Snowmobile Museum in beautifully renovated Hopedale building shows century of engineering innovation

 

[July 22, 2019] 

It’s July and as with any summer in central Illinois, the heat and humidity are soaring, and an occasional thunderstorm rumbles its way across the countryside. What is the last thing you would expect to think about on a sunny summer day?

Well, try to imagine a snowy landscape and the roar of snowmobiles streaking across the empty fields. Yes, snowmobiles! Russell Willis of Hopedale, the small rural community along Interstate 155 on the way to Peoria, has created a unique museum dedicated to his passion for collecting antique snowmobiles.

The Willis Snowmobile Museum had its grand opening last Saturday, and additionally hosted the annual convention of the Antique Snowmobile Club of America to help him celebrate.

But why collect snowmobiles? “My son bought a sled (snowmobile speak) in the 1980’s that needed a lot of work to get it running, we restored it, and my collection started from there,” Huck said.

And it grew and grew and grew. One antique snowmobile was not enough. Ten were not enough. One-hundred were not enough. His collecting continued to grow. He built a pole barn on his property near Hopedale, and eventually filled it with over 450 antique sleds! They go back to the 1920’s. When he saw an old building in downtown Hopedale, it sparked the idea of building a museum to house the best of his collection.

The Willis Snowmobile Museum holds 150 of the best sleds in Huck’s collection. Oh, Russell is known as Huck to everyone, a nickname from childhood.

Huck finds antique snowmobiles and restores them. That’s to be expected. But those are not the only historic objects he restores. “ I had the idea for a museum, saw the old brick general store building in Hopedale coming up for a tax auction, so I bought it,” he said with a laugh. “It was in terrible condition, ready to cave into the street. It was sure to be demolished if anyone else had bought it,” he said.

With the help of his three sons, Darrin, Danny, and Don, Huck began the task of turning the old decrepit building dating from 1900 into his dream of a museum. The restoration of the building turned into a family affair.

The Willis family had the skills to turn the old general store into the Huck’s vision of what he wanted. He has been a mason for fifty years.

The exterior has been refinished to the original look of an early twentieth century brick structure common in small town America, but the interior will take a visitor by surprise. All of the walls are finished in glowing hard wood paneling.

Huck did not just run down to the local big box lumber store and buy wood paneling. He selected trees from the area around Hopedale, cut them, and had the paneling made from them. He then built a dehumidifier and treated the paneling himself to remove the moisture. The paneling in the museum is made from different varieties of trees, and a sign on each wall identifies the type of wood.

A visitor walks into the restored building, and every square inch of the three floors is filled with the cream of Huck Willis’s collection of antique snowmobiles. The oldest is a Model T snowmobile from 1923 that was invented by a New Englander named Virgil White. He designed it as a kit to help doctors and mail delivery persons get around the countryside in the harsh winters with deep snow.

The collection has the first front engine snowmobile. It has a toboggan that was fitted with a motor to make a crude snowmobile. People are ingenious when confronted with a problem.

“There have been over three-hundred snowmobile companies worldwide over the years, and I have over one-hundred represented in my collection,” Huck said.

A snowmobile collection in Hopedale, Illinois? “We are a bit south of the most popular areas for snowmobiles. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan and New England are the most popular areas, but the members of the Antique Snowmobile Club of America come from all over,” said Huck.

The Willis Snowmobile museum is much more than one man’s seeming obsession with a machine from modern times. Look through the collection and it is easy to see the progression of designs as the decades of the twentieth century passed.

Call it a quirky museum in a tiny dot of a town in central Illinois, but it is a history lesson of human ingenuity when faced with the harsh conditions that Mother Nature can throw at us. Huck Willis can give a visitor a history lesson on each of the restored snowmobiles in his collection.

Now that Huck Willis has created his dream museum, he is around most of the time to show interested visitors through it. Call Huck at 309-241-6530 to arrange a visit. It is well worth the trip off the beaten path to Hopedale, Illinois.

[Curtis Fox]