Contest to pick Illinois' Seven Wonders

Sure, Illinois lacks the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Pyramids of Giza, or the Colossus of Rhodes.

But it does offer visitors the Garden of the Gods in southern Illinois, the prehistoric archaeological remains of Cahokia Mounds, and a 170-foot-tall water tower shaped like a giant ketchup bottle in Collinsville.

Echoing the ancient seven wonders of the world, the Illinois Bureau of Tourism has launched a "Seven Wonders of Illinois" promotion.

Visitors to the http://www.enjoyillinois.com Web site will be able to make nominations through February, said Jan Kostner, the bureau's deputy director.

Those nominations can be for anything residents and visitors consider wonderful about Illinois _ parks and historic sites, statues and museums, cheesy roadside attractions and naturally beautiful scenic spots.

The nominees will be placed in categories for each of seven regions: Chicago, Chicagoland, northern, central, western, southwest and southern.

The public then will be able to participate in online voting for their favorites starting March 5, with the field being narrowed through the rest of the month. The tourism bureau will announce one winner for each region on April 30, along with themed travel packages and downloadable videos, Kostner said.

In southwestern Illinois, a favorite nominee should be the Meeting of the Great Rivers Scenic Byway Area, at least in the opinion of Brett Stawar, president and CEO of the Alton Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The area is where the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois rivers meet. It features towering limestone bluffs, state parks, bike trails and several sites memorializing connections to explorers Lewis and Clark, whose Corps of Discovery spent time there preparing for their historic journey.

Some of the sites and attractions Illinois tourism officials believe might be nominated for the "Seven Wonders of Illinois" contest include the Old State Capitol in Springfield, the lodge at Starved Rock State Park, the Mississippi River, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Dana Thomas House in Springfield, the Superman statue in Metropolis, the giant ketchup bottle, the John Deere Pavilion in the Quad Cities, Millennium Park in Chicago, Garden of the Gods in Shawnee National Forest, the statue of Robert Wadlow, the world's tallest man, in Alton, and Jane, the dinosaur fossil at Rockford's Burpee Museum of Natural History.

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