GHOUL-ENA, Illinois Halloween T-Shirt

This design is one-of-a-kind and found only at Dubuque Clothing Co. — the GHOUL-ENA, Illinois Halloween T-Shirt is printed on a premium tee with high-quality, soft inks built to last.

If any building in Galena earns the "haunted" reputation, it's the DeSoto House Hotel. It opened April 9, 1855, billed as the largest hotel in the West, and quickly became the town's political stage — Abraham Lincoln spoke from its Main Street balcony in 1856, and Ulysses S. Grant used its rooms as his 1868 presidential campaign headquarters after a hero's homecoming reception drew 25,000 people. After fires, a boiler explosion, and a stretch of closure, it was fully restored in the 1980s. With that much drama packed into one building, it's no wonder local ghost tours make it a regular stop.

Our GHOUL-ENA, Illinois Halloween T-Shirt puts a spooky, punny spin on a neighboring river town, with a design you'll only find at Dubuque Clothing Co. It's printed on our premium tee blank with soft, high-quality ink, so the Halloween graphic stays soft and crack-free through plenty of trick-or-treat seasons.

The pun points to Galena, Illinois, just up the river from Dubuque. Galena boomed as a lead-mining town in the 1820s — Native peoples had worked its ore deposits for centuries before George Davenport shipped the first commercial load in 1816, and the town's population rocketed from about 200 to 10,000 in just three years. Galena went on to become home to nine Union Civil War generals, most famously Ulysses S. Grant, and its beautifully preserved 19th-century streets now draw visitors — and, every October, plenty of ghost stories — from across the Midwest.

Reference: Galena, Illinois — Wikipedia

Reference: DeSoto House Hotel — History