George E. Hilgard American Legion Post 58 used to be one of the largest posts in southern Illinois and the only one that operated a recreation area with a campground and swimming and fishing lakes.
But the past few years haven’t been kind to the 104-acre property in rural Freeburg, also known as the Freedom Farm, southeast of Belleville. It no longer hosts scout camps, military gatherings, fish fries, concerts or festivals that drew people from miles around.
The grounds are overgrown with weeds and littered with trash and debris. The swimming lake is green with algae. Mobile homes and pole barns that veterans once used as clubhouses have been ransacked by squatters and thieves. Some are falling down.
The campground, which officially closed last year, is full of dismantled electric boxes, rickety picnic tables and rusty playground equipment. Until recently, the former restaurant, bar and banquet hall was rented to a local chapter of Boozefighters Motorcycle Club.
“It’s just crazy,” said Aaron Shinn, 39, son of Rick Shinn, who owns a mobile home that he inherited from his late father, Maurice Shinn, a World War II veteran who signed a lifetime lease for the land in the 1970s.
“I haven’t been here in five years,” Aaron Shinn said last week during a visit to the property. “I was like ‘Holy crap.’ I can’t believe the condition of this place. It used to be gorgeous out here.”
Aaron Shinn, of Belleville, remembers fishing with his father and grandfather as a boy and playing in jam sessions on a deck overlooking a lake that his father, a U.S. Air Force veteran, stocked with fish. Rick Shinn, 66, also organized bluegrass festivals in the early 2000s.
Today, Rick Shinn’s tan-and-white mobile home is condemned. Intruders removed windows and doors to steal a table saw and other items and ripped out parts on his boat.
County eyes property for park
Post 58 attorney Doug Stewart acknowledged that maintenance at the Freedom Farm has decreased over the years as clubhouse owners and other members have died, and that this has led to security problems.
Lt. James Hendricks estimates that St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department has sent deputies to the property more than 100 times in the past five years. That includes regular patrols, but also actions related to squatting, stolen vehicles, drugs and outstanding warrants.
“I’m not sure when the Legion became aware of (the illicit) activity,” Stewart said. “I would tell you that they’ve been aggressive in their efforts to address it. But given their limited resources and the scarcity of the people there and the size of the land, it’s hard to stop all activity of that nature.”
The post has 134 members, according to the American Legion Department of Illinois. That compares to about 600 members in the 1990s.
St. Clair County Board has expressed interest in buying the property and turning it into a park. But it needs a signed contract by the end of the year to use $1 million in COVID-relief funds, according to Board Chairman Mark Kern.
Kern described the Freedom Farm as a “well-used recreational spot” and “big part of the community” for decades. It was the location of his Belleville East High School graduation party in 1981.
Post 58 is working on a potential contract, Kern said, but if the purchase falls through, the county could use the COVID-relief funds on a new Animal Control building.
“It’s in the hands of the American Legion now,” he said.
Leaseholders asked to vacate
Rick Shinn, of Freeburg, is one of a handful of remaining clubhouse owners who say Post 58 officials are requiring them to vacate the property, essentially terminating their land leases, without compensation.
Shinn said he signed an agreement this fall to leave voluntarily after being told that it would allow him to keep fishing in the lake until July 1, 2025, instead of being issued an eviction notice and taken to court on grounds that his mobile home’s condition violates terms of the lease.
“I’m disappointed, and I feel betrayed,” he said. “I’ve had this place for 20 years.”
Marty Conatser, adjutant for the American Legion Department of Illinois, declined to comment for this story. He referred questions to Bill Enyart, a former congressman and Illinois National Guard adjutant general who took over as Post 58 commander this summer.
Enyart referred questions to Stewart, who represented the post in a recent eviction case in St. Clair County Circuit Court involving Lisa Rhodes. He also has been negotiating agreements with other leaseholders.
Rhodes, 66, is a former U.S. Army reservist and one of the few people with full-time residence at the Freedom Farm. She bought her two-bedroom ranch with her ex-husband in 2003 through a real-estate agent. They signed a lifetime land lease with the post.
