McGirr, Illinois

10 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1934 and the latest in 1994. It stands in Afton Township. It lies in ZIP code area 60556. The Survey maps it on the Waterman quadrangle. It stands 896 feet above sea level.

McGirr within DeKalb County

Topographic sheets covering this place

7 surveys from 10 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.

1934 USGS De Kalb quadrangle1:62500
1937 USGS De Kalb quadrangle1:62500, 2 printings
1958 USGS Aurora quadrangle1:250000, 3 printings
1961 USGS Aurora quadrangle1:250000
1971 USGS Waterman quadrangle1:24000
1985 USGS Aurora quadrangle1:100000
1994 USGS Waterman quadrangle1:24000

In the county-history sources

1,532 words on this township

Portrait and Biographical Album of DeKalb County, Illinois : Containing Full-page Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens of the County : Together with Portraits and Biographies of All the Governors of Illinois, and of the Presidents of the United States : Also Containing a History of the County, from Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, published 1885 names this settlement in its chapter on Afton Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

W. R. Campbell is given the honor of being the first settler and John. A. Hayden the next. Among other early settlers were Daniel Washburn, Timothy Pierson, John McGirr, Benjamin Muzzy, Charles Ward, Francis Bemis and Alexander Folger.

Passage source: Portrait and Biographical Album of DeKalb County, Illinois : Containing Full-page Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens of the County : Together with Portraits and Biographies of All the Governors of Illinois, and of the Presidents of the United States : Also Containing a History of the County, from Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, published 1885.

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 Afton Township.

Fires near this place

1 since 2018

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 1 fire within 5 miles of McGirr in 2018, burning about 10 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
Equipment and vehicle use	1

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

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
25 September 2018	Equipment and vehicle use	10 acres	Illinois Division of Forestry Resources	DAVIS RD/SHABBONA RD FIELD FIRE

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

Every fire recorded in DeKalb 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.

Place	Distance	Sheets
Afton Center	2.7 miles	10
Elva	3.5 miles	10
Waterman	3.5 miles	10
Shabbona	5.2 miles	9
Shabbona Grove	6.5 miles	9
DeKalb	8.2 miles	10
Malta	8.3 miles	10
Hinckley	9.2 miles	8

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 McGirr	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q14687862	The 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 421939. 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.