Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1902 — A Large Delinquent List [ARTICLE]

A Large Delinquent List

The delinquent tax list of hake county, that has been published, is as large this year as the combined delinquent lists qf any other fifty counties in the state. There are over 20,000 different "towns” and "city” lots described in it, and they represent $3,000,000 of investment that will be practically turned over, in whole or part, to any one who will assume the taxes. These lots were sold sight unseen by Chicago sharpers to people all over the world, for all the way from $75, for inside lots, to $3,000 for corner or business block locations. There are houses on some of them, and they are the silent sentries of mirage cities that never developed. Many of the* great centers of industry never were to develop, except on paper, for the lands over which the towns were platted have always been under from six inches to three feet of Kankakee river flow. The three million or more dollars was invested, as a Tule, by people of moderate means—several hundred of them being* school teachers, and many of them foreigners who were financially crippled for life in some of the most glaring and stupendous swindling schemes on record. Ten thousand of these delinquent pieces of property lie in and around Tolleston, three thousand of them lie under the sluggish water of the Kankakee; another two thousand are in and around the collapsed town of Grffith, of sorrowful memory to several present or 'past residents of Rensselaer, and the others are scattered pretty well, some of them lying in additions to Hammond and several thousand being beautiful Michigan Lake front properties, extending all the way from Hammond around the twenty miles of lake front to Porter county. Griffith, though it went down in the general rush, really at one time had pretty fair prospects, as several factories were there, and more were on the Why when the crash came.