(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Welcome to the "You Gotta See This!"

best-of show.

We've done so many amazing stories this year.

They feature people.

They feature places.

But you know what, the best part, they're all made right here in Central Illinois.

So let's check out that first one.

(upbeat music) (chill upbeat music) - Well, we've converted our downtown square into the world's largest Monopoly game.

And we did that not randomly but because Elizabeth Magie, Lizzie Magie, was born here in 1866, and she's the woman that actually invented the game Monopoly, what evolved into Monopoly.

- Hi, I'm Elizabeth Magie, but I've always gone by Lizzie.

I was born in Macomb in 1866, and my father owned "The Macomb Journal" newspaper.

- When we all found that out, which was just recent history, believe it or not, my office, we knew that we needed to try to capitalize on that in some way, shape, or form.

And we had noticed how similar the downtown square is to a Monopoly plat of the board game.

So we thought, "How do we turn this into the world's largest Monopoly game?"

And then we did.

(chill upbeat music continues) Initially we thought, "How do we make this a giant Monopoly game and giant dice and that you can play on here?"

And there are ways to do that, but they're not practical, and they're not sustainable.

And we don't live in that era right now, right?

People want something that is an app that takes you around the downtown area.

- Okay, so we're starting.

So I first, I've downloaded my app.

- All right, you get it right off the QR code there, right?

- All right, now, well, let's go.

I have to pick my- - You pick your icon.

You know, a tenderloin sandwich I think is a good one to pick.

- Perfect.

Hey, guys.

- Hello.

- It's right in the middle of the square.

Everybody can get involved.

So I have to roll my dice.

- Right.

- All right.

(imitates energetic music) I get to go one step.

- One step.

- One step at a time like we do here.

So this way?

Oh, it gives me a little bit of history.

- [Ruth] I became an immunologist and developed Tunnicliff serum, the first inoculation for the measles.

- How you play the game is that once you're playing the game, you're moving.

It's moving you around the downtown square, but you're rolling dice from there.

There's all kinds of facts and history about Macomb, a lot of facts about Lizzie.

I mean, one of the great things about this project, though, is we got to really find out what an incredible human being Lizzie was and what a trailblazer she was.

- [Lizzie] I received my first ever patent for a paper feeder for a typewriter that fit all different sizes of paper.

I was only 26, working primarily as a stenographer and typist in the Postal Service's dead letter office.

- This is Lizzie herself right here.

- Wow, what an impressive statue.

- Yeah, I think actually the statue, she might be a little taller in the statue than she was in real life.

- Well, don't we all say we're a little taller than we actually are?

- Right, right?

- Yeah, she's great, larger than life.

- We started fundraising.

We wrote grants.

We got a grant from the state of Illinois that was a matching grant.

That was really the thing that really got the ball rolling, not just from a financial standpoint, but the legitimacy that it gave to the project itself from outside that the community could then see and go, "Okay, wait a minute.

This is real."

(chill upbeat music continues) (jail door clanking) - I'm not loving what it's telling me now.

It says I have to go to jail.

- You have to go to jail.

- I have to go to jail now.

- Fortunately you're close.

Sometimes you have to go to jail from all the way around out here, but the jail is actually right over here.

- Do I get $200?

Do I get to collect?

- I know how to get you out.

- Okay, okay, let's go.

- [Jock] You take a selfie of yourself, or you have somebody take it, and then you post that to social media.

- (gasps) Oh, okay, I can do that.

All right, Jock, give me a selfie.

- All right.

- All right, so.

- [Jock] You do look sad.

Now all you do is take that.

- So sad.

- It prompts you how to do it.

- Okay.

- And then you'll just, you pick your social media platform, and it hashtags it Macombopoly, and then- - So cute.

- You're free to go.

(jail door clanking) From our statistics that we're getting from eATLAS, yes, a lot, I mean, from as far away as Hawaii, California, Florida, New York.

People have come from all over.

We had some people just the other day drive here from Indianapolis just over to play the game.

That was it.

So it's been incredible.

And so far, it's just been a month that it's been open, but we have, you know, well over 1,000 downloads for the app already.

And we still haven't even gotten, you know, our big push to get people to come down here.

So I think that it's gonna have a very positive effect, and it better so I can keep my job, but I think what it does is that it enhances all the other things that we have here.

It enhances the Lincoln story.

It enhances Heritage Days and all the festivals that we have.

