Arlington, Illinois
Arlington has a history that is unforgettable. In the early 1900s, Arlington, which was then called 'Lost Grove', was experiencing rapidgrowth and development. Many companies set up shop to profit from the people flocking to the jobs at the coal mines in this area of Illinois. The businesses included a mattress factory, beer brewery, numerous restaurants, a brothel, and many others. The mayor at the time was from New York, and changed the town's name to Arlington, after the town of Arlington, NY. Arlington was about the size of Peru, Illinois. On November 13, 1909, a fire in a mine shaft killed 259 miners, young and old, at the Cherry coal mine. Authorities sealed the mine to contain the fire, trapping many rescue workers inside. When the mine was opened a week later only twenty men had survived of the hundreds involved. This disaster influenced early worker's compensation laws and labor practices in the coal mining industry. At the time Illinois had no laws governing working conditions for miners. Arlington's growth slowed drastically after this occurrence.
Many years went by and Arlington was still a big town in Bureau County. Pool halls, churches, bars, restaurants, and schools still running with no stop. In the 1950's a tornado, one of the biggest to hit the area in a long time, came through and destroyed most of Arlington. Many people decided that Arlington was never going to be the town it used to be, so they packed up and moved away. Today Arlington has about 250 people living there. Restaurants are closed down, schools shut down, and pool halls 
gone. Most of the town is now corn and bean fields, but if you walk through those fields, you can still find bits of history like old medicine bottles, billiard balls, spoons, whisky jugs, and sidewalks leading to nowhere. Sometimes, you can find an old foundation of a house once filled with furniture and a family, now just a line of bricks under dirt with lost memories.
