Founding year: Wikidata. First post office: 1894.The full story ↓
History grade
What drives Ina’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Ina is more historic than 57% of U.S. towns. Its age holds the grade up; its National Register listings pull it down.
B
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Ina’s overall grade.
Few Illinois towns list much on the Register (a typical Illinois town has 0.5 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Ina’s 0.0 sits below most of its state (28% of Illinois towns have fewer) while its 0 listings outnumber those of 23% of U.S. towns.
NoteThe founding year comes from Wikidata alone; no second source gives 1840.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from C+ to B+. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±8.3 points).
Founding year: Wikidata (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about Ina’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Many Cherokee families settled in Ina around 1840. They were apparently refugees from the Trail of Tears. In the 1800s, Ina was jokingly referred to as "the Cherokee Reservation".
The main settlement in this area was Spring Garden, about 3 miles (5 km) northeast of Ina. Spring Garden prospered from 1848 until the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad was built in 1905. After that, the population and business shifted over to the depots at Ina and Bonnie.
Passages that mention Ina, cut from the printed page as they were published.
Wall's history of Jefferson County, Illinois1909 · page 196Read the page →
Read the text
Garden was laid out in 1 848 and was getting to be quite a town, when a few years ago the Chicago, Eastern & Illinois Railroad was built through the township and missed the old town and the new town of Ina sprung up and captured most of the trade and took the lead. So now Spring Garden has two well-equipped towns and a railroad and is forging to the front in enterprise as well as in education and religious matters. It still sticks to its Democracy. The town of Bonnie is located near the Dodds and Spring Garden line
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Wall's history of Jefferson County, Illinois1909 · page 245Read the page →
Read the text
The post-office at other towns in the county have had some of the same experiences as Mount Veriion. Dix, Woodlawn, Waltonville, Bonnie, Ina, Belle Rive, Opdyke, Bluford, Marlow and Emmerson City, all have well conducted post-offices, most of them operating rural routes. Most of the cross roads post-offices have given away to those rural routes, which serve all the people better than did the offices. The one thing needed to perfect this mail service in Jefferson county, is good roads, so that none of the routes may he
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.
By decade
No old photos in the archives yet
Weddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
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In 1840, according to Wikidata. Ina’s post office opened in 1894, and the census of 1900 counted 317 people here.
How does Ina rank for history?
Ina is more historic than 57% of U.S. towns. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
How old are the homes in Ina?
16% of Ina’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±8.3 points), against a typical 11% for an Illinois town; the median home was built in 1988.
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).
From Wikipedia, 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.
