Grayville, Illinois

Grayville sits where Bonpas Creek empties into the Wabash River, a spot that French traders had long called Bon Pas, meaning good passage. The Gray family arrived in the early eighteen hundreds, and James Gray platted the town in the eighteen twenties and gave it his name. The post office opened in eighteen thirty-seven and the village incorporated in eighteen thirty-nine.

Straddling the border between Edwards and White counties on the Indiana state line, Grayville served as a Wabash River crossing point for settlers pushing into southern Illinois. The confluence of the creek and the river made it a natural stopping place, the same geographical logic that drew the French traders who named it well before any American town existed here.