Tracy is a

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

in Essex Township, Kankakee County, Illinois. Tracy was a relatively small settlement, amounting to possibly a dozen buildings, which housed

coal miners People have worked as coal miners for centuries, but they became increasingly important during the Industrial Revolution when coal was burnt on a large scale to fuel stationary and locomotive engines and heat buildings. Owing to coal's strategic ...

exploiting a nearby

coal seam Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extrac ...

in the 1800s; and it disappeared quickly around 1900, when the seam ran out. According to the 1892 Map 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, ...

, Tracy was located just northwest of

Buckingham Buckingham ( ) is a market town in north Buckinghamshire, England, close to the borders of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, which had a population of 12,890 at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 Census. The town lies approximately west of ...

and served as a major spur from the later.

References

Ghost towns in Illinois {{US-ghost-town-stub