights going forward. Looking forward to part 2!
Thanks for watching and glad that you are finding this interesting and useful! Are you tied in at all with the UofW at Milwaukee? They may be interested and helpful regarding the sites that you are documenting. Thanks again!
@@BeHistoric, not with UWM, but am currently having site forms processed with professionals. Will see about if they could help further. This Spring i'll be doing test digs with other professionals i'm in contact with. What's interesting about where i've searched is there's overlap from southern and northern type points. A crossroads type of place in history.
@@dudeman920 Wow, sounds very interesting! Please keep us posted on your progress!
@@BeHistoric made an incredible discovery today. Found a hammerstone that matches a similar hammerstone found about 80 yards SE at what i thought was a different site. I believe the two sites now to be linked one in the same
Interesting program. I grew up in the northern Chicago area but have never been to the FermiLab site. Love learning more about pre-European history. We now live in southern NH. Interesting factoid about New England, archeologists have discovered evidence of human habitation almost immediately as the glacier retreated. I find that fascinating as the last ice age striped off top soil here down to bedrock around here.
Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment! Thanks too for sharing your experiences, both here and in NH. Yes, FermiLab is a huge and interesting resource available to the public. They check your IDs (which you'd expet) at the gates - but otherwise allow access to the publically accessible portions of the site. Multiple natural trails are available to hikers and nature lovers. And they have the herd of buffalo, of course. Overall, a very nice place to visit if you are in the area.
Beginning to read the news as a high schooler, I followed the dismantling of Weston and the construction of the NAL.
My friend and I ride our bicycles out to the site after a visit to Cantigny.
A few years later, I drove there to the visitors center to see what their early research was producing.
I took keen interest in images that resembled X-rays, taken at the meson berm target area. Photographed collisions of particles splayed out from their target like fireworks, many of which formed perfect spirals as their energy decayed.
From these images, the researchers named one particular type of particle a "Quark".
Since that time, further research from colliding particle streams with beams of protons, have produced close to a dozen different types of Quarks, making the term commonplace in our lexicon.
I had no clue that the NAL site had been host to indigenous people for many thousands of years.
Thank you both for opening up the very old, to new discoveries through your research and reportage.
Thank you for watching and for the thoughtful comments and sharing! FermiLab is a fascinating place to visit, not only for its high-energy physics, but also for its natural beauty, the history and archeology, and the buffaloes, of course. Thanks again for sharing!
As far as ownership of the grounds being bought up, Brummel Site 1 in the southeast corner of what is now Fermilab was owned and farmed by my family.
Thanks for commenting! That's very interesting - so the area along Butterfield/State Road to the south was owned by the Brummel family. Thanks for providing that additional information!
UPDATE: After publishing this video, we realized that we mispronounced Stuart Struever's surname. We pronounced it as "STROO-ver". We now believe that it should have been pronounced as "STREE-ver". Our apologies for any confusion.
Are there documented habitation sites outside of the NAL property? Hunters can walk a long distance hunting, indeed, are more likely to hunt away from habitations as wildlife avoids people generally. A hunter or small band of hunters might well work flint while waiting, and discard broken points and tools wherever they happened to be.
Thanks for watching and commenting! Very good question. The documented habitation sites that we are aware of are along the Fox River valley and the DuPage River Valley. This goes along with one of Ann Early's hypothesis (stated in the video) - that these habitations were temporary encampments for extended families moving out from their seasonal occupation sites along the Fox River valley. The river systems afforded a means of travel/trade, along with food resources. As you point out, most of the Fermi sites appear to be more of way stops or encampment sites, perhaps while out foraging or hunting. The presence of ceramics at a few of the sites (Mississippian) suggests places where habitation occured, but likely only for short intervals. Thanks again for the comment.
Excellent! Thanks for this. I remember mentioning FermiLab awhile ago and you stating that the topic was already on your list to explore. I've always been curious about the location of the artifacts. Great investigatory skills and videography! I look forward to Part 2.
I am wondering if you both would you be interested in exploring the history of the Big Woods Cemetery and Historic School in Aurora, off of Eola Road, near Butterfield Road?? There are a few soldiers buried in that cemetery who fought in the Revolutionary War. I heard that church adjacent to it was used in a movie in the 80's or early 90's, but unsure what movie? I feel like it might have been in the movie _The Road to Perdition?_ Thanks for your informative videos. I like and of course subscribe!
Thanks for watching and supporting the channel! Yes, we remembered that suggestion. :-) We started recording this video back in early summer of this year - and had had it on our list for some time prior to that. A few things needed to come together for us to finalize the story and to publish, however - which is why we are publishing several months later. That is often the case with many of our videos, we start recording months in advance - and then return multiple times to the location, as the research and story evolves. Thank you for the suggestion regarding the Big Woods Cemetery in Aurora - we will look into that and add to our list. There are literally so many interesting places to explore, and so many stories to tell. Thank you again!
@@BeHistoric You both are so awesome! Keep it up!
Any natives part of the project?
Thanks for watching and commenting! No, not as yet. We have reached out to various regional Native American organizations in the past, so as to get their perspective, but they haven't responded as yet. We would love to have their input/perspective, but also understand that we are a relatively small TH-cam channel - and so perhaps not worth their time. We nonetheless endeavor to provide as balanced a view as we are able in our videos.