-
- Town
341
85%
$59,250
25.3%
America/Chicago
61776
Welcome:
The WikiXM 'Towanda' platform is your gateway to becoming an active part of our vibrant community, regardless of your age or how long you've called 'Towanda' home. It's more than just a news platform; it's a thriving hub where the collective wisdom of every 'Towanda' resident converges to ignite discussions, foster learning, and empower one another with knowledge about our beloved town.
Here in 'Towanda', we have a diverse tapestry of residents. Some have roots that run deep, their knowledge steeped in the rich history of our town. Others are students, dedicated to keeping us updated on school activities, while many are committed to sharing the ebb and flow of daily life.
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Towanda, IL - History
We would like to provide the residents of Towanda a basic history overview.
Welcome to the Towanda Home page. The Towanda Home page provides as much information as possible on Towanda. Knowing Towanda’s history is essential to guiding its future. Within Towanda’s Home page, you will also find Towanda’s Founders, Holiday, and Birthday sections.
Towanda has a population of 341. 51.9% of Towanda’s inhabitants are Male, and 48.1 are female. 43% of Towanda is married and 85.4% own their own home. The Average Home price is $145,500, and the average rent is $733. Household median income in Towanda is $59,250, and the individual median income is $31,957. Towanda’s Ethnic is the following: White(96.8%), Hispanic(2.1%), Other(2.1%), Multiple(0.9%), Black(0.3%).
Towanda has been plagued with fires. In 1905, a large part of the downtown area burned, and in 1917 the original railroad station went up in flames. However, there was also progress. In 1901, telephone service began, and in 1937 Main Street was paved. Still, Towanda remained in the shadow of its larger neighbors to the south, Normal and Bloomington, and was always smaller than Lexington, the next town north on the stagecoach road and the Chicago and Alton Railroad line, which generally paralleled each other between Chicago and Springfield. Trains were essential to the development of the town, but traffic was never heavy; in 1887, only one southbound and one northbound freight stopped at Towanda.
Passenger service stopped altogether in the 1940s. Most travel had long since been replaced by automobile and truck traffic along the roads that paralleled the Chicago and Alton rail line: State Bond Route 4 during the 1910s, U.S. Route 66 from 1926 through the early 1970s, and Interstate 55 from the 1970s onward.
In 1955, U.S. Route 66 was locally widened to four lanes, as a partially divided highway with a grass median between the northbound and southbound lanes along much of its stretch. The former southbound lanes of Route 66 are now long disused, whereas the northbound roadbed is still in use as a two-lane local highway and the current path of Historic U.S.
Route 66 in Illinois, now known as the Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway, a designated National Scenic Byway. When in 1977 the construction of Interstate 55 detoured U.S. Route 66 in a gradual curve around the northwest side of Towanda, a 3+1⁄4-mile section of southbound Route 66 was closed off to motorized traffic and abandoned.
Between 1998 and 2000, a not-for-profit student and community project created the Towanda Historic Route 66 Parkway, also known as the Historic Route 66 Trail (as seen on Google Maps), on a 2.5-mile stretch of the old disused Route 66 roadway between the south end of Towanda and a point about 3 miles northeast, where Interstate 55 swings east to meet up with and once again closely parallel Historic Route 66.
The parkway, an ongoing project that preserved the Money Creek Bridge north of town on Route 66 and begins about 750 feet northeast of the bridge, also includes an outdoor educational exhibit on the history of Route 66 called "Historic Route 66: A Geographic Journey" that details the path of Route 66 through all eight states.[1] This exhibit extends from the intersection of Historic Route 66 and Jefferson Street near the I-55 interchange to a point at the southern tip of town just past an unnamed pond off of Historic Route 66 (at 40.557656, -88.908876), where there is a rest stop and parking area for catfish and bass fishing in the pond.
The stretch of the parkway where the exhibit was erected is a subset of the overall Towanda trail, which includes a three-flagpole garden on the NE corner of Jefferson and Route 66, several picnic areas along the length of the trail, scattered birdhouses and intermittent landscaped areas extending from the Money Creek Bridge to the south end of the pond.
The trail and parkway exhibit, now a popular local tourist stop on Historic Route 66, continue to be improved on an irregular basis, and the progress of improvements is detailed on the project website.[2] In 2006, the Towanda Area Historical Society partnered with the Towanda District Library to obtain a digital imaging grant from the Illinois State Library for a project entitled "Capturing Towanda’s Past for Eternity." An exceptional collection of scanned documents and images were added to the project's website as a result [3].
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