Most museums are quite boring to the majority of Americans, but this is not the case with Midway Village. The facility has a traditional museum center with an entire section dedicated to the Rockford’ Peaches, a women's baseball team from 1943 to 1954. They were one of the first four teams in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, and provided a source of inspiration for all young girls hoping to participate in a sport that was usually reserved for men. Also, there is an exhibit where you can milk a fake cow, and a full-sized replica of the Stockholm, a plane that took flight in 1928, only to crash a short while later in Sweden. The replica was refinished and brought to Midway Village to be put on display. There are plenty of exhibits and fun to keep you entertained for hours including observing the original sock machine and sock monkeys from the Nelson Sock Company,who were the first to put together a seamless sock.

However, as you depart from the museum building, your journey has just begun. If you are paying attention to your surroundings, you will notice a quaint red brick building that resembles a small funeral home. If you were to go and examine the building, however, you would find that it was not a funeral home at all, but a home to dozens of professionally made doll houses that represent almost all nationalities and walks of life from one woman’s collection inspired by her travels.

Yet, the best is still to come. As you pass the modernized buildings, you will see a small village, comprising a dust road flanked on both side by various buildings. If you look closely, you will see men, women, and children dressed up in old-fashioned clothing going about their business. This is a daily reenactment of the tiny village from which Rockford was born. There are people going about their duties in the houses and stores. There are more than twenty locations in the entire village, including a print shop, a barber shop, a general store, a hotel, a hardware store, a bank, a school, a church, and several more. It’s simplicity shows its beauty. It’s not much to look at, but after you go there, you want to stay and spend a day in there shoes. You find yourself imagining life there. Midway Village connects the past with the present because I believe that it is good for citizens of Rockford and even non-citizens to know Rockford’s founding and to feel the feeling that so many have: to imagine life in their shoes.

Midway Village was started in 1972 by the gift of the Severin family’s eleven acres of land to create the original Midway Village. Midway Village has undergone several additions to their facilities. It is now located at on Guilford Road in Rockford, Illinois.

Jason Febery
Designer and Student Leader