Most of Panola was built recently: 5% of its homes predate 1940 and the median home dates from 2004. Below: maps from 1955 on and the census since 1880.
The Panola post office opened in 1892, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Panola Station (1854), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
First census: 127 in 18802020 census: 47134 years
Founding year: the first Panola post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
What stands out about Panola’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Some sources, including Stewart, pg. 362, as well as several Woodford County history books claim the name Panola was fabricated by J.B. Calhoun, land commissioner of the Illinois Central Railroad, by arbitrarily combining single consonants and vowels. However, the 1954 El Paso Story correctly records that while Panola was assigned by an official of the Illinois Central Railroad, it simply duplicates the name of Panola County, Mississippi as well as several municipalities in the southern U.S. named Panola. Panola is a Native American word for cotton.
In 1856 the people of Panola suffered a serious disappointment. They had expected that the Toledo, Peoria and Warsaw railroad would cross the Central there a-nd greatly increase the importance of the town by making it a railroad junction. For some reason the road went two miles south of Panola, and the town never quite recovered from the effects of this disappointment. ElPaso reaped the benefits that Panola had hoped to receive.
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The Past and present of Woodford County, Illinois1878 · page 405Read the page →
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The first school house in the township was built in the village of Panola, in the year 1857, and Jane Nesmith was installed as teacher. The building cost §600.00, and was paid for by subscription. This building, with an addition in 1865, has been in use, for this purpose, ever since. During the next year, two other school houses wei'e erected ; and, in 1859, a fourth one was built. The first four houses were built by the township, the board paying back to the donors their subscriptions to Panola house. Other districts were laid out and houses built, as the wants of the increasing population demanded,
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Farm houses began to dot the prairies and several towns soon sprang up along the line of road. Panola was one of the first of these. At that time the engines used wood as fuel, and had a wooding station near Panola. South of there a turntable was located in Ihc; early history of the road.
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The Past and present of Woodford County, Illinois1878 · page 408Read the page →
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& Warsaw Company would run a line of railroad through this place. Indeed a line was surveyed through the town ; and, had the road been built through here, instead of being a few miles further south, the fortunes of the Panola people would have been made. However, through the influence of other yjarties, the line was not located here, and the town of Panola stands a monument of unrealized expectations. i The village improved a little during the next few years, and for a time contended with El Paso for supremacy, but the advantage gained by the latter in
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.
Timeline
Panola, 1854 to 1955
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
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 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.
