Walnut Hill is a village in Marion 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 the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. The population was 95 at the 2020 census.

History

Walnut Hill was once the intersection of two of the main roads in Illinois: the George Rogers Clark Trace and the Yadda Road. The original capital of Illinois was at

Kaskaskia The Kaskaskia were a historical Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. They were one of about a dozen cognate tribes that made up the Illiniwek Confederation, also called the Illinois Confederation. Their longstanding homeland was in ...

, southwest of present-day Walnut Hill. The overland route from Kaskaskia to the interior of the state followed the

/ Big Muddy River divide, which went through Walnut Hill.

George Rogers Clark George Rogers Clark (November 19, 1752 – February 13, 1818) was an American military officer and surveyor from Virginia who became the highest-ranking Patriot (American Revolution), Patriot military officer on the American frontier, nort ...

marched through Walnut Hill in February 1779 on his march from

Fort Kaskaskia Fort Kaskaskia State Historic Site is a 200-acre (0.8 km2) park near Chester, Illinois, on a blufftop overlooking the Mississippi River. It commemorates the vanished frontier town of '' Old Kaskaskia'' and the support it gave to George R ...

to Fort Vincennes, which resulted in the conquest of Illinois by the army of

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

. Traces of the Kaskaskia/Vincennes road can be seen in several short stretches in northwestern Jefferson County, which point toward Walnut Hill, ignoring the surveyed Section boundaries. Northeast of Walnut Hill, the Kell Road is a winding, pioneer road up to its intersection with Interstate 57, from which it follows the modern Section lines to Kell. Walnut Hill was also on the

Goshen Road Goshen Road was an early road that ran from Old Shawneetown, Illinois, on the Ohio River, northwest to the Goshen Settlement, near Glen Carbon, Illinois, near the Mississippi River. In the early 19th century, this was the main east/west road in Il ...

, an early road across Illinois, from Shawneetown to the Goshen Settlement near Glen Carbon. Remnants of the Goshen Road can be seen in short segments of Pioneer Road between

Dix DIX or Dix may refer to: Computing * Danish Internet Exchange Point, in Copenhagen * Data Integrity Extensions, data corruption error-handling field in data storage technology * Device Independent X, part of the 2D graphics device driver in th ...

and Walnut Hill. The construction of the railroad tracks from Dix to Walnut Hill possibly obliterated much of the original Goshen road. In 1823, Thomas D. Minor built a road from

Mount Vernon Mount Vernon is the former residence and plantation of George Washington, a Founding Father, commander of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War, and the first president of the United States, and his wife, Martha. An American landmar ...

to Walnut Hill. This was called the "Vandalia Road", in that it connected with roads to the new state capital in Vandalia. The new road joined the Goshen Road just south of Walnut Hill. Today, it is called the "Old Centralia Road". The new road eventually captured much of the traffic on the Goshen Road since it provided a shorter route across Jefferson County. The modern road (Walnut Hill Road) running northwest out of Walnut Hill toward Centralia is the same as the Goshen Road as shown on the original survey maps of Illinois.

William Goings Gang

In the early 19th century, William Goings (also spelled Goins) kept a tavern that was presumably on land homesteaded by Goings about two miles south of Walnut Hill in Jefferson County. Goings led a band of robbers known as the "Goings Gang" that preyed on frontier travelers on the Vincennes-St. Louis Trace, a dirt road that was originally an old

bison A bison (: bison) is a large bovine in the genus ''Bison'' (from Greek, meaning 'wild ox') within the tribe Bovini. Two extant taxon, extant and numerous extinction, extinct species are recognised. Of the two surviving species, the American ...

path that extended through southern Illinois. The gang operated a series of connected frontier taverns along this road, passing information on to gang members whenever a traveler worth robbing stopped at one of their taverns. When the unfortunate traveler reached a remote spot, the gang members would assemble and relieve them of their property. As in other frontier areas, neighboring settlers overlooked this activity until the Goings Gang escalated to murder in 1818–1819. In response, the settlers organized a group of

vigilante Vigilantism () is the act of preventing, investigating, and punishing perceived offenses and crimes without legal authority. A vigilante is a person who practices or partakes in vigilantism, or undertakes public safety and retributive justice ...

