Facts
Saline County Illinois
Communities
- The first community established in Saline County was Somerset, located on the side of Eagle Mountain.
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The site of Harrisburg was developed around James Harris’s sawmill, situated on “Crusoe’s Island.”
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The village of Stonefort was moved in the 1870’s to be closer to the railroad.
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Carrier Mills was named after George Washington Carrier’s Mill, near the railroad.
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The oldest Black settlement in the state is “Lakeview” aka “Pond Settlement”. The settlement was founded around 1818 as a freedmen’s town by African American settlers from North Carolina. The original settlers were the Allens, Chavis, Blackwell, Taborn, Mitchell, Evans, Cofield, and Coleman Families.
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Eldorado was originally spelled Elder-Reed after the town's founders. When the railroad ran through the community, they changed the name. That is the reason for the difference in its pronunciation, Eldorado, not the Spanish word, El Dorado.
