Ladd, IL

Ladd is a Bureau County village whose streets began as a coal-and-rail construction camp. The Whitebreast Fuel Company bought 10,500 acres around the site in 1888, started sinking a mine, and worked with the rail line that was being built through the area. The first camp was called Osgood after company manager John Cleveland Osgood; after George Dana Ladd became involved, the name shifted to Laddville and then Ladd. The village incorporated in 1890.

Ladd's coal past is still easy to find in the present-day map. The village sits one mile north of I-80 on Illinois Route 89 between Cherry and Spring Valley, and its central park holds a Vietnam War tank that has become the landmark most newcomers notice. The Illinois Valley and Northern and Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroads made Ladd a shipping place for coal and grain; the old mine closed in 1924, yet the village's layout still follows that industrial beginning. Ladd is a small place where a park display and a highway route sit on top of a mining town's original grid.