A group seeking to resurrect the now-shuttered Lorado Taft Field Campus is hosting two fundraisers in Oregon to raise money in support of their efforts.

On Saturday, Sept. 6, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Together for Taft, is hosting a live music festival called Fest by the Nest from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Lowden State Park, 1411 N. River Road. The group is also hosting a 5K and one mile run/walk on Oct. 5, starting at 7 a.m. for registration at Oregon High School, 1101 Jefferson St.

ExpandAutoplay

Image 1 of 9

Buildings on the Lorado Taft Campus sit empty Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025, at Lowden State Park in Oregon. (Alex T. Paschal)

All proceeds from the events, along with the Together for Taft logo T-shirts being sold online, will be used for the “behind the scenes work” needed for the group to “get to the next step” of its mission to reopen the historic Taft campus as an open environmental education center for all ages, Together for Taft Founder Julie Bassett told Shaw Local.

“It is a very complex, layered endeavor. The fundraising isn’t necessarily what’s going to save Taft. It’s going to be the big donors that do that,” Bassett said. “There’s big help and little help and it doesn’t matter. It’s not about metrics in terms of how much or how little. It’s the point that people are doing all they can, where they can.”

[ Group organizes with mission of reopening Taft Field Campus ]

The Lorado Taft Field Campus is a 141-acre property featuring a dining hall that overlooks the Rock River, outdoor trails and several other buildings and dorms. It is adjacent to Lowden State Park and is the home of Lorado Taft’s Eternal Indian statue, commonly referred to as the Black Hawk Statue.

The campus was originally part of the Wallace Heckman estate and run by Taft as the Eagle’s Nest Art Colony, a summer home for a group of Chicago artists and writers.

Northern Illinois University acquired a portion of the Heckman estate in 1951, named the campus after Lorado Taft and ran it as a field campus, offering outdoor education classes and camps for schoolchildren across northern Illinois. NIU discontinued the program in 1999 and officials announced in September 2024 that the university would be closing the campus due to aging infrastructure and increasing operational costs.

It permanently closed in December 2024.

That’s when Bassett, along with several others, began organizing an effort to save the campus.

“Some people see Taft as being a liability or an old program past its prime, but I see a promise, a living classroom” where “nature isn’t something we extract from, but something we learn from,” Bassett said.

The group held an interest meeting Feb. 19 in Oregon where they spoke about how they envision the campus as “a global hub of intergenerational learning,” a place where people can get certifications related to environmental studies and have it open for everyone in the community to enjoy, Bassett said.

When the campus was run by NIU, “it’s always been a closed campus” meaning that unless you were a student in the program “you really had no reason being on campus,” Bassett said.

“One of the things that I envisioned with Taft, is having a relationship with the surrounding communities, but primarily Oregon,” Bassett said. “I want people out there. I want them on the trails. I want them to be a part of nature. We need to get back to nature.”

Some ideas, Bassett said, are to turn one of the buildings “into a cozy coffee corner” and “doing farm to table meals” in the dining hall “so the public can come out there and enjoy a nice meal in a beautiful vista looking out over the Rock River.”

Bassett said they’d also like to have an art show and art program, which she thinks “Laredo Taft would be very honored” by.

Since that February meeting, Bassett said, Together for Taft “continues to gain momentum” and has received a lot of support from the community and the city of Oregon.

“It’s going to take everybody together,” Bassett said. “People want to see it happen, and it will happen. It’s just trusting the journey.”

For information, visit togetherfortaft.org or join the Together for Taft Facebook group.