Ina, IL

Ina is a Jefferson County village on high ground between Casey Creek and Gun Creek, about eleven miles south of Mount Vernon along Illinois Route 37 and Interstate 57. The 2020 census counted 1,641 residents. Spring Garden School District 178 operates Spring Garden Elementary and Spring Garden Middle School in the village. Rend Lake College's Ina campus sits southwest of town, with a land lab, restored one-room Independence Schoolhouse, natural prairie, truck-driver training, and recreation grounds. The Big Muddy River Correctional Center and Rend Lake also shape the local working map.

Many Cherokee families settled around Ina in the 1840s after displacement connected to the Trail of Tears. The older settlement of Spring Garden prospered until the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad reached the area in 1905, shifting business toward Ina and nearby Bonnie. Rend Lake was later formed by damming the Big Muddy and now supplies water, flood control, wildlife habitat, and recreation across southern Illinois. Ina sits between those layers: village streets and school buses on one side, a community college and lake-serving institutions on the other, with Mount Vernon and Benton providing larger regional connections.