Farina: Named for Its Wheat

When a station was platted on the Illinois Central Railroad's Chicago Branch in the eighteen fifties, the surrounding land was so thick with wheat fields that naming the place was easy. Farina, the Latin word for flour and fine-ground grain, said everything about what this corner of Fayette County was. The village organized formally in eighteen sixty-seven.

By nineteen fourteen Farina had become a major rail shipping point, sending out not only wheat but fruit and especially strawberries by the carload. The village never grew large, but it grew steadily, turning its grain-country name into an honest geographic description that still fits today.