Grayville, IL

Grayville is an Edwards and White County city on the Wabash River, founded around 1810 near the mouth of Bonpas Creek. The river gave early settlers a natural port above the floodplain, and oil later brought another boom to the town. Grayville now sits beside a changed river landscape: the Wabash shifted away from the old four-mile oxbow after the 1985 flood, leaving the city about two miles from the main channel. Bonpas Creek still provides access to the oxbow.

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Interstate 64 crosses the Wabash just south of town, linking Grayville with the wider Illinois-Indiana road network, while Illinois Route 1 runs north and south through the county. City history notes the I-64 bridge and sewage outflow have had to be adapted to the river's new direction and erosion. That combination of highway, water, and civic maintenance gives Grayville a very physical daily geography. Grayville is an Illinois river city where an old port, an oil town, an oxbow, and a major interstate crossing share the same map.