How come Cairo never developed into a large city. It is on the junction of two major water ways, the Ohio and Mississippi. It is about midway between two large ports Memphis and St Louis.
What happened?
I’ve never been to Cairo, but I see two problems.
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Are there a lot of rail lines that meet there? I don’t think so.
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The people pronounce the city name “Kay-roh” and that sounds funny.
i’ve never been to cairo either but my thoughts:
i believe that cairo at one time was bigger than it is now
it floods a lot, probably even more so than any town just situated on one river
is there a need or a stop between st louis and memphis?
I’d turn the question around: Why would Cairo develop into a large city?
St. Louis was a jumping-off point to the West. It was established early as a trade-city and built on that. Memphis was a collection point for goods being shipped out of Tennessee and northern Mississippi by way of the Mississippi River.
Cairo is on a spit of flood plain at the tip of Illinois. There are numerous small towns in Illinois that are on the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers that are closer to any farming or mining communities than Cairo.
The presence of the Ohio gives it two rivers, but there is nothing inherent in the joining of two rivers that demands a city. Boats originally ran on schedules determined by refueling stations. There is no reason for a boat to stop its journey simply because there is a fork in the river. The Tennessee joins the Ohio near, but not at, Paducah. The Wabash joins the Ohio where no nearby towns have been built. There is no town at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi (although the proximity of St. Louis and the prevalence of floods probably influenced that decision). There is no town at the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers. Grafton, at the confluence of the Illinois and the Mississippi is very small.
I’d say that Cairo did well to become as large as it has.
Tom~
In “Huckleberry Finn”, Jim and Huck are looking for Cairo while they are rafting down the Mississippi so they can go up the Ohio River to the relative safety of Ohio. However, they miss Cairo in the night, so antebellum Cairo must not have been much to see.
I imagine that Twain was somewhat familiar with the place.
On the way from Mississippi to Chicago, we often stop at Cairo, cause it’s so strange. For some reason, in the early spring, it smells like a sewer. No judgement, just observation. It does seem like a town passed over, in what would seem to be a Mississippi River logical development. Two good points: for BBQ fans, Shemwell’s serves up a particular mustard based version that is unique.(yeah, I’m veg, but must make note of the unique). And there’s a guy on the outskirts of town who decorates his yard with pinwheels stuck in old oil bottles, who is truly a delightful person. So, Cairo is on my map of places to visit.
God created Man, and then said,“Hell,I can do better than that !” Courtesy of Wally’s Sig-O-Rama
The Chicago Reader, Cecil’s hometown newspaper, carried an article on this very subject within the last year. Do I have it on hand, or a handy web link. No, of course not; that would be too convenient…
“The dawn of a new era is felt and not measured.” Walter Lord
tomndebb:
I would think that the presence of two rivers would make a place a big industrial center, like Pittsburgh.
Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@kozmo.com
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
Well, manufacturing might have become a big influence, if coal mining hadn’t consumed the entire area. The vast majority of industry in Southern Illinois was based on coal, and it’s dried up recently. Now, the region, known as Little Egypt, is somewhat economically depressed. Cairo was larger previously, but it’s not the nicest town in the world and those people who might have stayed to help develop it seemed to have moved to some of the other towns, like Metropolis or Paducah. There’s not been much of a push to develop other industry in that area, and it seems most of the populace relies on either Southern Illinois University and its extension offices or IDOC, since prisons seem to be the new goldmines for these towns.
Battles are won in nuance.
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- (Warning: This is a local/regional joke.) Cairo went under when all the really cool people there moved to Matoon. - MC
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- “MA toon”, not “ma TOON”
It doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t provide a specific or necessary reason.
Pittsburgh (Fort Duquesne) was founded to control communications in the wilderness and its “two river” location was appropriate to that purpose. Its location (where the Allegany and Monongahela combined to provide a deeper river, the Ohio) was exploited by later westward immigrants as a good location from which to launch rafts to sail down the Ohio or launch boats to ply their trade on the Ohio. The later discovery of coal in the region ensured that the city that had already been established would grow.
As noted above, however, the simple presence of a riparian confluence does not guarantee that a place will be considered valuable for manufacturing or even trade. The Tennessee and the Wabash (both navigable in the early 1800s) flowed into the Ohio without inspiring anyone to build there. The Illinois and the Arkansas (to say nothing of the Missouri) each flowed into the Mississippi without prompting anyone to mark the sites with cities. Looking at other river forks where cities have arisen, they seem (at a quick glance) to follow the Pittsbugh model of having been prompted by considerations of control of communications rather than inspired by dreams of trade: Montreal on the St. Lawrence and Ottawa, Kansas City on the Missouri at the Kansas, Albany on the Hudson and Mohawk, Defiance OH on the Maumee and the Auglaize (and I’m already getting into small towns, although I’m doing this by memory).
We actually have rather few large cities at the juncture of large rivers. (Several large cities on large rivers may have smaller rivers that join in or near the city, but if you look at the city history, you will find that few of them were founded at the junction and most grew to encompass the junction, later.)
