Besides the existing animal and native footpaths that led them to the riverfront, easy access to water played a big role in their decision to settle here. That all began in 1825 and by 1834 enough people had gathered in the area that Samuel T. McKean decided to lay out a plat of a town he labeled Chillicothe.

Even before McKean had founded Chillicothe, Samuel Allen, in 1829, was granted a river ferry license to operate a ferry from the west side of the Illinois River to connect to the village of Spring Bay on the east shore. Then in 1837, Allen platted a town much larger than Chillicothe between Chillicothe and Rome. Only a few lots were ever sold and the Allentown plat was vacated in 1867. There is no record that a ferry was ever established there. The means of transportation during those 29 years were limited to the foot trails and paths mentioned above plus a canoe. Going downriver was not too bad, but it was a long 18-mile trek back to Chillicothe. Change is always underway and just as horse travel improved traveling on foot, the riverboat era was a huge boost to the development of the area.

Documentation sets the regular use of riverboats to move people and commodities up and down the rivers with much less effort and in much shorter times. The riverboat era began in 1829 and continued well into the 1900s. The development of the riverboat industry on the Ohio, Illinois, and Mississippi rivers greatly expanded business ventures throughout the Midwest. Most of the successful and expanding communities in the newly gained territory from the 1830s were along waterways. Those towns would most likely be considered “river towns.” For its first 20 years, there is no doubt that Chillicothe was a river town. That did not change overnight.

Though the river’s influence upon the business community steadily ebbed by the mid-1920s, the social side of life in Chillicothe was and still is still closely attached to the river and the associated activities of hunting, fishing, and pleasure boating. For those of you who enjoy learning of the times when riverboats plied the Illinois River, much of that history can be found in the two-volume set of On the Riverfront by Robert Burtnett available at the Chillicothe Historical Society. Burtnett was a weekly contributor to the Chillicothe Bulletin and chronicled much of the history of riverboats and their captains. But what about the “railroad town” identity? Check in next month!