Monks Mound is the largest remaining mound at Cahokia, near Collinsville. Photo by Tim Vickers. Nearly 1,000 years ago, a bustling city sprouted in southern Illinois. As many as 20,000 people lived in this six-square-mile metropolis located near modern St. Louis around the year 1050, but then the civilization simply disappeared. Now, one team of […]
flood
Posted inArts & Culture
Rebirth of a rivertown
Walking down the main business street in Cairo, Ill., it’s tempting to think that this spring’s floodwaters of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers were sent to put the languishing town out of its misery once and for all. Many buildings along Commercial Street in Illinois’ southernmost town have long been abandoned, left to decay since […]
Posted inArts & Culture
1937 – INCHES KEEP FLOOD FROM CAIRO
Flood waters have begun to recede in Southern Illinois in and around Cairo following concentrated efforts by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and others, but plenty of work remains to be done. (More info and background here: http://thesouthern.com/news/national/article_56caf9fc-feea-5bb3-9f49-1f85096096ca.html) In an interesting coincidence, Illinois Times editor Fletcher Farrar recently found some old newspapers from 1937 […]
