Near Starved Rock on the Illinois River, the Hotel Plaza site preserves repeated occupation from prehistoric times into the early historic era, with especially important evidence from the years around the founding of Fort St. Louis in 1682. Closely tied to the nearby Grand Village of the Illinois, it reflects a frontier landscape where Illiniwek groups, other Native communities, and French newcomers interacted after the 1680 destruction of the village and the gathering of allied peoples near the fort. Excavations in 1948 and 1949 uncovered pottery, tools, trade goods, food remains, pits, and burials that reveal long-term settlement, subsistence, ritual activity, and early sustained contact.