Interactive Map

Henry Fike’s service in the 117th Illinois Volunteer Infantry took him to far-flung corners of the Trans-Appalachian West. Evidence suggests that by the time Henry had reached age 30 he had not traveled more than a day’s ride from his native St. Clair County, Illinois. The Civil War, however, soon revealed to him and many other Americans the immense size and natural diversity of their growing nation. From the table-flat prairie that surrounded Mascoutah, Henry traveled to the Louisiana bayous, Missouri’s rocky Ozark hills, the sparkling beaches of the Gulf coast, and finally Alabama’s piney woods. He also spent extended periods of time in Memphis, St. Louis, Nashville, and New Orleans, and thus came to see the dynamic changes that railroads had brought to major western cities. By the end of the war he had ventured more than 4,000 miles, some by rail but many more of them by foot and aboard steamboats which sailed the Mississippi, Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee, and Red rivers.