Naper Settlement exhibit explores Naperville's agricultural roots

It's hard to imagine, but Naperville once was a center for agriculture and food production.

Roughly 146,000 people live here now, but 77 years ago the city had only 5,272 residents - and more cows than people.

To help better understand what life was like during Naperville's agricultural heyday - or "hay" day, if you will - Naper Settlement is opening a new exhibit called "Community Roots: Agriculture in Naperville."

The exhibit will continue through October at the living history museum at 523 S. Webster St. near downtown.

"We want to help people to make the connection from Naperville's farming past to today," said Jennifer Bridge, curator of exhibits and interpretation. "It's all around us, whether we realize it or not."

To help visitors realize that connection, Bridge's team will be displaying agricultural artifacts and telling their stories.

While smaller farming implements are on display, such as pitchforks and other tools, the museum also will display items that were so large and expensive that the whole community would use the same one.

Bridge said one of the largest artifacts is the industrial scale from the Boecker Coal & Grain elevator by the train tracks. Farmers would come from all over to have their yields weighed on the scale and find out how much money they would make from that harvest.

"We discovered the scale still has a certification stamp on it from the government dated in the 1970s," Bridge said. "So it was still in use up until that time."

Bridge said the temporary exhibit will serve as a preview to a larger project called the Agricultural Interpretive Center, a new building and permanent home to much of what will be on display in the Community Roots exhibit.

She said the plan is for the new 5,000-square-foot building to be constructed near the existing Halfway House, smokehouse and windmill to further expand programming opportunities focusing on the region's rich farming heritage.

The center also will tell the story of how some farmers were inventors, engineers and entrepreneurs, and it will feature STEM-based learning opportunities in areas of study such as the process of planting and harvesting crops, animal genetics and the science of weather.

For more information on the plan for the Agricultural Interpretive Center, visit napersettlement.org.

Admission to the Community Roots exhibit will be free with admission to the Naper Settlement until Oct. 8.