Rhodes said she had planned to fight the eviction but yielded to pressure to sign an agreement to vacate, allowing her to stay in the home until July 1, 2025. She said she was told that the post could file bankruptcy, which would force her to leave immediately. She now regrets her decision.
“I’d like to get out of it at least what I paid for it and what I paid for the windows and the (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system, and they don’t want to pay me a dime,” Rhodes said. “They said they don’t want my house.”
Rhodes speculated that the county will pay the post hundreds of thousands of dollars for the property, and if that deal collapses, a private developer might pay even more.
Rhodes called the post’s handling of her case “morally wrong, even if it was legally right” because, she said, its leaders are the ones who got into financial trouble after years of mismanagement, and she doesn’t have the money to buy another house and start over.
Post tries to dig out of debt
Post 58 hasn’t filed for bankruptcy, Stewart said, but it has no money to pay clubhouse owners. Even if it did, he said, it would be hard to assess the value of deteriorating structures on leased land.
“One of the incorrect assumptions is that there are no debts associated with that property that have to be paid,” he said. “And there’s other things that come into play. One is that the Legion itself has to find a new home. We don’t have a spot to hold our functions going forward.”
The post needs to find a solution to Freedom Farm problems quickly, Stewart said, as the criminal activity has created an unsafe environment.
The post has the authority to terminate leases if their terms aren’t being followed or structures aren’t up to code, and that’s the case with many of the clubhouses, according to Stewart.
“At the end of the day, the Legion is in a situation that it has to work its way out of, and (terminating leases to prepare for a land sale) was the most viable avenue to be able to do that,” he said.
Andy Bittle, County Board member for District 21, said he started getting complaints about drugs and other crime at the Freedom Farm soon after he was elected in 2022. In one case, a woman reportedly tried to break in a private home along the entrance road.
The county’s idea of buying the Post 58 property and turning it into a park is a good one, Bittle said, but the existence of long-term land leases has complicated negotiations.
“The county is not going to buy property that doesn’t have a clear title,” he said. “We told them that. So the Legion started clearing up title issues.”
Namesake was WWI surgeon
Post 58 was chartered in Belleville in 1919 in honor of Major George E. Hilgard, a physician, who was the city’s first casualty of World War I, according to a history on its website.
Dr. Hilgard served as regimental surgeon of the 9th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Infantry Division. He died at Vittel, France, on June 13, 1918, with burial at Walnut Hill Cemetery in Belleville.
In 1938, the post began sponsoring the Belleville Hilgards baseball team. It was recognized 75 years later with the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame President’s Choice Award.
“The Hilgards own more state titles than any other legion post,” according to a write-up on the Hall of Fame website. “Their record includes 19 state championship appearances and nine championships.”
In the 1940s, Post 58 moved its operations to rural Freeburg and established the Freedom Farm on about 200 acres.
Officials later created an organization called the Veteran’s Recreation and Retirement Association to manage lots leased to members for clubhouses, either for lifetimes or specified periods. An early map shows 128 lots.
The association is now defunct, according to Stewart. The vast majority of original leaseholders have died or otherwise vacated.
Meeting hall destroyed by fire
Post 58 fell on hard times in the 1990s after spending more than $400,000 to build a new hall and headquarters to replace one that was destroyed by fire, according to a 2000 story in the BND.
Leaders thought they could pay off the bank loan, but bingo revenues plummeted as more customers began spending their gambling money on newly legalized riverboat casinos.
Chuck “Bogie” Bogovich came to the rescue. The U.S. Air Force veteran and retired civil servant took over as commander and recruited a handful of volunteers to pick up trash, clean bathrooms, mow and supervise recreational activities that helped raise money.
Bogovich also facilitated the sale of 75 acres for development of 10 homes along George E. Hilgard Memorial Drive and coordinated a fundraiser called Save Our Legion Freedom Festival in 1997. It became an annual event, known simply as Freedom Fest.
“If it wasn’t for (Bogovich), this place would have gone down the tubes a long time ago,” Korean War veteran Mel Lark told the BND. “They were going to foreclose on us.”
