Ladd, Illinois: Born in a Board Meeting

The town of Ladd, Illinois was born in a board meeting in Ottumwa, Iowa. On April twenty-sixth, eighteen eighty-eight, the directors of the Whitebreast Fuel Company authorized an agent named William McNett to purchase rights to a large coal deposit in eastern Bureau County, Illinois. McNett secured ten thousand five hundred acres, and crews were dispatched to sink the first shaft.

The soft, water-saturated ground made it brutal work. The miners fought sand pockets and boulders before coal finally came up. The mining camp was originally named Osgood, after the company manager, then renamed Laddville, then shortened to Ladd after a Peru, Illinois businessman who became involved locally.

The village incorporated in June of eighteen ninety. By nineteen oh one, the Illinois Third Vein Coal Company bought the operation and invested a hundred thousand dollars in improvements, making it one of the most modern mines in the state. Today Ladd is a small village of about twelve hundred people in the Illinois Valley.