A history of Charleston,
since 1831
Postcards, papers and photographs of Charleston from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Native Americans lived in the Charleston area for thousands of years before the first European settlers arrived. With the great tallgrass prairie to the west, beech-maple forests to the east, and the Embarras River and Wabash Rivers between, the Charleston area provided semi-nomadic Indians access to a variety of resources. Indians may have deliberately set the "wildfires" which maintained the local mosaic of prairie and oak–hickory forest. Streams with names such as 'Indian Creek' and 'Kickapoo Creek' mark the sites of former Indian settlements. One village is said to have been located south of Fox Ridge State Park near a deposit of flint.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Charleston’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
1 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewThe Lincoln–Douglas debates of 18…, 1858: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Charleston
See all 22 →
Charleston, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as The Lincoln–Douglas debates of 1858 - CHARLESTON ILLINOIS FAIR GROUNDS (1858) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (4) and the Library of Congress (2). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.