How to Visit Cairo, Illinois
Cairo is a city seeped in history and devastated by the civil rights movement of the 1960s. African-Americans refused to shop at stores that did not hire them, and white store owners refused to give in to the pressure. In the end, the business district collapsed, and a city that had between 10,000 and 15,000 residents before the Civil War shrank to a population of 3,000. Cairo is an island behind seawalls, surrounded by the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and low-lying farmland. Regular spring flooding makes life difficult and can leave the city the only dry land for miles, safe behind its walls.
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Instructions
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How to Visit Cairo, Illinois
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Step back 150 years to the days when Cairo was a thriving river port. At Fort Defiance State Park, you can visit the spot on the Ohio River where Ulysses S. Grant once commanded the Union forces. The port here was important to the navies of both sides in the Civil War, and both held it at various times during the war. Runaway slaves often looked to Cairo as their first refuge in the free state of Illinois.
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Watch the rivers from the lookout at Fort Defiance. The bright blue Ohio rolls into the mighty Mississippi River just south of Cairo, and watching the rivers merge is an excellent lesson in physics and hydrology. The blue waters of the Ohio quickly disappear into the churning mud of the Mississippi. The lookout is also a great place to watch the tugs go by and learn a lesson about the continuing reliance on barge transportation on the river.
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Visit the old Customs House, a testament to what used to be. The three-story brick building in downtown Cairo was built during Reconstruction and now houses the city museum, featuring historical documents relating to Grant and other Civil War heroes who visited the once-thriving city.
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Check out the seawalls. Cairo was built to withstand flooding by one or both rivers and is completely surrounded by levees and flood walls. If the rivers get close to topping the 60-foot walls and deluging the city below, plans are in place to blow up part of the levees upriver, flooding the local farmland to protect the city.
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See Magnolia Manor, a 14-room antebellum manor house built by a Cairo businessman when the city was thriving. After Grant retired as president, one of his celebrations was held at Magnolia Manor.
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Investigate the civil rights movement and the battles that took place in Cairo. The business boycott was just one of the city's many racially troubled times.
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Tips & Warnings
Cairo is a very poor city in a very poor part of the state. Sadly, crime is very common in some parts of the city.
One of the few remaining industries in Cairo is a soybean processing plant, and anyone familiar with the process will attest that the smell can be unpleasant.
