Le Rocher or "Starved Rock"

 

Rising 125 feet above the Illinois River near present Utica, Illinois is a sandstone bluff known today as “Starved Rock”, and to the French Le Rocher, or “the Rock.” Like most such landforms along the river valleys of Illinois, Indigenous tribes utilized the bluff for millennia. However, the unusual promontory played a critical role in the early French colony as well.

 

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