Lanford

**Lanford** is a city located at the intersection of Interstate 24 and Highway 67/78 east of Lewiston and south of West Elgin on the Illinois River in Fulton County, Illinois. One of several port towns on the way to St. Louis, Missouri, it is also a college town, home to Central Illinois State College, and home to the National Soft Drink Museum.

Known for its socially liberal politics and ethnically diverse population, Lanford was founded in the 1830s as a stopping point for steamship captains traveling south. As a result, it is a highly industrial city with more factories and companies than most of the cities in the county. Some of these companies include Allegius Medical, Cushman Electronics, Goodman Motorcycles, Chalke & Goorson Distributors, Fischman Textiles and Wellman Plastics, which closed down in 1991 and reopened in 2020. It was named for Civil War Captain Richard Langford, the name getting confused with Langford Forks in nearby Knox County and Lannford Cross in Logan County.

Prior to the 1830s, the area now occupied by Lanford was mainly uninhabited, consisting largely of wetlands and swampy forest. However, the Potawatomi Native Americans used trails along the highlands west of the river and used the area as hunting lands but generally avoided the wetlands. French explorers originally referred to the general area as Mud Lake, derived from explorer and surveyor Samuel Arnold Mudd, who disappeared here in the early 19th Century. The first non-Native Americans settled in the area in 1836, the names "Mud Lake" and "Muddtown" used intermittently through the 1830s and 1840s, although the territory had no defined boundaries. The area remained only sparsely settled, supporting some farming and lumber activity on some of the higher ground, as well as a number of taverns or "hotels" in the later Lanford community. "Muddtown" eventually sunk into the soft soil on the lake, which is still known as Mud Lake today, with wealthy investors building homes, businesses and communities on the high ground through the 1860s and 1870s. Lanford sent 1200 soldiers to serve in the Illinois Ninth Infantry during the Civil War, seeing action in Tennessee, Virginia and Maryland.

In 1850, a Union outpost named Fort Metcalfe was built on Mud Island at the south end of Mud Lake on the Illinois River, later being used as a prison for Confederate sympathizers, dissidents and captured Native Americans, but it was closed by 1875. The 1850 census shows a few hundred settlers in Lanford and a post office established by postmaster Janes Hagen Conner in 1854. However, no municipality yet existed.

In 1857, a group of Methodist business leaders founded the Christian Bible Studies Institute in the area on land donated to them by the Fulton County Government unsure where to put them. The grounds have since expanded as Central Illinois State College. In 1866, the founders of the college submitted to the county judge their plans for the City of Lanford to be established. In 1857, the request was granted. The early township of Lanford was split off from the Mud Lake Township with the commercial district taking up all of the land east of the Lanford Turnpike (Highway 78) and the west side becoming residential. Other small business dotted the south side of Lewiston Road (now Interstate 24). In the 1970s, the Lanford Bridge linked Highway 67 across the river with the end of Highway 78. According to local legend, a few workmen were lost in the concrete during construction.

Lanford was formally incorporated as a town on December 29, 1863, having large population booms through the 1870s to the 1940s. The Mafia had huge control of the area during Prohibition. Harold "The Butcher" Harris was a noted Mafia hitman turned crime boss in the 1930s who owned several hotels and speakeasies in Lanford before he was killed in a drive-by shooting in 1938. During the 1960s, the Lanford Corp of Engineers converted part of the Lower Mud Lake area by adding a 74-acre lakefill.

Today, Lanford has a 71% blue collar demographic due to the number of local businesses in the area. It leans mostly Democratic (68%) with much of its citizens earning below the $15,000 threshold. Allegius Medical in town has done business with several other corporations, such as BioMart and Hedison Pharmaceuticals, carrying out its distribution through centers in nearby Lewiston, River Heights, New York and Hainesville, California. The Old Cushman Electronics Factory, Hastings Aircraft Parts Company, Dwight Furniture Warehouse and Old Kohler Bottling Plant were acquired by the Lightoller-Crosby Company between 1986 and 2010, later re-opening them and creating more jobs in the area.

Lanford has several notable landmarks, such as the National Soft Drink Museum, Mud Lake Cemetery, made famous by writer Thomas Earle Healey in his "Strange and Curious Chronicles from Muddtown" anthology, the Pithe Indians Mounds Museum, dedicated to American Indian artifacts, the Lanford Blacksmith Shop Museum, located north of town near the Crutcher Lake Reservoir and one of the few blacksmith shops left in the United States. It has been run by the Goranson family since 1880. Delaware Street, Montgomery Street, Hart Street, Doherty Street and Northpointe Streets in town are dotted by several abandoned homes dating back to the 1890s. One of which is the Old Crawford Mansion north of town, known as the most westward home for the Lucy Rose urban legend prevalent in the Northeast United States. In the late 90s, a con-artist named Randall Ewing attempted selling acres of undeveloped Lanford property to gullible investors.

The Lanford-Mud Lake Community Center holds an event sponsored by Lanford in the fall of each year. It includes a plethora of shops and stands that sell a variety of community-made products.