The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Until about 1850, much of northern Illinois was still frontier land and sparsely populated, which the exception of Chicago and towns along the rivers. This changed in 1850, when President Millard Fillmore signed a land grant for the construction of the Illinois Central Railroad, lobbied for by then-lawyers Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln. With the railroad expanding into Central Illinois, new opportunities for settlement by German, Dutch, Irish, Italian, Swedish, and other European immigrants opened up in Woodford County.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Start Roanoke’s collection
The first neighbors to add old photos shape how Roanoke’s history is told.
0 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Roanoke, decade by decade
2000
Nothing in Roanoke is on the National Register yet
That’s true of most small towns. It doesn’t mean Roanoke has no history, only that no one has written up a nomination. The closest listed place is Eureka College Campus Historic District in Eureka, 6.7 miles away.
Roanoke and the nearest listed places
How a place gets listed
Then & now
When neighbors add old photos, retakes from the same spot appear here side by side.
From Wikimedia Commons (2). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.