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00000179-e1ff-d2b2-a3fb-ffffd8410000Contributing reporter Dan Libman and WNIJ's Carl Nelson are the first to ride their bicycles along the entire Rock River Trail -- 320 miles from Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, to the Mississippi River at Rock Island, Illinois.Others have motorbiked the trail, and paddled it, but nobody received the Rock River Trail Initiative's 320-Mile Award for pedaling it... until now.Libman and Nelson shared the experience through five multi-media reports which you can find below in our archive. You also can explore WNIJ's other coverage of Rock River news.Enjoy -- And make it your goal to ride the entire trail this summer!00000179-e1ff-d2b2-a3fb-ffffd8420000

Oregon Group Wants Permanent Maintenance Fund For Black Hawk

Guy Stephens

An Oregon group supporting restoration of the statue known as Black Hawk wants to establish a dedicated fund to keep it maintained. 

The statue was uncovered recently after being wrapped up for the past few years. Observers noticed some further damage to the statue, and the restoration work isn’t complete.  

The recently passed state budget allocates another $350,000 to the project, but members of Oregon Together, a nonprofit supporting the statue’s restoration, want to go further. 

Black Hawk Restoration team member Jan Stinson says she wants to create an permanent maintenance fund to stave off further deterioration.
 
“Kind of like an endowment fund at a university library. We don’t want to go through this again. We want to see him maintained from now on,” she said. 
 
Member Roger Cain says his group plans to meet with the Illinois DNR and Illinois Conservation Foundation on a maintenance “endowment” and determine how $350,000 from the new state budget will go toward restoration contracts.   

“I think part of the reason we want to sit down with them is to say, 'Okay, how soon can we have this budget? How soon is the allocation money going to be released? How soon can that money start being spent?'”

That meeting will take place Monday, and Cain says his group will continue to raise funds. He hopes they can raise enough money to finish the current restoration work and create the permanent maintenance fund so that Black Hawk doesn’t have to be subject to another large restoration project.