Ransom, Illinois

8 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1958 and the latest in 1991. It stands in Allen Township. It lies in ZIP code area 60470. The Survey maps it on the Ransom quadrangle. 308 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 706 feet above sea level.

Ransom within LaSalle County

On record in Ransom

Buildings and businesses the archive holds for this place. Each opens its own page, with the source record it came from.

On the National Register 1 record

Ransom Water Towerlisted 1990

Population over time

2 figures

Ransom fell from 384 to 308 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.

Year	People	Change
2010	384
2020	308	-76 (-20%)

Topographic sheets covering this place

6 surveys from 8 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.

1958 USGS Aurora quadrangle1:250000, 3 printings
1958 USGS Odell quadrangle1:62500
1961 USGS Aurora quadrangle1:250000
1983 USGS Ransom quadrangle1:24000
1985 USGS Ottawa quadrangle1:100000
1991 USGS Ottawa quadrangle1:100000

In the county-history sources

590 words on this township

History of LaSalle County, Illinois : Its Topography, Geology, Botany, Natural History, History of the Mound Builders, Indian Tribes, French Explorations, and a Sketch of the Pioneer Settlers of Each Town to 1840, with an Appendix, Giving the Present Status of the County, Its Population, Resources, Manufactures and Institutions, published 1877 names this settlement in its chapter on Allen Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

The extension of the Chicago, Pekin & Sonthwestern Railroad was built through the town of Allen in 1875, giving a direct communication with Chicago. The station was located near the centre of Section 16, which, fortunately for the town, had not been sold previous to the location of the road. The town of Ransom was laid out by the School Trustees, and lots sold to the amount of 85,000 ab the first sale. If judiciously managed, the town will realize a very efficient fund for the support of her schools through all the future.

Passage source: History of LaSalle County, Illinois : Its Topography, Geology, Botany, Natural History, History of the Mound Builders, Indian Tribes, French Explorations, and a Sketch of the Pioneer Settlers of Each Town to 1840, with an Appendix, Giving the Present Status of the County, Its Population, Resources, Manufactures and Institutions, published 1877.

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 Allen Township.

Storms near this place

6 since 2004

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Ransom in 6 storm reports between 2004 and 2020: 3 hail, 3 thunderstorm wind. 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.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
July 2020	Thunderstorm Wind	Ransom	-	A tree was blown down onto power lines in Ransom.
November 2013	Thunderstorm Wind	Ransom	-	Tops of trees were blown down. Sheet metal was damaged at a construction site.
June 2012	Thunderstorm Wind	Ransom	-	Winds were estimated from 60 to 70 mph.
March 2006	Hail	Ransom	-	Golfball size hail was reported near N 19th and E 30th Roads.
March 2006	Hail	Ransom	-	no account filed
May 2004	Hail	Ransom	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in LaSalle 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
Kernan	4.9 miles	8
Otter (historical)	7.0 miles	11
Evans Heights Housing Project	8.9 miles	11
Richards	10.0 miles	11
Streator	10.1 miles	11
Delbert Egan Housing Project	10.3 miles	11
Seneca	10.9 miles	16
Grand Ridge	11.1 miles	11

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 Ransom	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q2396251	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 416389. 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.

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.