Rock River

Along the Rock River near Sterling's Dillon Home Museum — an 1858 Italianate house built for Civil War Brigadier General Edward Needles Kirk, later home to Northwestern Steel and Wire president P.W. Dillon — locals report ghost sightings tied to the bluffs and nearby railroad tracks, where the "blind corner" has claimed lives to both train accidents and the river's strong current over the years. On the dead-end of Seventh Avenue, some say you can hear a mother calling for her children, and see a woman walking along the tracks before she vanishes.