Forgottonia
Forgottonia (/ˈfɔːrɡɒˌtoʊniə/), also spelled Forgotonia, is the name given to a 16-county region in Western Illinois in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The name Forgottonia was created by Jack Horn, son of civically minded Coca-Cola regional bottler Frank "Pappy" Horn; John Armstrong, Macomb Chamber of Commerce board member; and Neil Gamm, a Vietnam war veteran turned Western Illinois University theater student.
[1][2] The initiative grew from frustration among the citizens and public officials of western Illinois due to the lack of support for regional transportation and infrastructure projects.
The Valley City Eagle bridge for the Central Illinois Expressway in the southern section of the region was not completed until the late 1980s.
There were issues with eagles nesting in the Ray Norbut State Fish and Wildlife Area, through which the highway passes.
The toll ferry across the Mississippi River at Canton, Missouri served Adams County, Illinois; it was closed in 2014.
[5] Forgottonia represented a protest against inequalities in state and federal funding of infrastructure (e.g. transportation), communications and economic development in the region after World War II.
[citation needed] Carthage College, in Hancock County, relocated its campus to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1964.
These political and congressional actions resulted in the exodus of the region's businesses, long-time industries, and population by 1970.
Variously described as a new U.S. state or an independent republic, Forgottonia eventually became a fictional political secession movement in the early 1970s conceived by residents of McDonough County, in the heart of this region.
Western Illinois University student Neil Gamm was named governor, and the hamlet of Fandon near Colchester was to be Forgottonia's capital.
[8][9] An Avenue of the Saints (St. Paul, Minnesota, to St. Louis, Missouri) Expressway was proposed in 1955 during the formation of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956.
The Mississippi River barge companies raised political objections for a new federally funded competitor.
Future Iowa governor and US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack, mayor of Mt.
[10] The Illinois Zephyr began daily round-trip service from Chicago to Quincy in 1971, through the heart of the region.
As part of the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative and Illinois's partnership with Amtrak an additional daily train service on this Chicago-Quincy line was added on October 30, 2006.
[12] During fiscal year 2011, both the Illinois Zephyr and Carl Sandburg carried a combined 225,000 passengers, a 6.9% increase over FY2010.
[13] The Central Illinois Expressway, the Interstate 72 (I-72) Purple Heart Memorial Highway began in the late 1970s and was completed in 1991.
This provided some relief for the southern counties and enabled Interstate access to the cities of Quincy, Pittsfield and Jacksonville from Springfield, Central Illinois and Indiana.
A tri-state economic and highway study was performed and found that a full, limited-access tollway running from the Kansas Turnpike at Kansas City to the Indiana Toll Road at Gary or Tri-State Tollway near the Joliet area would cost $2 to $2.5 billion, if funded entirely by private investors.
[15] The study was useful in providing an expenditure number (1989 dollars) to Illinois and Missouri legislatures and public officials for building the highway.
This provides these communities (Quincy, Carthage, Macomb) with a southwestern connection (Kansas City and St. Joseph, MO) to Interstate 72.
Portions of U. S. Route 67 in Illinois north of Macomb were upgraded to a four lane expressway with bypasses around Monmouth and Roseville.
The 4 lane divided highway starts again at the Jersey County line, south to Godfrey where it intersects with Illinois 255.
By 2003, the Macomb to Peoria Expressway, through the former coal mining regions of Fulton County was planned and routes proposed, but is not currently funded (DOT Job No.
Currently, it is a partial cloverleaf to a short spur to the west that ends on Maxwell Road leading one mile south to Illinois 116.
In 2011, The History Channel series How the States Got Their Shapes focused its first season, second episode, The Great Plains, Trains, and Automobiles to the historic inequality given to this western Illinois region, as a result of Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (Public Law 84-627) and later legislation.
