Effingham: The Crossroads, the Name, and the Cross

Effingham sits at the junction of Interstate Fifty-Seven and Interstate Seventy, two of the busiest highways in the Midwest, and it has styled itself the Crossroads of Opportunity ever since the interchange was built in the nineteen sixties. The town's name has a stranger origin. It may honor Thomas Howard, the Earl of Effingham, a British general who resigned his commission in seventeen seventy-five rather than fight the American colonists, though some accounts credit a local surveyor.

The settlement here was known as Broughton until eighteen fifty-nine, when the name was changed to match the county. Today the most visible landmark at the crossroads is a steel cross standing one hundred ninety-eight feet tall, dedicated in September of two thousand one, just five days after the September eleventh attacks, at a ceremony that drew thousands.