Grayville, IL

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Grayville, IL was a river town until the Wabash River moved in 1985. Now what used to be the river is an oxbow lake. Note the five swans on the lake above the hood of the truck.

The Peoria, Decatur and Evansville Railway, which became part of the Illinois Central, ran by the town down by the riverfront.

The town has done a good job of preserving its railroad heritage. I believe the gravelly part in the foreground is where the mainline ran through town.










Because they have done a good job of preserving the depot, I took pictures from additional angles.



Note the "bay window" on the track side. This is typical of depots and allows the station clerk to see down the tracks. I looked in the windows and the building seems to be used for storage.

Looking north from where I took the above overview pictures of the depot and caboose, you can see that it has been abandoned for a while because there are no tracks in the road. Also note the hill to the left of the right-of-way. (Update: I learned from Abandoned Rails that the Big Four (CCC&StL) also went through this town. I'm  guessing the hill on the left was its right-of-way.)

Wisely, the town is built above that hill. The downtown is in the background at the top of this road next to IL-130. At first this surprised me because the road would not have existed when the town was initially established. Normally the downtown is close to the railroad depot. Then it occurred to me that they built their town "on top of the hill" rather than close to the depot. Since the depot is in the flood plane, this was wise.

Specifically, much of the land by the depot would have been below water April 1, 1913. And the oxbow lake is still part of the Wabash River's flood plain because they had another flood in 2002.















The first building on the hill caught my eye. Is this Romanesque Architecture?

The Wabash River is big so it would have been easy for boats to come up the river from the Ohio River. So this should have been a prosperous town in the 1800s. First with riverboat traffic, and then with railroad traffic. But as we have seen, both of these economic activities dried up. But it now has road side services for I-64 traffic and oil drilling services as an economic base. However, as I write this, the oil drilling services will be drying up again. It has at least a couple of restored Italianate Architecture buildings that I use as an indication of a "tech town."

Back when the Wabash was still close to the town.

Andy Zukowski posted
Flooding caused damage to the Illinois Central Railroad on March 31st, 1913, at Grayville, Illinois.

The city park has a M-60 tank on display.