If there's this other thing that can bring you here that you can experience that you can't experience anywhere else, you know, that's our hook, right?

And then once we've got you here, you know, we give you the history.

We turn you onto the charm of this beautiful small town, its escape from the city life.

And next thing you know, people are moving to Macomb.

(chill upbeat music continues) (bright music) - [Reporter] 60 miles north of Peoria, the smell and promise of baked goods lures customers from far and wide.

- Welcome in to Millstone Bakery in the historic downtown La Salle.

- [Reporter] The business got its start in a most unconventional way.

- I was never really a baker.

It started with the pandemic.

I got on the quest of making the perfect chocolate chip cookie.

And so we made a lot of chocolate chip cookies.

We were eating a lot of chocolate chip cookies.

- [Reporter] Those cookies were so good that Kent Maze and partner Erin Maze thought others might like them as well.

So why not start a bakery?

Not just cookies, but breads, coffee, and other treats as well.

- So these are some of our... We do sourdough every single day.

So we always have the top shelf, as we make the most of it.

We also do specialty sourdoughs every day.

- [Reporter] And since day one, customers have been lining up.

- I don't think we could have ever imagined how much the community would rally around what we're doing and how much the staff just pours their heart and soul into this.

- [Reporter] In just two years, the bakery has enjoyed a quick rise.

- So here we have our stone oven.

This is our Italian loaf.

It's ready to come out of the oven.

So we use these peels, put it on there, and you see that nice crust, that nice golden exterior.

- [Reporter] In just two years, the bakery has enjoyed a quick rise.

It recently was named to Illinois Made, the state's roster of distinct small businesses, not too bad for part-time work.

Kent is a corporate tax attorney.

Erin is a project manager for a small real estate development company.

But seven employees help keep the place humming and customers smiling.

- And when you do it fresh every day, we have to have a team in here producing high-quality products every single day, just like a manufacturer would.

- [Reporter] During the pandemic, when they first baked all those chocolate chip cookies, they were living in Michigan.

They wondered where to open a bakery when they thought about Erin's hometown of La Salle.

- We decided that we wanted to move back here because Erin loves downtown La Salle particularly.

And so we wanna be close to our family.

We wanted to do something for the community.

And we were looking around and thinking, you know, "What could bring people downtown?"

And we always loved traveling and finding really neat bakeries where they make everything from scratch.

And we realized there's nothing like that within an hour radius of this area.

- [Reporter] They found a spot in an 1880s retail shop that had hosted many businesses over the decades, most recently a comic bookstore.

But the interior needed a lot of work.

- So it was sort of an old wood-panel building.

A lot of the colors were very dated.

Everything was very worn.

And so they took off the carpet.

They repainted the walls and the ceiling, and we kitted it out for a bakery, and it really looks like a whole new place.

- [Reporter] They chose the name Millstone as a nod to the area's rich history in growing grain and baking bread.

- Downtown La Salle I think at its peak had about four bakeries.

Peru had a couple of bakeries as well.

There was a lot of sort of agricultural milling and turning things into bread and different baked products.

(lively music) - And that really goes to the roots of baking, is the simple process using really good ingredients, using traditional methods.

- [Reporter] The process is a European style that takes time, such as for their popular sourdough bread.

- So this is gonna be our sourdough.

It just got mixed, so it's not quite...

It's not at all the final product.

But what you do is you put your hands in there, and you fold it over itself rather than kneading.

We don't kneed.

We fold.

It takes about 26 hours to make.

So you get a slow fermentation that really rises slowly, builds all that flavor in there, and you can really taste the difference.

And that's why it's more European.

You don't add all the preservatives that are in a lot of bakeries and a lot of kind of commercial breads.

So it's just a different style.

I think one thing Millstone is known for is just making really good quality products, really artistic, and it's just a really neat experience to see.

- [Reporter] The enthusiastic clientele includes sisters Jill Campos and Jean Carter, who live nearby in Peru.

They say Millstone has become a community gathering ground.

- Sometimes we sit here, and we call them clients.

The regulars come in, and they join our table, and sometimes we have up to eight people at our table.

Sometimes we're here for three hours.

So, no, it's the whole experience we enjoy here.

- [Reporter] Other customers come from many miles away.

- It seems like a lot of people have relatives or family from outside the area, and sometimes... We had a woman in this morning who was buying bread to gift to her daughter this weekend when she goes up and visits her in Chicago.

So I think there's sort of a, here's a nice fresh-baked bread like grandma used to make kind of as a show of affection or love.

