Category Archives: Street

Marion City Street Department

1974, Special Election Adds 440 Acres To Marion

Posted on by February 20, 2014

Addition of 440 acres to the City of Marion was voted in a special election held in the affected area north of the city Tuesday. Six residents of the area voted for annexation and two voted against it.

The annexed area includes the land north of the city cemeteries to the county road south of Cedar Grove, which is bounded on the west by an extension of North Russell Street and on the east by the C. & E. I. Railroad. It includes the Marion Drive-In Theatre, an auto salvage yard, Tom’s Restaurant and five or six retail businesses in addition to the Central Illinois Public Service Company’s gas storage plant and the county acreage on which the highway garage is located on the east side of Route 37. Continue reading →

1929 Progress Edition of the Marion Daily Republican

Posted on by September 9, 2023

Clyde Bailey 1929 Police ChiefA few of the articles extracted from a special 1929 Progress Edition of the Marion Daily Republican newspaper reflects the state of the city of Marion on its 90th year of existence as follows.

Marion the county seat of Williamson County is the oldest city in the county and as such is one of the most stable cities of the rich Southern Illinois or Egyptian coal fields where it is with its more than one and a half million dollars’ worth of public improvements the home city of 15,000 people. Continue reading →

1941, Boyton Street and Interstate 57 Plans

Posted on by June 16, 2014

This post contains an article dated September 9, 1941 and notes a few details about Marion and the regions past. First is the potential sale of the Marion Waterworks. Secondly is the originally planned routing of Interstate 57 which was to avoid Marion altogether and swing through Centralia and Carbondale instead. Can you imagine how different Marion’s economy would be without the interstate being here? Third, the last part of this article deals with the paving of Boyton Street, which may seem inconsequential, but how would you get from Market to Court before it was there? Continue reading →