Field of Dreams to Clinton
Dad and I get a chance to tour the Field of Dreams Movie Site before heading to Clinton, Iowa, to have Chicken George and learn about lumber.
Field of Dreams Movie Site
From the moment we settled on the Western Midwest for our next big regional ballpark road trip, I knew that — whatever the itinerary — we would be making a critical detour to the Field of Dreams Movie Site in Dyersville, Iowa. The day had come, and so we set out on blue highways under blue skies toward an enduring symbol of baseball, imagination, redemption, and the love between a father and a son.
The 1989 movie Field of Dreams was shot on two adjacent family farms in Dyersville. The production cleared a section of the Lansing family’s cornfield to build a baseball diamond with temporary lighting and bleachers. Given the movie’s huge success and heart-tugging sentimentality, baseball fans flocked to Dyersville long after the movie’s release to reconnect with those feelings. To paraphrase: They built it, and people came.
In 2011, Go the Distance Baseball — a partnership led by businesswoman Denise Stillman — purchased the entire site with the dual goals of preserving the famed diamond and building a larger youth sports complex with up to 24 baseball and softball fields. Funding issues and legal battles have slowed progress on some of those dreams, but the property has been developed to include a gift shop, pub, event center, and, most notably, an adjoining stadium that seats 8,000 and has hosted Major League and Minor League games.
Dad and I stepped onto the field together. We didn’t bring gloves to play catch, but we had arrived early enough to have the field to ourselves. It was a surreal and special moment.
The magical effect of the field’s iconic cornfield perimeter was lessened somewhat by the fact that the corn stalks were just a foot high in early June.
We took a 30-minute guided tour of the farmhouse to learn how it had been transformed into the home of Ray Kinsella — Kevin Costner’s character in the film — and his family. Our guide talked us through each room downstairs, noting which scenes were shot where. Visitors can immerse themselves further in the Field of Dreams experience by renting out the three-bedroom farmhouse between March and December.
After the tour, we somehow found ourselves in the gift shop looking at hats and baseballs. Go figure.
Chicken George on the Big Muddy
Dad and I enjoyed a pleasant late-morning drive, the warming sun lighting up the gently rolling hills and fertile farmland around us. After about an hour and a half, we came upon the eastern suburbs of our next ballpark destination: Clinton, Iowa, home of the Clinton LumberKings. We soon reached the Mississippi River and our lunch spot for the day, the Candlelight Inn.
The Candlelight Inn is an all-purpose American restaurant with a Midwestern supper-club vibe that serves the standards: steak, seafood, chops, burgers, and the like. But it is “world famous” for one menu item in particular: Chicken George, an ancestor to modern chicken strips that dates back to the 1970s when a Candlelight Inn fry cook named George — working at the restaurant’s original Sterling, Illinois, location — served them to a customer asking for “something different.”
The dish comes with “Jan’s Sauce,” based in vinegar and mayonnaise, but you can get it with buffalo sauce, prime seasoning, sweet and sour, or the house-made Boom Boom sauce (a creamy-tangy-spicy blend). Combined, the current chain of three Candlelight Inn locations serves roughly 6,000 pounds of Chicken George each year.
We both had it with Jan’s Sauce and thought it was fine — crispy and juicy, but not especially flavorful. I would have liked to try all the sauces to compare.
Around Clinton
We drove south from the Candlelight Inn along the Mississippi River, past the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre, which stages musicals, children’s shows, and the county spelling bee.
We turned into downtown Clinton, the easternmost city in Iowa, which has a population of about 25,000. It was incorporated in 1857 and named after U.S. senator (NY), New York City mayor, and naturalist DeWitt Clinton.
The town’s location — where the Mississippi is relatively wide and calm, with easy access to railroads — made it an ideal spot for lumber mills to process cut logs floating down from Minnesota and Wisconsin on rafts. By the 1890s, Clinton was known as the “Lumber Capital of the World” and boasted 13 millionaires – the most per capita of any American city at the time.
The Sawmill Museum
We learned a little more at the Sawmill Museum, which tells the story of the timber and lumber industries in a big space with a vintage sawmill and other equipment.
We walked into a room featuring animatronic portraits of four local lumber barons: Ernest Struve, Chancy Lamb, David Joyce, and William Young. A man working at the museum asked if we wanted to see the show and did some fiddling in the back to get it going. Dad and I watched the four barons tell their colorful tales — of the booming business, the competition, the innovations, the setbacks. One was a German immigrant, another Irish. They all got very rich, very fast.
Eagle Point Park
We drove a little north of town to Eagle Point Park, which sits high on limestone bluffs above the Mississippi. We drove through the hilly park to a small, castle-like structure with a turret that was built by the Works Progress Administration. It’s at a perfect vantage point to see just how wide the Mississippi gets at Clinton.
Great Revivalist Brewery
We finished our afternoon in Clinton at the fabulous Great Revivalist Brewery, located in the 1898 building that was once home to the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The building has been restored with loving care and attention to detail. With decorative mood lighting and colorful stained-glass windows dotting the brick-walled interior, the venue is immaculate in its conception, executed perfectly from top to bottom — the kind of place I would expect to find in San Francisco or Hollywood. It was an exceptionally fun place to have a brew in Clinton, Iowa.