How Are Mussels Used (continued) ?

The mussels are cooked out in “nondescript and malodorous camps (Figure 64) where tents and shacks supplemented cabin boats and where crude vats were set up for steaming open the mussels” (Thompson 2002). The mussel shells are thrown into piles to await cleaning and sorting before being sent to factories where the blank buttons (Figure 65) are cut from them. The soft tissue of the mussel is often discarded after being probed for pearls. In Meredosia, mussel shellers are required to take the cooked meat to the channel of the river and to dispose of it in the river, or the mussel operation is shut down. This prevents the “stench of rotten muscle [sic] meet” which is “overwhelming” (Meredosia Historical and Genealogical Society 1989).

Figure 64: Early 1900s Mussel Camp along the Illinois River (Illinois State Museum)

Figure 65: Mussel Shell with Blank
Buttons Cut (Key West Shrimp House)

Figure 66: Pearl Buttons and Spoons
Made from Mussel Shells

These blanks are then sent to finishing factories where the buttons are finished. Mussels are also used to make spoons (Figure 66). In 1912 there are 15 button factories on the river in Peoria, Beardstown, Meredosia, Naples, Pearl, and Grafton (Cummings 2003).

Mussel harvests begin to decline as fishing pressures deplete the numbers. By 1912 there are only 400 boats are working the Illinois River, down from a peak of 2,600 in 1909. Recovery of the mussel beds is considered slim with the virtual elimination of mussels by 1920. Mussel fishery continues until 1948 when the last plant on the river closes, driven out of business as plastic buttons and zippers replace pearl buttons from mussel shells.