West City, Illinois

West City, just outside Benton in Franklin County, grew up as a coal camp in the early nineteen hundreds. Immigrants from Poland, Lithuania, and England arrived to work the numerous mines that dotted southern Illinois at the time. By nineteen eleven the settlement had three hundred fifty residents, enough for thirty-three citizens to petition the Franklin County court for incorporation.

On June first of that year, a judge declared West City a legally organized village under Illinois law. Coal drove the local economy for decades. The mines are long gone, but the immigrant character those workers gave the community left a quiet imprint on this corner of southern Illinois that persists to this day.