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 […]
Category: Place Names of Illinois
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 […]
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 […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 6, 2008
Bug Tussle. Franklin. According to a local story, the community was named when a revival meeting attracted more june bugs than attendees, and the congregation spent most of the evening […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 3, 2008
Elizabeth. Jo Daviess. Village (1887) Twelve miles east-southeast of Galena. According to an Illinois state historical marker, in June 1832, at the height of the Black Hawk War, a group […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 2, 2008
Bone Gap. Edwards. Village (1891) six miles northwest of Albion. Reportedly named for the large number of animal bones found by settlers in the 1830s (Harper, ed., History of Edwards […]
Illinois Place Name of the Day – Oct. 1, 2008
We just received finished copies of Edward Callary’s new book Place Names of Illinois. The publication date is November 3, 2008, and every weekday leading up to publication I will post […]