Menominee, IL

Menominee is a village in Jo Daviess County, Illinois, on the Little Menominee River near East Dubuque and Galena. The 2020 census counted 211 residents. The village sits in the rolling northwest Illinois landscape where river valleys, wooded slopes, and farm roads meet the Mississippi River country. East Dubuque supplies nearby services, while Galena draws the wider regional map west and south. The hills around town also make the village feel like part of the Driftless Area, where roads rise and fall between farms.

Menominee takes its name from the Menominee Indigenous peoples, a reminder that place names in the Upper Mississippi region carry histories older than the village itself. The Little Menominee gives the community a clear geographic center, flowing through a rural corner of Jo Daviess County before joining the larger river system. Menominee is small, but its setting is layered: a named stream, a nearby river city, historic Galena, and the farm roads that connect them locally.