Harvey, Illinois: The Magic City That Banned the Bottle

In eighteen eighty-nine, Chicago lumberman Turlington W. Harvey looked at a flat Illinois prairie and saw something unusual: a Christian utopia. Harvey bought land south of Chicago along the Illinois Central Railroad, recruited factories and workers, and incorporated the town bearing his name in eighteen ninety-one.

The rules were simple: no saloons, no gambling, no vice. Harvey was a devoted follower of Dwight L. Moody, the era's greatest evangelist, and he wanted to prove that capitalism and Christian morality could build a better city than sin could.

The experiment worked, briefly. By nineteen hundred the population topped five thousand, and the town is remembered as the Magic City. Then in eighteen ninety-five, residents voted to become a city, and the strict temperance ideal slipped away over the following years.

Harvey grew into a full-fledged industrial suburb, and today remains one of Chicago's oldest south-suburban communities.