Walnut Hill, Illinois

9 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1943 and the latest in 1985. It stands in Centralia Township. It lies in ZIP code area 62893. It lies near Creeds Hill. The Survey maps it on the Walnut Hill quadrangle. 95 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 568 feet above sea level.

Walnut Hill within Marion County

Population over time

2 figures

Walnut Hill fell from 108 to 95 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	108
2020	95	-13 (-12%)

Topographic sheets covering this place

6 surveys from 9 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.

1943 USGS Ashley quadrangle1:62500
1946 USGS Ashley quadrangle1:62500
1958 USGS Belleville quadrangle1:250000, 3 printings
1962 USGS Belleville quadrangle1:250000
1974 USGS Walnut Hill quadrangle1:24000
1985 USGS Pinckneyville quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings

In the county-history sources

3,494 words on this township

Brinkerhoff's History of Marion County, Illinois, published 1909 names this settlement in its chapter on Centralia Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

In 1851 the Illinois Central Railroad was sureyed and located, and Seven Mile Prairie, in which they had been no marked improvement, began to exhibit more animation. Unknown faces were less rare than formerly and citizens showed more anxiety to increase their landed possessions. In 1852 the work of grading was begun and many foreigners appeared upon the scene, some of whom remained in the country and were valuable additions to its population. The change wrought in the appearance of the county and the habits and pursuits of the people was wonderful. Where before there had been a sort of Rip Van Winkle sleep, all was life, industry and activity. New industries became available and old ones were stimulated by better prices and a home market. The people began to put the good old times behind them. Central City supplemented Walnut Hill as a commercial metropolis of the region. That part of the city of Centralia known as Jones, Eheninger,Mc- Clelland and Spear's addition was laid out in the summer of 1853. In the autumn of the same year A. P. Crosby's addition was laid out. In 1853 Centralia proper was laid out by the Illinois Central Railroad Company, and some lots were sold, but no deeds were executed until after the passage of the law of January 14, 1855, authorizing the railroad company to lay out towns and sell town lots.

Passage source: Brinkerhoff's History of Marion County, Illinois, published 1909.

At the Presidential election of 1860 the vote for the Democratic electors was 147 against 197 for the Republican electors. In the Centralia precinct in 1864 the Democrats polled 133 and the Republicans 405 votes; 1868, Democrats 269, and Republicans 544, and in 1872 Democrat and Lib- .eral vote was 271 and O'Conner and Republican 453. Until 1856 the polling place was at Walnut Hill.

Passage source: Brinkerhoff's History of Marion County, Illinois, published 1909.

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 Centralia Township.

Storms near this place

4 since 1998

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Walnut Hill in 4 storm reports between 1998 and 2014: 2 tornado, 2 hail. 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
April 1998	Tornado (F2)	Walnut Hill	$50,000	no account filed
April 2014	Hail	Walnut Hill	-	no account filed
August 2012	Hail	Walnut Hill	-	no account filed
April 1998	Tornado (F2)	Walnut Hill	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Marion 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
Hubbard Woods	2.8 miles	13
Centralia	5.8 miles	12
Central City	6.6 miles	12
Kell	7.3 miles	12
Cartter	8.2 miles	11
Junction City	8.4 miles	12
Foxville	9.2 miles	11
Selmaville	9.3 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 Walnut Hill	An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q596315	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 420472. 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.