Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Below: maps from 1929 on and the census since 1880.
The Forest City post office opened in 1861, the earliest record of the town by name.
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The first neighbors to add old photos shape how Forest City’s history is told.
Peaked at 321 in 1990; 222 people lived here in 2020.
14 censuses, 1880–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Forest City’s Wikipedia page.
Wikipedia doesn’t have a history of Forest City yet. The photos, dates and memories neighbors add here are how it gets written.
Forest City is a village in Mason County, Illinois, United States. The population was 222 at the 2020 census.
Its first post office opened in 1861. Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses its population fell from 246 to 222 (-10%).
Intro from Wikipedia. Population: U.S. Census Bureau.
Passages that mention Forest City, cut from the printed page as they were published.
Forest City is situated on the Peoria, Pekin and Jacksonville Railroad, and laid out at the time of its first construction, and is seventeen miles from Pekin and thirteen from Havana. It was in what was originally Mason Plains precinct, but by an act of the Board of Supervisors, in 1S73, it was changed to Forest City township. The original town plat was purchased by Walker, Kemp, Waggenseller and Wright, in Havana, and surveyed in 1859.
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
On the mapFirst mapped by the U.S. Geological SurveyWeddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
Every edition of the U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Forest City. Tap a year, or press play to watch the town change.
U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Forest City.
The Forest City post office opened in 1861, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
