page_title: Cairo, Illinois
section_title: Landmarks and points of interest
hierarchical_section_title: Cairo, Illinois / Landmarks and points of interest
caption_attribution_description: Aerial photo of Cairo, IL
context_page_description: Cairo is the southernmost city in the U.S. state of Illinois, and is the county seat of Alexander County.
  Cairo is located at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Fort Defiance, a Civil War camp, was built at the confluence in 1862 by Union General Ulysses S. Grant to control strategic access to the river. Cairo has the lowest elevation of any location in Illinois and is the only Illinois city to be surrounded by levees. It is in the area of Southern Illinois known as Little Egypt.
  Several blocks in the town comprise the Cairo Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Old Customs House is also on the NRHP. The city is part of the Cape Girardeau–Jackson, MO–IL Metropolitan Statistical Area. Being bypassed by transportation changes and industrial restructuring cost many jobs: the population at the 2010 census was 2,831. The city's peak population was 15,203 in 1920.
  The entire city was evacuated during the 2011 Mississippi River Floods, after the Ohio River rose higher than the 1937 flood levels, with the possibility of 15 feet of water inundating Cairo.
context_section_description: Magnolia Manor is a postbellum manor, built by the Cairo businessman Charles A. Galigher in 1869. It is a 14-room red brick house which features double walls intended to keep out the city's famous dampness with their ten-inch airspaces. Inside the home are many original, 19th-century furnishings. It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since December 17, 1969. The house is operated as a Victorian period historic house museum by the Cairo Historical Association.
  Other points of interest include:
  Fort Defiance Park
  Gem Theatre
  The Hewer, a 1902 public sculpture by George Gray Barnard
  Cairo Custom House & Post Office
  The Riverlore
  A. B. Safford Memorial Library
caption: 1997 aerial view of Cairo, with Ohio River in foreground, Mississippi River in background
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