Glen Carbon, Illinois

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About Glen Carbon, Illinois

This is the new Glen Carbon, Illinois group. This group is for Glen Carbon fans! Anybody who has good Glen Carbon photos, go ahead and send 'em in! Show pride in our small, historic, beautiful town!
Also, for anybody who lives in Edwardsville, you may only send in photos taken in Glen Carbon. If you want to send in photos of Edwardsville, please send them to this group.
Thanks Everybody!

If anyone needs help with the Glen Carbon borders (Edwardsville/Pontoon Beach/Troy/Maryville), send one of us a message.

Here are the borders of Glen Carbon & other towns:
east border: Old Troy Road (Troy)
north border: Center Grove Road & Goshen Trail (Edwardsville)
south border: Route 162 (Maryville)
west border: Route 157 (Pontoon Beach)

Google Maps map of Glen Carbon, Illinois with St. Louis also in the map.

Glen Carbon, Illinois zoning map

Anything on this map that is NOT colored in is NOT IN GLEN CARBON.

About Glen Carbon, Illinois:

Glen Carbon is a quaint village situated in Metro East St. Louis, Missouri. Just 25 miles from downtown St. Louis (15 miles as the crow flies), this village of 11,800 people features several village parks and several miles of scenic multi-use trails (Infact, the entire Metro East has over 85 miles of trails! The entire metro area has trails spanning greater than the distance between St. Louis and Chicago. And Madison County, Illinois-where Glen Carbon is located-is one of the few counties in the USA that has a transport system involving trails, trains, buses, and carpool). Glen Carbon is more than your typical midwestern town. Glen Carbon is situated on a bluff range that extends along the mighty Mississippi River. The terrain is rolling and the trees are plentiful. A creek runs through old town Glen Carbon, called Judy Creek. There is a covered bridge located on Main Street that crosses Judy Creek. While Glen Carbon is in a metro area of nearly 3 million people, it is very rural and quiet. The village is experiencing growth, with new housing developments and stores opening every year. All in all, Glen Carbon is a great village to live in, and us Glen Carbonites take great pride in our village. This "about Glen Carbon" part was made by Mamba205, and I thought that it was a great paragraph describing Glen Carbon!

History (this part was made by me):
Glen Carbon was founded in 1892 as a railroad & coal mining village. Glen Carbon means "Valley of Coal". 3 railroads once served the community: the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad (originally the Nickel Plate Alignment, now the Nickel Plate Bike Trail), the Norfolk Southern alignment, which ran parallel to the C&NW alignment, and the Illinois Central Railroad, which is now the Heritage Trail. The last railroad operating through Glen Carbon was the C&NW line, which, in 1995, Chicago & Northwestern was bought out by Union Pacific, which discontinued use on the line in the year 2000, so it was turned into the Nickel Plate Bike Trail. The Illinois Central Railroad allignment, which had a train station in Glen Carbon at one time, was abandoned between 1976 and 1992 (I am doing research to find out exactly when). Thought railroads were a major part of Glen Carbon's history since the very establishment, the last railroad anywhere in the corporal boundaries of Glen Carbon quit running in 2000, so there are now absolutely no more railroad lines anywhere within the boundaries of Glen Carbon, but, railroads still criss-cross around the town; there is a line down in Collinsville, there is a line in Edwardsville that is only 2 miles from the Glen Carbon border, and there are many lines the the west between Glen Carbon & the Mississippi River.

The following information was found on the official Glen Carbon website. Here is the information:

