Why Pearl Street?

This array of lines and hooks was lowered into the water and slowly dragged across a clam bed.. When touched by hooks, the clams would close their shells, allowing them to be hauled aboard the clammer’s boat. This photo was taken on the Kankakee River near Aroma Park in the 1920s. (Kankakee County Museum Photo Archive)

By Jack Klasey

April 5, 2025

The origins of street names in many communities are obvious—School, Bridge, Main, Court, Washington, etc.—but those of some names are more obscure. Take, for example, the small village of Aroma Park. The town has a Bridge Street, a Mill Street, a Front Street, and so on. But it also has a one-block-long street named “Pearl,” tucked away east of the Kankakee, Beaverville and Southern Railroad tracks, north of the Kankakee River.

Why Pearl Street?

The answer is found beneath the waters of the adjoining river. Freshwater clams were abundant in the Kankakee River; their meat was often used as fishing bait. When harvesting clams for bait, fishermen sometimes found pearls that had formed inside their shells. The pearls occasionally proved to be quite valuable. The opened clamshells, considered worthless, were discarded.

In 1919, however, Aroma Park residents learned that those clamshells had a value far greater than fish bait or the occasional pearl. The story of how clamshells became a commercially valuable item was related by Bert Fowler, who authored a history of his native village in 1957. Fowler’s typewritten manuscript is in the collection of the Kankakee County Museum.

He wrote, “One thing that will be remembered by those who lived here in 1919-1920, was the small lost fortune that they may have had if only they could have known that there were several large clam shell beds in the Kankakee River at Aroma Park. It took some river rats from Muscatine, Iowa, to discover the valuable clam beds. One summer afternoon four men came down the Kankakee river in rowboats and stopped at the lumber yard office to inquire about boat lumber, saying they were prospecting for clam shells.

“Then, they left and went down the river and soon they came back to the office and said that they had located some shell beds just below Shannon’s Island and others at the mouth of the Iroquois River where it flows into the Kankakee. They ordered lumber to build several flat-bottom boats. They then phoned the button factory at Muscatine and within a day or two several men came and began building boats. They were clam diggers….the old river-rat kind. Almost before anyone realized what was going on, the boats were finished and the operation of digging clams was in full swing.

“Their equipment consisted of a pole 16 feet long, with stay lines fastened about a foot apart and strung along each line were rows of four-pronged hooks made of heavy galvanized wire. The length of the line from the pole float depended on the depth of the water where they were working. They would put the pole with stays and hooks attached into the water over the clam beds, and with a windlass attached  to the boat, slowly pull the float, and as the hook touched a clam, it would close its shell over the hook. After the float had been dragged over the bed, it was raised and the clam shells were taken off.

“Then the same operation would be continued until the clam digger would have a boat load or enough for what was called a ‘good cook out.’ Each crew built a cooking vat about 4 by 8 feet, and when they had enough clams to fill it,  would start cooking. After cooking a few minutes, the shells would open and the meats  could easily be removed. Then each clam meat would be carefully inspected for pearls.

“The diggers got permission from the land owner to pitch their tents along the river banks and they ate and slept and put in long hours at their work. After about a week, a buyer from the Muscatine Button Factory came and made arrangements to buy the shells and arranged to have them weighed at the lumber yard and loaded in freight cars on the lumber yard switch track. They paid $20 per ton for the shells, and before the summer was over, there had been several car loads.

“The sale of the shells was a paying proposition for the diggers, but nothing in comparison to what they received for the pearls they found. They found hundreds of nice pearls valued at from $1 to $250. Every few days, a pearl buyer would come and try to buy the pearls. Some would sell a part of their find, but most of the men had regular jewelry firms that took their find. One of the diggers accumulated, during the summer, pearls which according to a pearl buyer, would bring more than two thousand dollars.

“It seemed as though the people of Aroma Park had for years been fishing, boating, swimming and skating over a little gold mine. It took some river rats from another state to find and capitalize on it.”

In the early 1900s, the town of Muscatine, Iowa, was known as “The Pearl Button Capital of the World.” Its plants turned out over 1.5 billion “mother-of-pearl” buttons (cut from clamshells) each year. The last of Muscatine’s button factories closed in 2020.

The Kankakee area never manufactured “mother-of-pearl” buttons, but did have two button factories in the 1870s. In 1873, the Crescent Button Factory opened on West Avenue, north of River Street. It made buttons from a material called “vegetable ivory.” The factory burned in 1876, and was not rebuilt.   The city’s second button manufacturing business opened in 1874 in a former school building  at Indiana Avenue and Chestnut Street. The Northwestern Button Company turned out fancy buttons with cloth or leather coverings that were sold to high-end clothing manufacturers. Unfortunately, like the Crescent factory, the Northwestern Button Company fell victim to fire. It burned in 1880 and was not rebuilt.

Jack Klasey is a former Journal reporter and a retired publishing executive. He can be contacted at jwklasey@comcast.net.