Ashkum: More and More

The village of Ashkum, Illinois, takes its name from a Native American word meaning more and more, an oddly fitting phrase for a prairie settlement that came into being precisely because the Illinois Central Railroad kept pushing south. The station went in during the eighteen fifties, and a small settlement soon took root around it. Like dozens of small Illinois Central towns spaced a few miles apart across the Kankakee plain, Ashkum existed to move grain and livestock to Chicago, its reason for being embedded in the rhythm of the line running through it.