A history of Cairo,
since 1818
Postcards, papers and photographs of Cairo from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Cairo was named after the Egyptian city of the same name because its location at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers was reminiscent of the Nile Delta.
The first municipal charter for Cairo and the Bank of Cairo were issued in 1818, but without any settlement and without any depositors. A second and successful effort to establish a town was made by the Cairo City and Canal Company in 1836–37, with a large levee built to encircle the site. However, this effort collapsed in 1840, with few settlers remaining.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Cairo’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
0 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewOhio River between Mound City and…, 1864: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Cairo
See all 26 →
Cairo, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Ohio River between Mound City and Cairo (1864) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (4) and the Library of Congress (1). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.