A parade of tractors will be on the roads in LaSalle County today. Richard Mertel with the Ridge Roundup says they’ll start in Grand Ridge at 8am, head to the Middle East Conflicts Wall Memorial in Marseilles, and go to a farm north of Seneca. Then they’ll go back to Grand Ridge. They could be on the roads until early to mid afternoon.
Some of the tractors have been kept running for decades or were restored and made to run again.
While they’re not on the tractor ride, the machines will be in the tractor show at the Ridge Roundup in Grand Ridge. Brian Kerestes has some entries that aren’t tractors but which were the first motor power devices many farms had a century ago. They’re called hit-and-miss engines.
Kerestes’s family owns one built in 1916. They aren’t the original owners, but his family owned a motor like it long ago.
The Ridge Roundup continues through Sunday.
Hit-and-miss engines on display at the Ridge Roundup tractor show. These provided the first motor power to farms a century ago before rural electrification.
The late Karen Ranger’s tractor honoring cancer survivors. Ranger (she pronounced her name RANG-gur) organized many of the annual tractor rides over the last two decades.