The Village of Glen Carbon is located within an
area known as the Goshen Settlement of the
early 1800s. Colonel Samuel Judy was the first to
settle on the western edge of this area, along a
creek, some 90 years before Glen Carbon was
incorporated. Judy and other pioneer farmers
raised produce that was shipped from Peter’s
Station, as it became known after the introduction
of railroads in the 1880s. On the eastern
edge of the Village, farmers settled the Glen
Crossing area.
As the Industrial Era began in the late 1800s,
coal and clay were discovered along Judy Creek.
With the advent of coal
mining, the bluffs that
overlooked the American
Bottom east of the Mississippi
River became a
maze of interlocking tunnels.
These tunnels were
used to mine the coal that
made the new industries’ machines run. Clay
was taken from quarry holes in the bluffs to be
fired into bricks for the city of St. Louis at the
World’s Fair in 1904.
The coal mines and brickyard located in the Judy
Creek Valley needed workers. A call went out to
Eastern Europe for coal miners and brickworkers.
Men came to work so they could send for their
families to join them in the middle of the great
United States. No matter that the streets were
mud and at first there were only tents to stay in.
The coal and brick companies
were paying real
money for their labor. So
the laborers came
through Ellis Island to the
little village where they
joined many more like
them. Entrepreneurs
from surrounding towns
saw the opportunity to sell goods and services to
these immigrants; they joined the flood of people
A Brief History
of Glen Carbon
populating the area and became part of the Great Melting
Pot.
Both the Madison Coal Company and the St. Louis
Press Brick Company built boarding
houses, two family and single family
residences on the sides of the Judy
Creek hills. Soon the workers, storekeepers,
and company men were
organized into a community. They
incorporated the Village of Glen Carbon
(meaning Valley of Coal) in 1892
and George Bonsack became its first
mayor.
In 1910, at the crest of a hill close to the schools, a
brick building with a bell tower was built to be used for
Village Offices and for housing the Fire Department.
The building overlooks the Village and the trail originally
traveled by the folks of the Land of Goshen in the very
early 1800s. This “Main Street” became the center of
activity with its stores, residences and taverns.
Schools were built for the many children of the Village.
Mine bosses, store owners, miners and laborers all sent
their children to a one room schoolhouse built in the
1880s. A two story brick building followed in 1891, and
it was replaced in 1914. The two schools were then
joined by a two-story wooden building.
The Villagers settled more or less in neighborhoods with
the Village. Italian, Czech, English
etc. living in close proximity
to one another. These ethnic
groups were not large. Only two
mines and one brickyard employed
them, however, the
groups brought their cultural
identification to the Village.
Social groups such as the Redman, Royal Neighbors,
Czech Society, and German Society were all found in
the Village. The mixing of the various ethnic groups was
evident when dances or other social events were held.
Four buildings that had been built as Union or Fraternity
Halls were also used for many dances and parties.
Peters, Crossing and Glen all had baseball teams; rivalries
flourished.
In 1906, the brickyard burned, however there were still
two coal mines that employed the workers. In the
1920s, Mine No. 4 closed. Mine No. 2 took the workers,
but in the 1930s that mine closed too. As a result
of there being no other employers in the Village many
stores closed and workers moved out. This was
happening all over the United States during the
Great Depression.
The coal company allowed the miners to retain
their houses and did not collect rent . Government
Relief programs became important to citizens
of the Village. Miners and other workers
found work outside the Village, however they
stayed on to live in their
houses, which had eventually
been bought from
the Coal Company.
In the 1940s, the Village
kept its identity as families
sent sons, brothers
and husbands off to fight
in World War II. During this period the Village
installed a waterworks system through the Works
Progress Administration (WPA) and built a sewage
system with Federal Grants. It did not grow
larger, but it still had its identity. Things started
to change when area schools had to join together
as a larger district. The Village was able to expand
its tax base to pay for services.
In the 1970s, subdivisions began to appear and
the Village annexed land.
Most importantly, those
people living in the Village
who had roots in its industrial
heyday, began to
set aside items and
memories of their lives
and families. The collection
of artifacts and
memories developed into the collection that the
Glen Carbon Heritage Museum now houses. The
minutes of the United Mine Workers Union No.
686 are one of the more treasured artifacts.
Many photos donated by the residents of the Village
give glimpses of the social life. Audio and
video taped interviews are another source of
memories. These are all part of the museum.
The Glen Carbon Heritage Museum provides educational
programs at local schools. Commission
members and volunteers act as mentors to
school children also. Activities showing life in the
1850s are carried out at the Yanda Log Cabin
and visitors to the Ronald J. Foster Glen Carbon.

Here is a different version of the story, also from the official Glen Carbon website:

Men who accompanied George Rogers Clark into Illinois in 1778 received land grants of
300 acres for their service. One of them, David Bagley, a Baptist minister from Virginia passed
through the Glen Carbon vicinity and was so impressed with the landscape that he compared it to
the Biblical Land of Goshen. Mentions of this Land of Goshen have endured since then. In
1801, Colonel Samuel Judy received a grant of land near the base of the bluffs, just north of Judy's
Creek and became the first permanent settler of Madison County. The community became known
as the Goshen Settlement, and while its boundaries were never clearly outlined, it was centered on
the Judy property at the junction of Judy Creek and Route 157.
In 1808, the Goshen Road trail was built as a wagon road from the Goshen settlement to
the Ohio salt works. The trail crossed the state diagonally following a route from Peter's Station to
the north and west of Glen Carbon, east to Troy, and then in a southeasterly direction eventually
ending at Shawneetown on the Ohio River. The existing Goshen Road running from Illinois Route
159 to the intersection of Route 143 is part of the original road.