Tom~
Ha ha, MC! That one’s a barnburner! 
I have the pleasure of attending school at Southern Illinois University and working for a radio station here. My job requires me to understand (or pretend to) most of the local geography, history, and culture.
That said, I agree with Flyp, who noted that while Cairo isn’t BAD, persay, it’s not up there with other cities in Massac County and the area.
The region is in a mild economic depression (S-I-U is the largest employer in Illinois south of Springfield) and that can’t be helping.
Another theory I have is that its location, while on the two rivers, can’t help much…i.e., it’s just far enough from St. Loo and Memphis and WAY too far from Chicago.
But what the heck. Any town that sounds like a very sugary syrup can’t be all THAT bad.
In reference to Little Egypt, above, allanadale can confirm the SIU’s student newspaper is the The Daily Egyption and the mascot is a Saluki, an egyptian breed of dog, IIRC.
[hijack]
allanadale,
do they still take over the strip every halloween?
I got a BSEE and an MSEE from SIU in 94 and 96, respectively.
[/hijack]
Tinker
Well, I see I’m in good company. Hello, fellow Saluks.
I, too, graduated from the hallowed halls of SIUC. BS in Journalism, '98.
Tinker, they’re still giving them a break over Halloween, IIRC. Although that doesn’t seem to stop them taking the Strip on any other given weekend.
What happened to Buffalo NY? At the turn of the last century, it was well on its way to being as big as Chicago. It was a deepwater port, handling as much cargo as NYC-what happened to bring ot into decline?
This is strictly WAG, but I’d say that Buffalo suffered from being a one-trick pony. Chicago had the stock yards, a modest amount of manufacturing, and a burgeoning retail industry. It was the rail distribution point for most of the New England and Great Lakes manufacturing that was shipped to the west. Prior to the St. Lawrence Seaway, it was a more equal competitor for shipping products from the Great Lakes to the ocean by way of the Michigan-Illinois canal. (It still has a lively barge shipping industry.) It was well positioned to continue its growth.
Buffalo, on the other hand, had steel. It was a transfer point for some coal headed to Pittsburgh (in competition with Erie and such unlikely locations as Ashtabula and Conneaut). Similarly, grain brought down from the Great Plains was dependant on a healthy railroad system to pass it along to the East. There was not really much more going on, there.
I’d be interested to know how Buffalo rivaled New York for shipping. Is it possible that the comparison is based on raw tonnage? In that case, the large number of bulk ore and coal freighters inflated its apparent activity. Buffalo was not, in 1900, a deep-water port. It was then, as now, a lake port. Rivers were typically dredged to around 24 feet in those days (usually 28 feet now). The New York Canal System (aka the New York State Barge Canal, aka the old Erie Canal) cannot handle lake-going traffic, much less ocean traffic. Before the Saint Lawrence Seaway, Buffalo was simply a railroad terminus for the basically closed Great Lakes waterways. The New York canal was about on a par with the Illinois canal, but there was greater demand for a canal system pointed at the Mississippi than there was for a canal system linked to NYC.
Buffalo was also only available as a port for eight months a year. Even today they have never established 12-month service on the Great Lakes.
Buffalo probably suffered from problems similar to Cleveland. In 1900, Cleveland had over 900,000 people, a flourishing steel industry, and a good location. Detroit lucked into grabbing the auto industry and stole a lot of the potential growth of those two Lake Erie towns. During WWII, the auto industry was able to capture a (small) piece of the aircraft industry and several automobile-related applications brought in a chemical industry, as well. After the war, the decline of the railroads further reduced the amount of traffic that passed through Buffalo and Cleveland. An increase in barge traffic on the Mississipi and Missouri rivers siphoned off much of the grain traffic. (About the only grain ships still in use on the Lakes are Canadians bringing the harvest of Saskatchewan and Manitoba down the St. Lawrence from Port Arthur and Thunder Bay.)
Tom~
AHA! The Rumors are true!
Not everyone who comes out of SIUC is a drunken buffoon! I thought I was going to have to change that!
Yes, it’s the D.E…they need a coupla good editors. I’d love to get in there with a Red Pen and correct some grammar.
And as a Marching Saluki alum (snare line 1999) and Sports Reporter for WSIU-FM, I can affirm we are the Salukis.
The strip, on Halloween, is much more subdued than in the past to my knowledge. I’m in my first year here so I can only testify hearsay, but this year I do know that 2000 people packed the strip at 2 am, the crowds did not move, and the only real casualties were the idiots jumping off the roof of Styx (why??).
But I’m off topic…just nice to see some other people bleeding maroon around here. 
“Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue…” Anon.
Tom rocks! Great posts.
Anyone got a clue as to why Cairo stinks so bad when the river is rising??? I’d like to know.
Let’s not forget Sacramento at the confluence of the American and Sacramento rivers. 
And talking about Defiance is getting a bit esoteric, especially with Fort Wayne at the confluence of the St. Mary’s and St. Joseph Rivers (making the Maumee River) just upstream.