One of Central Illinois' hottest dance halls in the wide-open Roaring Twenties was O'Neil's, located on a former dairy pasture just beyond Bloomington's western edge.

In July 1922, area residents petitioned the city of Bloomington to cut off water and sewer services to the hall. Neighbors were up in arms over the unwelcome noise and all-night gallivanting, with the last straw the discovery one morning of an "insensibly intoxicated" girl on the dance hall grounds (today O'Neil Park).

We can't get to sleep until midnight," complained one resident. "Even our children are becoming contaminated. One of my young girls came home the other night demonstrating some foolish step she had seen at the dance."

Jazz Age dance halls and platforms, many scattered throughout the rural reaches of Central Illinois, offered the promise of illicit liquor, the mingling of the sexes and other unwholesome extracurricular activities for the era's "flaming youth."

An incomplete list of area dance halls would include Shadynook, located east of Normal town limits; Bob Mikel's Jungleland near Downs; Hinshaw's, 2.5 miles southwest of Danvers; Crystal Garden in or near Cooksville; Orendorff Springs, 4.5 miles southeast of Bloomington; Funk's Grove Park; Mackinaw Dells Park near Goodfield; and Bon-Go (or Bongo without the hyphen), on the southern edge of Bloomington.

The tuxedo-clad dance bands (or "orchestras," as they were often called) of the 1920s played post-ragtime, pre-swing jazz. Bands that performed at area dance halls and platforms included the Moonlight Melody Boys; Fred O'Brien and his Silvertown Juniors; Abbott Parson's New Orleans Blue Boys; Maurer's Black Cat Orchestra; Tucker's Original Night Owls; Noonan's Syncopators; and Pinky Green and his Red Birds. In the mid-1920s, the area's most popular bandleader was George C. Goforth of Bloomington, who had a financial stake in Bon-Go Park.

A convergence of factors contributed to the dance hall phenomenon. The 1920s was a period of relative economic plenty for the middle class, bringing with it revolutions in consumption patterns and leisure. The automobile gave young people mobility unthinkable a generation earlier. Motion pictures and radio further loosened parental restraints. Prohibition, which went into effect in 1920, made cornfield dance halls and hastily erected platforms more attractive to those interested in not only dancing, but also drinking alcohol far from the prying eyes of local law enforcement.

Women, recently guaranteed the right to vote, also made gains in the workplace and began exercising independence at home. A sampling of period movies playing in Bloomington theaters reveals the changing role of women, especially in regard to public displays of sexuality. The movies included "The Sporting Venus," featuring a "reckless and pleasure-mad" girl of London night life; "Proud Flesh" ("She danced on the hearts of men! -and she was some stepper!"); "A Kiss in a Taxi" ("Oui, Oui, It's a Wow!"); and "Don't Tell the Wife."

It's clear that McLean County Sheriff J.E. Morrison was no fan of dance hall jazz. "I am opposed to dancing in any form," he said. "I believe dancing is a menace to society. It leads boys and girls to the bad and has an injurious effect upon married persons."

Bloomington's Florence Fifer Bohrer, the first woman to serve in the Illinois Senate, campaigned on the promise to cleanup dance halls. She then played a leading role in the passage of a 1925 act that required county boards to license dance halls and roadhouses located in unincorporated areas. Under the new law, a county board could revoke a dance hall license for a variety of reasons, such as allowing "disorderly or immoral practices" on the premises.

Crackdowns like those led by Sheriff Morrison and State Sen. Bohrer, the Great Depression and repeal of Prohibition all helped deflate the dance hall craze, though a few local venues survived into the post-war years. By the 1950s, though, a new type of music supplanted jazz as the new menace: rock and roll.