Historical November 1985 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
On April 1, 1861, the city we call East St. Louis took the essential geographic shape it has today.
The citizens of two communities, Illinoistown and East St. Louis, voted on that date to merge into one city and adopted the name of East St. Louis.
In fact, Illinoistown had been in existence since 1817: whereas, the upstart East St. Louis had only been platted in 1859—two years after the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad connected the river with the Atlantic. Early writers who came to St. Louis by land from the east commented on the beauty of the western shore as they prepared to take Wiggins Ferry across the Mississippi.
One of the reasons it looked so attractive was the apparent grimness of the eastern shore.
From the Mississippi to the escarpment leading up from the American Bottoms was a distance of nearly 12 miles. Much of it flooded every year, the bottoms was largely swamp and deserted Indian mounds.
The Cahokia Creek was known for its odor as it crossed the bottoms to enter the river just across from Mill Creek on the western shore.
To reach the ferry to St. Louis, the traveler had to cross Cahokia Creek. Illinoistown was platted on both sides of this creek. Henry Schoolcraft described the village as anything but attractive in 1821.
It would be forty years before it really started to become something. Wheras St. Louis grew because of the river, Illinoistown grew when the railroads came in 1857.
By 1837, there were maybe a dozen families living along the Cahokia Creek where the ferry road lead the way to the trip to St. Louis. First laid out by John McKnight and Thomas Brady, it was not even a pleasant overnight stop until after the Civil War.
The town grew in the 1840s as St. Louis grew.
Most of the produce and virtually all the coal for the west bank came through Illinoistown to take the ferry over the river. What businesses there were serviced the transportation of goods to the western shore.
The Ohio and Mississippi Railroad changed all that only in so far as it brought another kind of transportation vehicle to be serviced in addition to coaches, wagons, and ferries.
It was largely St. Louis money which paid for the railroad from Indiana to Illinoistown across the Illinois prairie.
When the rails from the Atlantic to the Mississippi were completed in 1857, a number of developments were spurred along adjacent to Illinoistown.
The largest of these was platted in 1859 and called East St. Louis.
On land originally owned in part by John Jacob Astor, four men—Samuel Barlow, Henry Chauncey, William Aspinwall, and Samuel Comstock—held title to the lands involved.
Two years later, the residents of Illinoistown voted with those of East St. Louis to merge their communities and name the final product East St. Louis. Four years later, 1865, another election featured an attempt to rename the city St. Clair after the first governor at Kaskaskia in 1790, Arthur St. Clair.
The decision was to stay with East St. Louis, and there it has remained to this day.
The forty-four years of Illinoistown, 1817 to 1861, demonstrate the effect of geography upon the commercial and residential development of urban areas. St. Louis, built on a limestone bluff overlooking the river, developed and grew while its eastern neighbor was almost washed away by the very same river.
The American Bottoms, fertile but unprotected from the power of the river, held risk for any who lived there.
Yet it was these residents who won and held the monopoly on the river ferriage at St. Louis.
It was they who wanted to bridge the river; and it was they who first brought the railroad to St. Louis signalling the end to the steamboat era. St. Louis eventually turned away from the river and abandoned its riverfront until the Arch brought tourism as a growth industry to recall the romantically nostalgic steamboat days.
By that time, the railroad yards of East St. Louis were as derelict as the wharfs of downtown St. Louis.
As the riverfront rebuilds, it is clear the east bank will have to also rebuild.
The two shores, separated by a common river and a common language, are really one to anyone visiting either bank of the river. Perhaps this would be more obvious if East St. Louis had been called Missouritown—particularly since its major tasks have always been to act as the front door to St. Louis.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, November 1985.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1985_11.pdf, printed page(s) 6; PDF page(s) 6.
