Future City: The Town That Floated Away

Just north of Cairo at the tip of Illinois, where the Ohio and Mississippi rivers nearly converge, there was once a community called Future City. Founded in the early nineteen hundreds by African Americans who worked across the line in Cairo, it grew into a tight-knit place with schools, churches, stores, and lodges, all built without any formal municipal government. The name captured something real: residents believed in a better tomorrow.

The floods disagreed. In nineteen twelve the rivers rose and damaged much of the town, but residents rebuilt. Many families spent much of that year in a tent city, and the rebuilding was mostly finished by winter.

Then the great flood of nineteen thirteen struck, and nearly every building in Future City was damaged or moved from its foundation, many of them floating free. That April the river at Cairo crested at fifty-four point seven feet, higher than any earlier record. Many Future City residents had been needed to reinforce Cairo's levees, working day and night, and most of Cairo was saved.

Some accounts suggest Cairo's flood control measures left Future City worse off. Future City was saved, barely. Only a handful of residents remain today.