s or "rangers" who surprised the Goings Gang at Walnut Hill. The gang members were tied to trees, flogged, and ordered to leave the county, an order which all but one obeyed. The following year, the vigilantes returned and cropped the ears of this obstinate gang member, who may have been criminal gang leader William Goings, possibly because they believed he had no use for his ears as he would not listen and cease in his criminal activities. The tavern site of one of the reported gang members, Samuel Young of Marion County, was excavated by archaeologists working for the Illinois Department of Transportation in 1988 prior to its destruction by a highway project''The Archaeology of the Old Landmark'', Mark J. Wagner and Mary R. McCorvie, 1992

Geography

Walnut Hill is located in southwestern Marion County. Its southern border is the Jefferson County line. The county boundary is the baseline of the Third Principal Meridian, also called the Centralia Baseline. The survey of this area was begun as early as 1804. Centralia is to the northwest of Walnut Hill, and Salem, the Marion

county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or parish (administrative division), civil parish. The term is in use in five countries: Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, and the United States. An equiva ...

, is to the northeast.

, the Jefferson County seat, is 14 miles to the southeast. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Walnut Hill has a total area of , all land. To the north of Walnut Hill is Raccoon Creek, a west-flowing tributary of the

Kaskaskia River The Kaskaskia River is a tributary of the Mississippi River, approximately long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed May 13, 2011 in central and southern Illinois in the U ...

. To the south is the

Big Muddy River The Big Muddy River is a river in southern Illinois. It joins the Mississippi River just south of Grand Tower. The Big Muddy has been dammed near Benton, forming Rend Lake. The Big Muddy has a mud bottom for most of its length. Hydrography ...

, a small creek at the northernmost limit of its watershed. Walnut Hill is thus on the Kaskaskia/Big Muddy divide. That divide is a ridge that formed a natural, pioneer highway from

Sparta Sparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (), while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement in the Evrotas Valley, valley of Evrotas (river), Evrotas rive ...

to Kell, perhaps properly called the "Highway to Kell".

Demographics

As of the

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

of 2000, there were 109 people, 45 households, and 30 families residing in the village. The population density was . There were 50 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the village was 99.08%

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

and 0.92%

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

. There were 45 households, of which 48.9% had children under 18 living with them, 37.8% were

married couples Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognised union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children (if any), and b ...

living together, 20.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.3% were non-families. 31.1% of all households comprised individuals, and 28.9% had someone who was 65 or older living alone. The average household size was 2.42 and the average family size was 2.90. The village's population was spread out, with 33.0% under 18, 5.5% from 18 to 24, 35.8% from 25 to 44, 11.0% from 45 to 64, and 14.7% who were 65 or older. The median age was 33 years. For every 100 females, there were 67.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 58.7 males. The median income for a household in the village was $21,250, and the median income for a family was $30,625. Males had a median income of $26,250 versus $15,417 for females. The

per capita income Per capita income (PCI) or average income measures the average income earned per person in a given area (city, region, country, etc.) in a specified year. In many countries, per capita income is determined using regular population surveys, such ...

for the village was $9,025. There were no families, and 3.9% of the population lived below the

poverty line The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line, or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for ...

, including those under eighteens and 26.7% over 64.

References

*Wagner, Mark and Mary McCorvie. "Going to See the Varmint: Piracy in Myth and Reality on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, 1785–1830," ''X Marks the Spot: The Archaeology of Piracy'', Univ. Press of Florida, 2006. *''History of Jefferson County, Illinois'', Perrins, 1883 *'History of Southern Illinois'', G.W. Smith, 1912

External links

Original Survey Plats of IllinoisTopoQuest Walnut Hill
{{authority control Villages in Marion County, Illinois Villages in Illinois