Metropolis, Illinois: Fort, Frontier Town, and Superman's Hometown

On the Ohio River in the far southern tip of Illinois stands a small city with a name that has always promised more than geography could deliver: Metropolis.

The French built the first significant fortification here in seventeen fifty-seven, calling it Fort Ascension. Two years later they renamed it Fort Massiac, in honor of the Marquis de Massiac, the French Naval Minister. The fort guarded the confluence of the Ohio and Cumberland Rivers, a strategic chokepoint that France desperately wanted to hold against British expansion into the Mississippi basin. The gamble failed. After the French and Indian War ended in seventeen sixty-three, the French abandoned the post and Chickasaw warriors burned it to the ground.

British forces did not regarrison the ruin, but Americans did. In seventeen ninety-four, under orders from President George Washington, the United States Army rebuilt the fort to project power along the lower Ohio River. In eighteen oh three, the young Meriwether Lewis stopped at Fort Massac on his way to meet William Clark, recruiting men for an expedition that would depart the following year. The fort became Illinois's first state park in nineteen oh eight.

The town of Metropolis was platted in eighteen thirty-nine, named with the grand ambition common to speculative frontier settlements. Its location on the Ohio was supposed to make it a commercial hub. It remained a small river town instead.

Then in nineteen seventy-two, DC Comics officially designated Metropolis, Illinois as the real-world hometown of Superman, and the Illinois General Assembly confirmed the honor by resolution. The town leaned into it. A fifteen-foot bronze statue of the Man of Steel stands in the town square today. Every June the city holds a Superman Celebration, drawing fans of the comic and the dozens of actors who have played the role across eight decades of film and television.