Pittsburg, IL

Pittsburg is a Williamson County village whose street grid still tells the story of a 1906 coal venture. John Colp and Samuel T. Bush sold mine property and laid out a town around mines, a company store, and the Marion, Eldorado and Southwestern Railroad. The plat's Pennsylvania, Hocking Valley, Scranton, and Lehigh Valley streets point to Colp's hope that this southern Illinois town would echo Pittsburgh's industrial power. A post office opened in 1907.

ATTRBrian Stansberry (photographer) / CC BY 4.0

Mining shaped the village's original arrangements: the railroad carried coal, the company store served workers, and the town gave miners a place to live near the workings. The Colp Coal Company sold its property in 1918, and the coal business later faded. The 2020 census counted 565 residents, and Pittsburg now occupies a compact 2.1-square-mile footprint within Williamson County's older coal landscape. The street names and the small-town outline still show how closely the community was built around a mine and a rail line. That layout remains legible today.