Mason City, IL

Mason City is a Mason County city founded in 1857, with Illinois Route 10 running through downtown as Chestnut Street. Its name comes from the county, but the local map is more about water and roads: Salt Creek drains south toward the Sangamon River, while Route 10 ties the city to Lincoln and Easton. The place carries the compact grid of a nineteenth-century central Illinois town, with the old county-road pattern still doing most of the connecting. Mason City is the kind of place where a short drive gives you the whole story - prairie town, river basin, county-name identity, and a main street that is still the route through.