- [Reporter] And many come for more than bread.

They bolster tourism, a key economic driver in the Starved Rock area.

- We have a couple regulars who are about 45 minutes out, and then they come to the bakery, and then they make a day of it.

They go to the boutiques.

They go to the Quilting In The Valley.

They go to Nina's Market for lunch.

So I think that's one neat thing about our area, La Salle, is you come for the bakery, and then you stay for the shops.

You stay for the canal.

You stay for the towpath.

It's just a really neat area, and hopefully it encourages other people with ideas about a business that might not... You know, there might not be a business like that around here, like this bakery.

Give them the motivation to say, "Hey, this could succeed."

There's a market for really cool artisan places around here.

(lively music continues) (gentle piano music) - [Julie] In Fulton County, you can drive through the rural area between Ipava, Table Grove, and Bernadotte and see nothing but typical Illinois countryside.

What you don't see is the history.

Where the tall grass now grows, there used to be a bustling community called Camp Ellis.

- During World War II, as World War II was getting started, the United States didn't have a place to train people to be support people for the war.

- [Julie] For three years, from 1942 to the winter of 1945, this was a home to Camp Ellis, a United States training center and POW camp.

Here are just a few of the things you could find here.

There were more than 70,000 soldiers and volunteers being trained, over 2,000 buildings, including libraries, four gymnasiums, chapels, and an airport, but most impressive was the large state-of-the-art hospital.

- It was a 1,500-bed hospital.

It was probably the largest hospital at the time in the country.

And that could be arguable, I think, but probably was the largest.

It was probably larger than any one downstate hospital in Illinois is today.

- [Julie] To make way for this modern camp, local farmers had to make sacrifices.

- 150 families, including the families of Bernadotte.

And the people from the government came around with a sheet of paper that had your name on it and the number of, the amount of money at the bottom that you're gonna get for your land.

And the sheet of paper also says that you have to be gone in 30 days.

You can take your house, your barn, your cows, your corn.

Anything that belongs to you, you can take with you.

All we want is the dirt, but you have to be gone in 30 days.

That made a lot of people unhappy, but there were more people who were tickled to death because they had jobs.

- [Julie] Julie Terstriep's family was one of the families that had to relocate very quickly.

- So they had been here over 100 years at the time that they lost the land to the camp.

But they were never angry or bitter about it.

My dad was seven, and my uncle would've been 10 at the time.

And my grandparents always said, "Well, our boys weren't old enough to serve.

Our nephews were, but it was our way to help the war effort."

- [Julie] Those families gave up their land so that people could be trained in many fields, including engineering, bridge-building, nursing, and other support people for the soldiers that would help in our World War II efforts.

- Well, the pictures that I showed you of the quartermasters, there are three guys in one foxhole, and they dig a little trench on the outside, line it with a pup tent, and they're mixing bread dough.

And then the other picture, these two pictures were actually taken out there.

They were done during the training.

And three other guys have dug a hole in the side of the hill, and they put a fire in that hole, and they're baking bread in the hole.

And that's kind of an amazing thing when you look at the pictures.

And what made it even more amazing to me was that shortly after I got the pictures, and I was reading about it, I read that the quartermasters trained at Camp Ellis, they went both to the Pacific and to Europe.

And it was estimated they baked 91 million loaves of bread after they left Camp Ellis.

These three over on this side, this is father, mother, and son.

Son, Clifford Butler, was in World War II, and this uniform was actually in that picture, and it's at the hospital- - Oh wow.

- In the camp.

- [Julie] It also became an internment camp for prisoners of war.

- They put 'em on empty ships, and they came back to the United States.

Then after they got here, we didn't have any place to put 'em either.

So they did bring them to Camp Ellis.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) All of the buildings were moved out, most of them sold.

Some of them were moved as a whole building but a lot of 'em just torn down and used as material.

They dug up all the water system.

All of the telephone communication system was taken down and used somewhere else.

- [Julie] Today, little is left to mark the place where 125,000 servicemen were trained and 5,000 prisoners of war were held, just two water towers and a heavily graffitied rifle range.

But the lessons from history have not been forgotten.

- I think it's important for a community to understand where they came from and to see what they did to contribute to the war effort.

(upbeat music) - [Julie] Three words you don't typically hear together are alpaca, beach, and party.

(festive music) That is, unless you've stumbled upon the Little Creek Alpaca Farm in Plymouth, Illinois.

