Dongola: Egypt in Southern Illinois

Dongola is a small village in Union County near the southern tip of Illinois, laid out in eighteen fifty-seven as a stop on the Illinois Central Railroad. Its name comes from Dongola, Sudan, a city far up the Nile. That is not as strange as it sounds.

Southern Illinois is sometimes called Little Egypt, though the origin of the nickname is debated, and one common idea is that the rich river bottomland reminded settlers of the Nile delta. The region is dotted with Egyptian names, Cairo at the very tip where the Ohio meets the Mississippi, Thebes, Karnak, and here, Dongola. Abraham Lincoln himself worked as a lawyer for the Illinois Central Railroad, the line that laid out the string of towns named for distant places along its tracks.