Meyer Illinois

I took this sunset photo just a little south of town.

Just the Facts

NOTE: Meyer is just too small for the US Census Bureau to notice. This little town is in under the radar so to speak, and so I can't look up their statistics. So, if the government doesn't know you're there do you have to pay taxes -- jury duty -- boat licenses -- I'm moving to Meyer Illinois.

Meyer exists for three reasons. One: the Canton ferry crosses the river just below dam number 20 and connects Canton MO with destinations on the Illinois side of the Mississippi. Meyer is less than a mile from the ferry landing. Two: Lock and Dam number 20 is at Canton on the Missouri side of the river and Meyer on the Illinois side. Three: The URSA Coop grain elevator is located just above the dam. At harvest time the streets in Meyer are covered with spilled corn from the trucks that pull up to unload at URSA and, the sky is full of birds who come to eat the corn.

Meyer is located right smack in the middle of Illinois's first large (northern) expanse of flood plain. About 160 miles north of Meyer the Upper Mississippi National Wildlife and Fish Refuge ends at Cordoba Illinois. This is the beginning of the end for the bluffs along the east side of the river. (In Missouri the bluffs continue on down to the little town of Commerce just above the bootheel). Moving south from Cordoba, patches of flood plain appear intersperced between the bluffs. The Illinois bluffs don't disappear -- in fact they remain with the river right to the end of the state and then pick up again across the state line in Kentucky. What happens is that the bluffs begin to receed back from the river's edge. They snake in and out, moving away from the river and then back. When the bluffs receed from the river they open up a section of flat flood plain where the soil has been enriched for millennia by the river -- a farmer's dream come true.

It's a twenty five mile drive from Warsaw to Quincy Illinois. The road (U.S. 96) runs along the base of the bluffs at the back of the flood plain. Only those who have business in the corn and soybean fields cross over the drainage canal and enter the flood plain. Some of the roads through the flood plain are paved, but otherwise unmarked, many are just gravel. You can drive the entire distance through the flood plain and not meet another vechicle. In the late summer when the corn is high, it's like driving through a giant maze. If not for the URSA grain elevator which, out of all reasonable proportion, towers over the flood plain like the castle of a mythical giant, Meyer would be invisible. You can't even see it from across the river, because it's tucked down behind the levee. Meyer is not on most maps but, to their credit MapQuest will find Meyer. Google only brings up two obscure references to Meyer; one a note with photos from the 1993 flood and the other a photo from a Canton website that notes the URSA elevator located in Meyer.

As the photo to the left makes perfectly clear, Meyer is a river town. It's not the kind of river town that has a waterfront park or tour boats done up to look like old river steamers. The only dock in Meyer is the one where barges tie up to take on a load of corn. There's a levee between Meyer and the river but, it only works most of the time. In the summer of 1993 travel to and from Meyer was by boat only. It's happened before and as the owner of this home clearly knows, it'll happen again. I was delighted to see that some folks in town can laugh at the constant threat of flooding. Anywhere else the sight of a picnic table thirty feet in the air on a post would seem odd to say the least. In Meyer the picnic table joke works and dovetails perfectly with the unusual sight of homes on stilts. In Meyer every home has a driveway big enough to park the car and the boat. If the car's underwater you can still get out of town. In the meantime the boat is good for fishing and getting around on the river. Speaking of fishing, there is only one business in Meyer; they don't have a quickie mart or a gas station, but they do have Downs Fish Market -- river town.

The river in Meyer is just beautiful. It's big and wide and blue. Autumn and Winter it runs pretty clear. If it hasn't rained for awhile in say late October, the river will be clear and deep blue on a sunny day. Once you pass Keokuk heading south (lock and dam 19) the population along the river starts to fall off quickly. All the little towns, common in Iowa, Wisconsin and Northern Illinois that dot the river one right after the other, start to disappear. Now the river passes through mostly wilderness with twenty miles or more between the cities and towns. Meyer is about as far north as I'll typically head up river in our boat when I get a couple days off. During the week I can usually have the river to myself and I get a chance for some serious peace and quiet.