They've taken a few simple ingredients like a white-sand beach loaded with toys, a two-acre pond, and added 46 alpacas to create a fun family activity that the people of McDonough County were not expecting.

♪ In alpacas ♪ ♪ Little Creek Alpacas ♪ - I think what I like most about it or what's surprising is just how people like alpacas are.

They're kind of like an introverted human mixed with a cat.

I don't know, there's just something so peaceful about 'em, and I guess that just really surprised me how easy it would be too.

They're really easy to take care of.

As long as you give them proper nutrition and keep their stress levels down by giving them a good environment to live in, then they're very healthy, hearty animals, as long as they have everything they need.

- You're getting both of them in the face.

(laughs) - Yay, I wanna get alpaca wet.

(laughs) - [Julie] Families from all around are eating up this fun and wholesome activity.

- Pretty much everybody.

I would say the younger people, the elderly, probably appreciate them the most.

Like, I'm really excited to have Good Shepherd Nursing Home come out because I think they'll be really excited to get to experience them and feed them, but yeah, the kids especially.

And the nice thing is is even if there's someone in the family that maybe isn't real into animals, there's so many other things they can do here.

You know, dad can go fishing if he doesn't wanna see the alpacas (laughs) or go listen to the music.

- Oh my goodness, look at that.

You just scarfed that right down, didn't you?

You want some more?

You have 'em there.

- [Julie] It looks more like a festival than a farm on the days when Lindsay Moore hosts her free alpaca beach parties.

You can participate in arts, crafts, music, or buy alpaca products.

But most importantly, people of all ages are having fun everywhere you look.

- Usually they're just like, "Whoa, I can't believe there's an alpaca."

You know, most of 'em are pretty excited and think it's really neat.

There's a few that are kind of scared.

- [Julie] These fluffy friends are typically raised for their fiber that is woven into lots of clothing and products, but Moore, she does it for the love of the animals and as a tribute to her best friend, Sonny.

- She was peacefully passing away at age 87.

I met her on top of the mountains when I was 15, and we wrote letters ever since.

And it was COVID, so I couldn't go see her, and so I called her and told her I had this idea.

Her name's Sonny, and I said, "Sonny, you know, I'd love to come see you, but with COVID and everything, it's just gonna be hard.

And so what I'd like to do is, the money I'd spend on a ticket, I'm gonna build this beach in your name for all the kids."

And she just thought that was wonderful.

- [Julie] That's why she keeps the admission free and the smiles coming.

- I guess what I really want them to leave here with is just a sense of joy.

Sonny always had a sign that said "celebrate kindness."

That's one thing about these beach parties.

We get so many kids, and in all the years we've done 'em, not once have I heard an argument on the beach, have I heard a kid yell at another kid.

And I just think it's a place of peace, and I just hope that, like, they continue to be kind to their peers and to other kids and act like it's a beach party every day, I guess.

(laughs) - Thank you so much for everyone who watches "You Gotta See This!"

This unfortunately is my last show with WTVP, but... Don't, wait, wait.

It's still gonna be here.

We have some great producers who are gathering great stories, and we're gonna keep going every month just like we used to.

And we're so excited that "You Gotta See This!"

remains in the WTVP family.

Thank you so much.

- [Coworker] Aw.

- I love you.

(Julie whimpers) (gentle music) - Hi, I'm Julie.

(Julie and coworker laugh) - Okay, whew.

- Oh gosh.

All right, I think it'll be great.

What...

I mean, it's like made for me.

- [Owner] (laughs) That's kind of a Cleopatra look there, Queen of the Nile.

- Mm, mm.

Mm.

(owner laughs) - Do that again.

- Look at me.

I'm like Bob Ross.

(cohost laughs) Only on "You Gotta See This!"

- [Cohost] Eh!

- Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh.

That's an added move.

- I know you're recording me, Amy.

- [Amy] Do it, Julie.

(laughs) ♪ Where do I work, PBS ♪ ♪ Where do I work, PBS.

♪ - Hey, it's fall time.

(coworker laughs) Yeah?

That was a pretty scrumptious episode.

(laughs) - [Cohost] What?

(laughs) - Scrumptious, I tried to save it.

I tried to save it.

♪ You gotta see this ♪ - [Announcer] Thank you for joining us on this journey.

If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to explore even more local content.

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visit our website, and check out Passport for exclusive features.

We can't wait to see you next time on "You Gotta See This!"

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues)