McLean County has long honored its war dead. In 1869, local officials saw to the erection in the center of Franklin Park a monument featuring the names of some 700 Civil War dead from McLean County. Yet due to the poor quality of the marble and the monument’s subsequent deterioration, it was taken down in 1914. The lower half, though, survives today as a ghostly remnant in Bloomington’s Briarwood neighborhood.
