East St. Louis owes its origin to Cahokia” width=”240″ height=”320″ class=”alignleft size-full wp-image-283″ />East St. Louis owes its origin to Cahokia, the historic village several miles south of the city, where the French established an Indian mission in 1699. Cahokia became the chief trading center on the Illinois frontier in the eighteenth century, and then declined quickly as the result of floods and the commercial rivalry of St. Louis.
Although an attempt at settlement opposite St. Louis had been made in 1770 by Richard “English” McCarty, the first permanent foothold was gained by Capt. James Piggott some 25 years later when he established a ferry service across the Mississippi. The ferry helped hasten settlement of the region. In 1816 McKnight and Brady, St. Louis land operators, auctioned lots in Illinoistown, a newly platted village near the ferry station.
Aided by the westward flow of pioneers and the rise of steamboat commerce, Illinoistown’s permanence was further secured through an early development of natural resources. Coal deposits in the nearby bluffs were mined in 1837 by a company organized by ex-Governor John Reynolds. The coal was freighted to the river in cars drawn by horses along wooden rails; some historians cite this contrivance as the first railroad in Illinois. The first steam railroad from the East was the Ohio and Mississippi, in July 1855, followed in a decade by ten other lines. All terminated at Illinoistown, connected with St. Louis by the Wiggins Company ferries, which had, replaced Capt. Piggott’s crude pirogues. Freight handling became Illinoistown’s chief economic function.
Although the plat of Illinoistown was recorded in 1818, the town was not incorporated until January 1859. Several months later a town named East St. Louis was platted northeast of Illinoistown. In 1861 the State legislature presented a new charter to Illinoistown, proposing that its corporate limits be extended and its name changed to East St. Louis. The charter was approved in a bitterly contested referendum, and Illinoistown, in growing larger, lost the name it had borne for almost half a century.
The opening of the Eads Bridge to rail traffic in 1874 impaired the ferry business but did not destroy it. Continuous rail passage was limited to certain roads, and the majority of companies, rather than pay heavy tolls for each box car sent over the bridge, used ferries or wagon vans. The construction of the Municipal Bridge in 1917 afforded cross-river passage to all railroads, but by that time warehouses and miles of track had been built at the East St. Louis riverfront. Today many railroads still break carload lots into bulk at East St. Louis and transport the goods to St. Louis by motor trucks. Ferry boats are no longer used.
Because of its low site on the flood plain, East St. Louis has been constantly threatened by the Mississippi. The severest flood on record was that of 1844 when the American Bottom was so completely inundated that a steamboat was able to load a cargo of coal at the bluffs east of the present city. To ward off possible disaster, John B. Bowman, many times mayor of East St. Louis, proposed in 1870 that the streets be elevated above the 1844 high-water mark. The city split into vociferous camps of “High-Graders” and “Low-Graders”; the latter group charged that the ” High-Graders” were the cat’s-paw of profit-hungry construction companies. After considerable bickering the “high-grade” was established by the city council in 1875.
During the last decades of the nineteenth century, East St. Louis declined as a river town and gradually assumed its present industrial profile. Then, on May 27, 1896, a tornado struck the city, demolishing the business district, killing more than 100 people. Buildings were splintered, fires raged unchecked, and the entire east approach of the Eads Bridge was ripped away. With the aid of a $90,000 relief fund contributed by neighboring communities, East St. Louis entered the new century with the scars of this calamity effaced.
The opening years of the twentieth century brought an era of great industrial expansion to East St. Louis. New industries created jobs faster than houses could be built for incoming workers. Although 2,600 new dwellings went up in 1903, an acute housing shortage existed and more than a thousand workers were forced to commute between St. Louis and East St. Louis.
In June 1903, despite frantic efforts of levee workers, the swollen Mississippi poured into East St. Louis, flooding one-fourth of the city. Eight thousand refugees were housed in St. Louis; although no lives were lost, the flood was a bitter reminder that the problem of control had not been solved by “high-grade” streets and the construction of a few makeshift levees. Public demand for protection resulted in the formation of the East Side Levee and Sanitary District in 1907. The levees and canals built by that agency have sent subsequent floods swirling harmlessly past the city.
During pre-World War years the foreign and Negro population, drawn by the city’s rapid industrial growth, became important elements in political and labor struggles. Negroes were used as strike breakers in at least one instance. Competition for jobs sharpened racial prejudices and fanned the mob spirit. Race riots of shocking ferocity occurred on May 28 and on July 2, 1917, when more than 100 Negroes were killed. Property damage exceeded $400,000. Seven thousand panic-stricken Negroes fled to St. Louis where they were quartered in the municipal lodginghouse. An investigation by a committee of the House of Representatives found much municipal corruption, and the electorate abandoned the aldermanic for the commission form of government on November 5, 1917.
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