Fort Defiance, a Civil War base, was located here in 1862 by Union General Ulysses S. Grant to control strategic access to the rivers, and launch and supply his successful campaigns south.

[7] A second and successful effort to establish a town was made by the Cairo City and Canal Company in 1836–37, with a large levee built to encircle the site.

During the Civil War, Admiral Andrew Hull Foote made Cairo the naval station for the Mississippi River Squadron on September 6, 1861.

Since Cairo had no land available for base facilities, the navy yard repair shop machinery was afloat aboard wharf-boats, old steamers, tugs, flat-boats, and rafts.

Cairo failed to regain this important trade after the war, as more railroads converged on Chicago and it developed at a rapid pace, attracting stockyards, meat processing, and heavy industries.

In 1869, construction began on the United States Custom House and Post Office, which was designed by Alfred B. Mullet, the Supervising Architect.

Across the street from the customs house, the Cairo Public Library was constructed in 1883 of Queen Anne-style architecture, finished with stained glass windows and ornate woodwork.

Several buildings, including the old custom house, were originally designed to be built to a higher street level, to be at the same height as the top of the levees.

[17][18] Cairo's turbulent history of race relations is marked by the 1909 spectacle lynching of black resident William James.

Later in the early 20th century, Chicago became the center of black life in the state, as it was the destination of tens of thousands of migrants during the Great Migration.

The first was William James, an African American accused of the murder of Anna Pelly, a young white woman killed three days earlier, although there was no physical or circumstantial evidence connecting him to the crime.

James was accused of killing Pelly by choking her to death in an alley with pieces of a flour sack on the evening of November 8, 1909.

The white townspeople grew infuriated by the delay in a speedy trial, and the threat of mob violence quickly developed.

On November 10, Sheriff Frank E. Davis arranged to take James out of the city jail on an Illinois Central train to avoid mob violence.

The mob then set James's body on fire and roasted the remains while men, women, and children shouted and cheered...

Some took out their pocketknives and cut off ears and fingers and broke up bones to take as gruesome souvenirs.But the increasingly large mob in Cairo learned of this and seized another train, racing to catch up with the sheriff and James.

Approximately 10,000 people had gathered for a spectacle lynching as the leaders attempted to hang James from large steel arches that spanned the intersection.

Unable to locate him and still bloodthirsty, they entered the court house jail and broke into the cell where Henry Salzner was being held.

After the residents had calmed down, Governor Deneen enforced the 1905 anti-lynching law by dismissing Sheriff Davis for failing to protect James and Salzner.

Between the 1930s and 1960s, the population in Cairo remained fairly steady; however, many jobs were gone as the shipping, railroad, and ferry industries left the city.

On July 16, 1967, Robert Hunt, a 19-year-old black soldier home on leave, was allegedly found hanged in the Cairo police station.

During the night of rioting on July 17, three stores and a warehouse in Cairo were burned to the ground, and windows were broken out of numerous other buildings.

Cairo Mayor Lee Stenzel and other city leaders met with federal and state representatives to ensure that a plan was developed to satisfy the demands by the deadline in an effort to head off any additional rioting.

The United Front formally accused the White Hats of intimidating the black community, and presented a list of seven demands to the City of Cairo.

The protests led to a rash of violence that was stopped only when Illinois Governor Richard Ogilvie deployed National Guardsmen to restore the peace.

In summer 1969, the Cairo United Front also began what became a decade-long boycott of white-owned businesses, which had generally not hired blacks as clerks or staff.

The city faces many significant socio-economic challenges for the remaining population, including poverty, crime, issues in education, unemployment and rebuilding its tax base.

They are restoring some architectural landmarks, and plan to develop heritage tourism focusing on the city's history and relationship to the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

[51] Major highways include: Cairo's location on a spit of land that lies between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers made overlapping US 60 and 62 briefly through Illinois more practical than directly connecting Missouri and Kentucky.

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.