Newton, IL

Newton is Jasper County’s seat, set near the geographic center of the county on a bluff above the Embarras River. Illinois Route 33 runs through Jourdan Street, while Newton Lake and Sam Parr State Fish and Wildlife Area sit nearby. The city’s older entertainment marker is the Drive ’n Theatre, opened as the Fairview Drive-In in 1953 and still one of Illinois’s surviving drive-ins. Newton also carries the industrial side of the map through a large coal-fired power plant. It is an eastern Illinois county seat where river bluff, movie screen, and power station share the horizon.