BlockBefore

Illiopolis, Illinois

11 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1954 and the latest in 1985. It stands in Illiopolis Township. It lies in ZIP code area 62539. The Survey maps it on the Niantic quadrangle. 846 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 600 feet above sea level.

Illiopolis within Sangamon County

Population over time

2 figures

Illiopolis fell from 891 to 846 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

YearPeople Change
2010891
2020846-45 (-5%)

Topographic sheets covering this place

5 surveys from 11 printed sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

In the county-history sources

6,404 words on this township

History of Sangamon County, Illinois; Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Townships ... Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens. History of Illinois, published 1881 names this settlement in its chapter on Illiopolis Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

The township of Illiopolis is in the eastern part of the county, and is bounded on the east by Macon county, on the west by Wheatfield township, on the north by Logan county, and on the south by Christian. From the peculiar shape of the county, the old settlers used to call the territory comprising the township the coon's tail.

Passage source: History of Sangamon County, Illinois; Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Townships ... Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens. History of Illinois, published 1881.

The township is five miles wide from east to west, and its mean length from north to south about eight miles. The soil of the township is a heavy black loam, and is especially adapted to all kinds of cereals.

Passage source: History of Sangamon County, Illinois; Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Townships ... Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens. History of Illinois, published 1881.

The first settlement made in what is now Illiopolis township was in 1826, by Mrs. Anderson, a widow lady, who settled on section thirtyfour. Soon after, Mr. Allen, Joel Watkins, Chesley Dickerson, William Gregg, James Hampton, John Churchill, John and James Hunter, Josiah Kent, William Bridges, and others came. All these settled in or near the Sangamon river timber. The township being mostly prairie, prevented its rapid settlement, and consequently it did not develop like some others, and it was not until some time after the railroad was built that the prairie began to be improved to any great extent. Now some of the finest and most highly cultivated farms in the county, are the prairie farms of Illiopolis.

Passage source: History of Sangamon County, Illinois; Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Townships ... Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens. History of Illinois, published 1881.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Illiopolis Township - it names this place 51 more 51 times.

Fires near this place

2 since 2009

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 2 fires within 5 miles of Illiopolis in 2009, burning about 4 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause Fires
Smoking1
Missing data/not specified/undetermined1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

DateCause SizeReported by Name on the report
4 March 2009Missing data/not specified/undetermined2.0 acresIllinois Division of Forestry ResourcesDAVIS
17 March 2009Smoking2.0 acresIllinois Division of Forestry ResourcesSMITH

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in Sangamon County

Storms near this place

7 since 1996

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Illiopolis in 7 storm reports between 1996 and 2013: 3 thunderstorm wind, 2 hail, 2 tornado. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

WhenEvent Place namedHarm What the report says
May 2013Thunderstorm WindIlliopolis$22,000A large tree was blown onto a truck.
June 2003Tornado (F0)Illiopolis-A tornado briefly touched down in a field. No damage or injuries were reported.
April 2000Tornado (F0)Illiopolis-A tornado briefly touched down one mile south of Illiopolis. A porch on a home was damaged, a grain bin was damaged, and several power lines were blown down. No injuries were reported.
June 2000Thunderstorm WindIlliopolis-One tree was broken off near its base. Also, several large tree limbs were blown down.
April 2000HailIlliopolis-no account filed
May 2000HailIlliopolis-no account filed
April 1996Thunderstorm WindIlliopolis-no account filed

Every storm recorded in Sangamon County

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Map PlaceDistance Sheets
Haynes2.9 miles10
Saunders3.5 miles10
Lanesville5.7 miles10
Mechanicsburg8.8 miles10
Buffalo8.8 miles10
Buffalo Hart11.7 miles11
Dawson11.7 miles10
Buckhart12.9 miles12

Elsewhere

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

Wikipedia article on IlliopolisAn encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q2671777The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0).

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 410774. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.