A territorial government formed in 1812 and Samuel Judy was elected to serve in the first
legislature that convened at Kaskaskia. Madison County, named for James Madison the fourth
President of the United States, was organized in 1812 and encompassed much of what would
become the State of Illinois. The County's borders were the current southern boundaries of the
County, the Mississippi River on the west, the Wabash River on the east and its northern border
reached to Canada. Judy was one of the first county commissioners. Illinois became a state in
1818. Madison County was reduced in size through the creation of other counties including
Edwards County in 1814. In 1847 the County's boundary was fixed with the transfer of a small
portion of the northeast corner of the County to Bond County.

Goshen Township was established soon after Madison County and Samuel Judy and Henry
Cook were appointed overseers of the Township in 1818. The 1820 census reported 13,550
citizens in Madison County (which included present day Sangamon and Macoupin Counties) with
200 heads of families in Goshen Township. Between 1820 and 1830 the township was
subdivided into five smaller townships with Edwardsville Township encompassing approximately
one-third of the original expanse (including Glen Carbon), and the remaining section divided
among Silver Creek, Big Prairie, Six-Mile Prairie and Wood River Townships.

Much of the development in and around Glen Carbon over the next few decades was
concentrated along Main Street. In 1857, William Yanda built a log cabin and maintained a
blacksmith shop on Main Street. His son, Frank Yanda, Sr., constructed six homes along the
northwest side of Main Street in the 1890s for his children. His son, Frank Jr., served as mayor of
the Village from 1933 until his death in 1939.

The St. Louis Press Brick Company, begun as the Collinsville Brick Company in 1884, was
the largest brick manufacturing plant in the state of Illinois. Allegedly the company produced all of
the bricks used in constructing the facilities for the St. Louis World=s Fair in 1904. The company
manufactured paving and building bricks, and decorative bricks. While the company rebuilt its
operation after a fire in 1895, a fire in 1906 destroyed the facility and it was not rebuilt. The
company built nine two-story saltbox style houses and two one-story houses for their employees.
These houses were sold to the Madison Coal Corporation after the brick yard closed.

In 1891, the Madison Coal Corporation was founded by three St. Louis businesspeople,
William E. Guy, James L. Blair and George O. Carpenter, Jr., who proposed to mine and sell coal
and other minerals. The company operated three mines in Glen Carbon (mines 1, 2 and 4) and
owned and platted much of the land in the Village. The coal miners bought their supplies at a
company store and rented company houses. Churches and schools in the Village were built on lots
donated by the company.

On May 11, 1892, a petition was presented to the County Court asking permission to
incorporate as a Village. The petition was granted and on June 6 an election was held approving
the incorporation. Mr. James Harry Lister, an original trustee of the Village, is credited with
naming the Village. Mr. Lister, an immigrant from England, recalled the beautiful glens of his
native Great Britain and chose the name Carbon Glen meaning Coal Valley. His daughter Emma
suggested instead Valley of Coal, or Glen Carbon.

Glen Carbon has historically contained persons with a diverse ethnic heritage. In 1899, the
nationalities of the miners in the various coal mines of the area included 485 Americans, 79
Austrian/Bohemians (which included Austrians, Bohemians and Czechs), 12 Belgians, 87 English,
21 French, 226 Germans, 8 Hungarians, 72 Irish, 124 Italians, 66 Poles, 63 Russians, 20 Scots, and
32 Welsh. Ethnic groups often formed their own social organizations, and sometimes clustered in
their own neighborhoods. The neighborhood around Park, South Summit, and Austin Streets was
referred to as Little Italy. Bohemians settled near the intersection of Glen Crossing and Main
Street.

Mining operations ceased at Mine No. 1 around the turn of the century because of water
seepage problems. Mine No. 4 closed around 1914, and Mine No. 2 ceased operating in 1931.
The last Madison Coal Corporation mine closed in 1934.

The Village experienced slow growth in the succeeding years until the early 1960's when
plans were made for the construction of I-270 through the Village. Construction of the new
interstate forever changed the Village. In 1969, land development proposals in the community
intensified.