sister, and still holds that job and conducts the store. Thus, the Drake family has operated the Kappa post office for fifty-six years.
Dr. Albert Reynolds was the first doctor in Kappa and built an office there in 1854, about the same time W. R. Willis opened Kappa's first hotel.
The Kappa mill was built by Thomas Dixon below the old iron bridge over the Mackinaw River west of Kappa in 1830, and he operated it for three years. It was built of common boulders with one side slightly smoothed. A sawmill was built by Jacob Smoots in the late 1840's, and he sold it in 1850 to Hiram Havens of Hudson. Havens added one run of stones and converted it into a gristmill which burned down in 1852, when high water surrounded a barrel of limestone, igniting a partition in the building. It was rebuilt on the opposite side of the millrace in 1853 by James Jaynes; several others owned it thereafter for short periods before it was purchased by Dr. E. D. Witt.
The dam for the mill provided a small lake just southeast of Kappa, and Dr. Witt and his sons, Clint and Filmore, turned the area into a picnic center. They built a dance pavilion and other facilities, added a fleet of row boats, and at one time had a small steamboat which made regular trips between the dam and a deep spot at a bend in the river called "nigger hole" because a young Negro had accidentally drowned there while swimming.
The recreation area was named Pastime Park, and was the center for Sunday school and lodge picnics, troop encampments and community celebrations of all sorts for thirty years or more. Special trains ran from Bloomington to Kappa, and other cities brought groups for political rallies and Fourth of July celebrations, complete with brass bands and flowery oratory. For a number of years a hack made regular trips from El Paso to Pastime Park during the summer months. Filmore Witt entertained the crowds by walking a wire stretched high above the river. The dam went out during high water in 1894 and the mill was dismantled that November, but fishing parties and picnickers visited the place frequently until about 1912.
Kappa Cemetery is located at the northeast edge of the village, and in 1890 a walk was built connecting the two. Kappa has had electric lights for many years, but it was not until 1951 that street lights were installed. The Village Board of Trustees is composed of James Thompson, president; Floyd McClure, clerk; Ernest Nevius, Jesse Nevius, William Corbley, David Turpin, Jack Brown and Marion Leenhouts.
The present business activities of the village includes a branch plant of the El Paso Elevator Company, Drake's general store, three taverns with the Ro-Jo serving complete dinners, and a shipping station for corn cobs.
PANOLA is another Illinois Central town, the depot being the first building erected, but soon after that a store building was moved from Gabetown, which had served there as the Hammers & Crosley store.
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