Recently I made another day trip to Cairo, Illinois — a once prosperous riverboat town on the Ohio River that has declined in population so much and so fast that many people think it’s on the way to becoming a ghost town.
- Current population: Between 1,450 and 1,650 people.
- Population in 2016: 2,349.
- Peak population (1920): 15,203 (one source from the time claimed as many as 20,000).
This was possibly my sixth or seventh trip to Cairo — I’ve lost count. But I went to get more footage and photographs for a long term project I’m working on about the city.
I patched together some of this B-roll to give you an idea how eerie and silent the community feels — except for the unfortunate rustle of constant wind that I experienced on this visit.
More to come.
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