Cave in Rock. Hardin. Village (1901) twenty-five miles southeast of Harrisburg. Named from the natural cave in the bluff along the Ohio River, a landmark for boatmen since the seventeenth […]
Category: Illinois / regional
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 17, 2008
Equality. Gallatin. Village (1851, 1872) ten miles east of Harrisburg. Founded about 1827 by Willis Hargrave, John Black, and Thornton Cum(m)ings. Formerly known as the Gallatin Salines, a tract of […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 16, 2008
Shawneetown. Gallatin. City (1814, 1874) nineteen miles east of Harrisburg. Also Shawnee Township. Named from the Shawnee Tribe, the “southern people,” members of which migrated to the area from southern […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 15, 2008
Savoy. Champaign. Village (1956) two miles south of Champaign. Named for Princess Clotilde of the Alpine Duchy, the House of Savoy, who visited Illinois in 1861 with her husband, Prince […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 14, 2008
Lickskillet. Lickskillet is a popular (usually informal) place name, occurring at least a hundred times in the United States. The stories told to explain the name are remarkably similar, usually […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 13, 2008
Golf. Cook. Village (1928). Named for the game of golf. The local story is that Albert J. Erling, president of the Milwaukee Road, would have the train stopped at this […]
“Dime Novel Desperadoes” profiled in the Chicago Tribune
John Hallwas’s new book Dime Novel Desperadoes: The Notorious Maxwell Brothers was featured in the Chicago Tribune‘s October 11, 2008, “Illinois Style” column. “No books had been written about them; in the […]
Just Landed: A bevy of new books
A handful of new books landed on my desk in the past few weeks: –Terrence Malick by Lloyd Michaels (October 20, 2008) –Health Culture in the Heartland, 1880-1980: An Oral History […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 10, 2008
Goofy Ridge. Mason. Nine miles northeast of Havana. The origin of the name is unknown. According to a local story, the name dates from the Prohibition era of the 1920s, […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 9, 2008
Wing. Livingston. Seven miles northeast of Fairbury. Founded in 1883 by a man named Byrd. According to a local story, there was already a Byrd in Illinois so there ought […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 8, 2008
My hometown! Park Forest. Cook, Will. Founded in 1946 as a residential community for returning veterans of World War II by Carroll F. Sweet and American Community Builders. The name […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 7, 2008
Foosland [FOOS luhnd]. Champaign. Village (1959) seven miles southwest of Gibson City. Founded in 1874 and named for William Foos, an absentee landlord who owned some 3,500 acres in Champaign […]