Cairo

Cairo

This is the southernmost town in Illinois, on a little peninsula at the point where the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers meet.

I went to finish my journey down Illinois's section of the Mississippi, but I learned something much different than I'd expected.

The Great River Road
First, to finish the Great River Road.  I pulled off the road just before it split to cross the rivers, with one branch going to Missouri and the other to Kentucky.  That's also the point where Fort Defiance was built during the Civil War.  There's a parking area there with some historical signs and a road leading off to what's left of Ft. Defiance.

This sign explains that Lewis & Clark stopped here for a week before going up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Missouri River.  While they were here, they taught themselves navigation skills.  Amazing to me to think of what they were doing: setting off into a wilderness area where no white men had been before, intending to cross half a continent and come back again, and it's only at this point they learn longitude and latitude?  Sure glad they thought of that before they left.

Until I saw this marker, I didn't know there were any meridians, besides the Greenwich Meridian of course.  Turns out this is related and there are many more of them in the US.

As you can see from the title of the marker, these meridians are survey aids.

This graphic I found online shows the meridians as far west as the 5th, but it turns out they're used throughout the western US too.  A slightly technical but dumbed-down (for people like me) website explaining how these work in the Midwest is at this link.   www.sidwellco.com/principal-meridians  To see how they play out across the West, check out this link.   www.mdshs.org/US-Map

Cairo
Now, for what I learned about Cairo, which is that it's a prime example of how racism can kill a town when it truly takes over the local culture.  When I was looking for campgrounds in the area I found websites like the ones here.   This one - www.atlasobscura.com/cairo-illinois - is a brief summary, if you just want the bottom line and an illustrating photo.  For quite a bit of American history, including some Civil War history I hadn't heard about, and how that led up to the modern overt racism Northerners have comforted themselves with thinking was found only in the South, take a look at this link.   www.legendsofamerica.com/il-cairo 

This town is indeed dying.  I saw almost nothing alive here except government offices, historical sites (run by government entities) and churches, with a very few local businesses - car wash, ice cream store.  I saw a few people gathering near these businesses, but the only vehicles I saw seemed to be driving through, to and from other places.  Even though I'd wanted to stop, there was nothing here to stop for.  All the other buildings were boarded up, burned, falling apart - just as those websites say.  Decay was everywhere.

I've learned many things so far on this trip, including how incredibly diverse our country is.  But one of the primary lessons I've been learning has been how remarkably insulated in my world I've been all my life to the injustices my fellow citizens have been suffering.  It's one of those things I knew as an item on the news programs, but I'm gradually starting to see it much more clearly in real life.  Certainly not something I expected, but certainly enlightening.