Cotton Hill, also known as Crow's Mill or Cotton Hill Post Office, was a small unincorporated community on the banks of Sugar Creek in

Ball Township, Sangamon County, Illinois Ball Township is located in Sangamon County, Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and ...

, about eight miles south of downtown Springfield. It stood for slightly over a century, from the 1820s until it was razed in the 1930s to make way for

Lake Springfield Lake Springfield is a reservoir in the southeast of the capital city of Springfield, Illinois. It is above sea level. The lake was formed by building Spaulding Dam across Sugar Creek, a tributary of the Sangamon River. It is the largest munic ...

. In 1900 the community had an estimated population of 150, a post office and a train station on the

Illinois Central The Illinois Central Railroad , sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, is a railroad in the Central United States. Its primary routes connected Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama, and thus, the Great Lak ...

. Just before its demolition in the 1930s the community had a store, a schoolhouse, a blacksmith's shop, and a gas station on

Route 66 U.S. Route 66 or U.S. Highway 66 (US 66 or Route 66) is one of the original highways in the United States Numbered Highway System. It was established on November 11, 1926, with road signs erected the following year. The high ...

Name

The town was originally known as Crow's Mill for the gristmill around which the community took shape, which was acquired by the Crow family around 1850 and operated by them for many years. Despite the name "Cotton Hill", the town was not named directly for either a hill or a cotton crop. It acquired the name of Cotton Hill in the late 1860s, when the post office serving Ball and Cotton Hill townships was moved there from its initial location several miles away, on the boundary between the two townships.

Business and economy

The Sugar Creek valley in which Cotton Hill is built, which lay along the Edwards Trace, attracted settlement from an early date. The mill at Cotton Hill was first built in 1827 as a water-powered saw mill. It was the first water-powered mill in present-day Ball Township; earlier mills in the area had been

horse mill A horse mill is a mill, sometimes used in conjunction with a watermill or windmill, that uses a horse engine as the power source. Any milling process can be powered in this way, but the most frequent use of animal power in horse mills was for gri ...

s. The original sawmill was subsequently expanded to encompass a

gristmill A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and Wheat middlings, middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that h ...

and a

distillery Distillation, also classical distillation, is the process of separating the component substances of a liquid mixture of two or more chemically discrete substances; the separation process is realized by way of the selective boiling of the mixt ...

, and to operate on both water and

steam power A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be transf ...

. Around 1826, an extended family of potters including the Ebeys, Royals and Brunks established a

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a ''potter'' is al ...

at Cotton Hill. Located south of the town and above the present-day waters of Lake Springfield, the Ebey-Brunk pottery continued in operation until about 1854, and has been excavated as an archeological site. The pottery specialized in large, utilitarian

redware Redware as a single word is a term for at least two types of pottery of the last few centuries, in Europe and North America. Red ware as two words is a term used for pottery, mostly by archaeologists, found in a very wide range of places. Howeve ...

pots. In the 1830s a limestone quarry was dug near Crow's Mill. It provided the limestone for the Old State Capitol in Springfield. The limestone (known as Crow's Mill limestone) unfortunately turned an unsightly shade of brown after prolonged exposure to the atmosphere. However, it continued to find various practical uses. When visited by the state geologist in 1912, the original Crow's Mill quarry was grown over and abandoned, but a new quarry had been established a quarter-mile to the west.

Transportation

Cotton Hill had strong transportation connections even in the earliest days, thanks to its location on the Edwards Trace. In the 1830s and 1840s the stone blocks for the state capitol were hauled north to Springfield over the wagon roads by teams of ten to twelve oxen each. The railroad came to Cotton Hill in the late 1880s, with the establishment of the Chicago and St. Louis Railway, which later became the Jacksonville-Southeastern Railway, and in 1900 became the Litchfield division of the

Illinois Central Railroad The Illinois Central Railroad , sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, is a railroad in the Central United States. Its primary routes connected Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama, and thus, ...

. The nearest stops to Cotton Hill Station were

Glenarm Glenarm () is a village in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It lies on the North Channel coast north of the town of Larne and the village of Ballygalley, and south of the village of Carnlough. It is situated in the civil parish of Tickmac ...

six miles to the south and Gatton Station (later

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

) one mile to the north. In 1901 the Illinois Central ceased service to Cotton Hill and began stopping a mile north at Gatton. The Cotton Hill post office was discontinued in 1907. The road through Cotton Hill was named as a state aid highway in 1913, following the path that

would follow from 1930 to 1935, north to Springfield and south to Glenarm.

Legacy

The community's names lives on in the name of Cotton Hill Road, which follows the former alignment of Route 66 leading toward the town; East and West Cottonhill Parks on the shores of Lake Springfield; and the Crow's Mill Pub, a bar that occupies the relocated North Crow's Mill schoolhouse near

. Crow's Mill limestone can be found not only in the Old State Capitol but in two "blanks" used for the capitol stones, which are preserved in parks on the shores of Lake Springfield.

References

{{reflist

External links

Cotton Hill
on SangamonLink Ghost towns in Illinois Unincorporated communities in Sangamon County, Illinois