Amboy, IL

At the 2020 census, Amboy was a Lee County city of 2,278 people along the Green River. The Illinois Central Railroad began buying land here in 1852, and Amboy was chartered in 1854 as an agricultural and railroad town. The line brought businesses, several faith communities, and eventually the railroad's headquarters. The name came from Amboy, New Jersey, but the town built its own little collection of legends: the planned Mormon headquarters left a cemetery and marker, and Abraham Lincoln stopped for a haircut while traveling as the railroad's lawyer.

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World War II added a much larger industrial footprint. The Green River Ordnance Plant operated west of town, while a former Carson Pirie Scott store became the Long Branch Saloon in the old commercial district. Today Amboy Depot Days turns the railroad past into a local gathering, with the depot and downtown doing the storytelling. Amboy is a place where a railroad headquarters, a Mormon cemetery, a presidential haircut, and a wartime ammunition plant all sit inside an ordinary-looking Illinois town.