That explains why Cairo, IL is a ghost town.
It explains some of it, but Cairo has a very rich history. Almost all of it bad.
Cairo, IL, Wickliffe, KY, that area where the Ohio hits the Mississippi, that's my back yard. Because of the confluence of the two rivers people have been desperately trying to make Cairo into a real town for 200 years. It was incorporated as a town, with a bank, before anybody even lived there. That effort failed. They then tried two more times, including building a really big regional Post Office and Customs House, and putting a regional Court there. But it's too far away from everything, and it floods like all the time.
The entire town is completely surrounded by levees, which were originally built in the early 1800s and were heightened and strengthened after one flood in the mid 1800s, again after the 1927 flood, again after the 1937 flood, and again in the 1950s. But flooding is only a small part of the problems there.
There was a lot of trade that passed through there, but that was all diverted up river to Chicago when Grant took over the town as a headquarters during the Civil War (to supplement nearby Ft Defiance). After the War Cairo never recovered all of that trade.
When the railroad came though, there was a massive ferry business economy installed, as there were no bridges for trains or cars (no cars, either). The population swelled to like 17,000 people. They could ferry more than 40,000 railroad cars per month across the rivers.
But then in about 1890 the railroad bridge was completed. The ferry business was impacted, but ferries were still needed for horses and cars. Then one bridge across the Mississippi was completed in 1905, but that was into Cairo. But in 1929 and in 1937 the two bridges south of Cairo were opened, one across the Mississippi and one across the Ohio (which is very kewl if you've never driven it, as you cross one river, take a hard turn, and immediately start across the other river), which bypassed Cairo completely. Then barges started replacing steamboats, and the reasons for stopping in Cairo went away. Then the I-57 Bridge across the river pretty much did Cairo in, as there was no reason to go to Cairo at all. Ever. For any reason.
The population today is, I dunno, not even 3000 people.
In addition to all of that, there are problems in trying to force a town into existence in a place where it doesn't happen naturally and there is no genuine sustainable economy.
Then there's the racial problems that have more or less defined the town more than anything else. The White Supremacists, Antifa and BLM folks of today are all rank amateurs compared to the fine folks of Cairo's history. I'm sure there are books and countless Web pages on it all. When the population was about 15,000, more than 5,000 of those were black. So you'd think blacks would have a little say in what goes on. But no. Police brutality, economic opportunity, the same complaints then as now.
There were mob lynchings that happened often. One time the sheriff tried to sneak a suspected murdered out of town on a train, and a mob commandeered another train and caught up with them, brought the prisoner and the sheriff back to town, and hung the prisoner, and when the rope broke they just shot him, over and over and over. They also gave the sheriff a good talking to. He was so offended that he resigned and moved away. Of course, not wanting to be given the chance to break another rope with his own neck probably had something to do with it.
Blacks, meanwhile, would set fires, and when the fire and police would show up, snipers would pick them off. They eventually (in the 1960s) demanded black police and fire chiefs, a black mayor, and a 50/50 black/white representation on the city council. The carrot for these demands was peace, the stick was to simply burn the entire town down.
Around the same time many of the white citizens formed a citizens protection group called the "White Hats" cause they wore white construction helmets as their uniform. They were all deputized by the sheriff. All 600 of them.
The White Hat opposition was the Cairo United Front, composed chiefly of
not White Hat members. They included the local chapter of the NAACP, various street gangs, and other people who were generally pissed off about being harassed and beaten daily by people wearing construction hats.
But Cairo has a lot of historic buildings and it's designated as a historic landmark. So there is that.
There's also a Trump Tower in Cairo.
OK not really, but it would be kewl if there was.