By 2000, the post had paid off all its debts. It continued to operate the campground and hosted Girl Scout camps, fish fries, U.S. Navy recruit gatherings, concerts and other activities.
But leaders seemed to realize that trouble was brewing due to the advancing ages and deaths of members, an issue for American Legion posts nationwide. They cited recruitment of younger veterans as one of their main goals.
Downturn worsened with COVID
Conditions at the Freedom Farm began to change about five years ago and got dramatically worse during the COVID pandemic, according to leaseholders Rick Shinn and Rhodes.
They said people down on their luck were living at the campground, not camping for recreational purposes, in a hodgepodge of tents and rundown RVs, and some were selling drugs.
“I called it meth alley,” Rhodes said. “I’d be out with somebody else in the yard or playing with my dogs or whatever, and there would be a line of vehicles between my house and (a pole barn), picking up drugs.
“I love it out here when it’s quiet. But when the campground was (still operating), it was hell on wheels. It was constant stress.”
Squatters also have been living in clubhouses, according to Rhodes, Rick Shinn and Jake Brewer, who bought a mobile home for $900 at a St. Clair County tax sale in 2022.
Brewer, 38, started renovating the mobile home with his friends and girlfriend, Ashley Schultze, to use as a clubhouse next to the lake. But the peace and quiet didn’t last long.
Brewer said a false accusation by a former post commander prompted her to turn off his electricity and, because he couldn’t find anyone else to address the problem in the middle of winter, he ran extension cords to a power pole and got arrested and charged with a misdemeanor.
Brewer said squatters began staying in the mobile home and trashing it, then thieves broke windows and doors and took a generator, air conditioner, washer and dryer, tools and copper parts off appliances.
“We’ve left notes for people saying, ‘Please don’t stay in our house. Please don’t take our belongings,’” said Brewer, of Freeburg.
'I was so excited to live here'
Brewer and Schultze went to the Freedom Farm last week to check on the mobile home and found that a St. Clair County building inspector had posted a condemned notice.
Brewer said he’s frustrated because he’s being told to stay off the property, but no one has explained why he was allowed to buy the mobile home from the county if he couldn’t use it as a clubhouse. He maintains that it can’t be moved because of a permanent addition.
Stewart declined to comment on Brewer’s case, except to confirm that he’s not a leaseholder.
“I love this place,” Brewer said. “I love it. I was so excited to live here. But it’s been a nightmare, and I’ve been nothing but nice to these people.
“This isn’t even a post anymore. There are so many people squatting out here. I think there’s someone living (in my mobile home) right now. There are sleeping bags in the bedroom that I didn’t put there. There are sheets and pillows, candles and an ashtray. They’re not mine.”
Frank Heiligenstein, a Freeburg resident, former County Board member for District 21 and president of the tax-oriented watchdog group Citizens Federation of St. Clair County, supports the plan to turn the Freedom Farm into a park.
Heiligenstein said he’s heard many complaints about problems on the property, and he’s confident that such a project would lead to the improvement of badly deteriorated county roads in the area.
Rick Shinn said he won’t feel so bad about losing his clubhouse if the county establishes a park because he could still take his grandchildren fishing at the lake, but he will be upset if he hears that a developer is paying a large sum to Post 58 for the land.
Bittle, the current County Board member, also hopes to see the county park plan go through.
“That way, people can still use it, and it kind of benefits everybody,” he said last week. “If it gets sold to a developer, and they put a subdivision out there, so be it. I just don’t want to see it as it is now, which is a place for criminal activities and that kind of stuff.
“The neighbors are all stressed out, and their kids don’t want to go outside. If it’s a park, I know (the county will) take care of it. It will open at a certain time and close at a certain time. They’ll patrol it and keep all that trouble out of there.”
Editor's note: This story was originally published by the Belleville News-Democrat. Teri Maddox is a reporter for the Belleville News-Democrat, a news partner of St. Louis Public Radio. Reporter Lexi Cortes contributed to this report.
