Senior's thesis on state park accepted for presentation
History major Bonnie Thornton's senior history honors thesis has been accepted for presentation at the National Conference of Phi Alpha Theta national history honors society in January.
Selection is competitive. Her paper is entitled "The Politics of Collective Morality: Orchestrating the Natural Conservation and Historic Preservation of Blackhawk Watch Tower Park, 1917-1927."
Thornton '16 examines how local historian John Hauberg persisted throughout the 1920s to transform an amusement park in Rock Island, Ill., into a state park, recognizing the land and its history.
Her research was conducted in the Special Collections department of Augustana's Tredway Library. Her research will be funded by the Augustana Student Research Committee and the History Department's Endowment Fund.
Thornton works in Special Collections. She is a Spanish and Honors History major from Mount Vernon, Iowa. She is a member of Phi Alpha Theta, Phi Beta Delta – Zeta Upsilon, Sigma Alpha Iota Delta Tau, and Rotary Youth Exchange.
Hauberg was an amateur historian, photographer, progressive-era activist, member of civic and cultural societies, and a book collector. He was especially drawn to books which dealt in some way with the Upper Mississippi River Valley, including its history, exploration and geography. When Hauberg died in 1955, many of his papers and books were given to Augustana College. This includes more than 300 book titles, over 100 linear feet of manuscript materials and approximately 60,000 images in different formats. Today, Hauberg's books form the backbone of Special Collections's materials on local and regional history.
About 8,000 of the images are in the form of glass negatives. The college is working to create digital copies of about 1,500 of those images.
Hauberg was instrumental in the creation in 1927 of Black Hawk State Park, now Black Hawk State Historic Site. He wrote a 78-page booklet in support of the site and placed it before the State Senate. After presenting a lecture to the legislature, his plan received a unanimous vote of approval. A museum was erected in the park in 1937. John and his wife, Susanne Denkmann Hauberg, furnished many of the Native American relics in the museum and later it was dedicated as the Hauberg Museum.