Grand Tower, IL

Grand Tower is a city in Jackson County, Illinois, United States. The 2020 census counted 479 residents. The town gets its name from Tower Rock, a landmark island in the Mississippi River. Former names of this town include La Tour, Jenkins Landing, Cochran's Woodyard Landing, and Evans' Landing. The Grand Tower Energy Center is a 478 megawatt combined cycle gas-fired facility which produces power for the region. Grand Tower is owned by Ameren Energy Generating Company, or Genco. The short version is that Grand Tower carries an earlier story into the places people know and use now.

ATTRMarkkaempfer / CC BY-SA 4.0

That is the local read on Grand Tower: its past remains attached to the places people use now. The earliest inhabitants were a band of river pirates, who settled here after being driven off Spanish soil west of the Mississippi River, near the pirate ambush spot of Tower Rock. Grand Tower is located in southwestern Jackson County and is bordered to the west by the Mississippi River, which forms the Missouri –Illinois boundary. The northern edge of the city borders Shawnee National Forest.