Mount Morris, IL

Mount Morris is an Ogle County village whose town square is also an old college campus. The 2020 census counted 2,861 residents. Rock River Seminary opened on the square in 1839, later became Mount Morris College under the Church of the Brethren, and closed in 1932 after financial troubles and a fire. The village still calls the square "the campus," and its buildings—Old Sandstone, College Hall, the Memorial Fountain, and the bandshell—make that history easy to walk through.

ATTRAndy McMurray / CC BY 2.5

Then there is the bell. The Illinois Freedom Bell, a replica cast in 1862 and recovered from Lake Geneva after more than four decades underwater, came to Mount Morris in 1966. The state legislature named it Illinois' official Freedom Bell in 1971, and the village rings it every July 4 during the Let Freedom Ring festival. Kable Concert Band has played free summer concerts from the campus bandshell since 1896, giving the square a living musical routine. With Dillehay, Mounder, and Zickuhr parks around the village and Route 64 cutting east-west, Mount Morris feels like a town whose best landmarks are still part of ordinary local use.