Ay yo is ya boy DJ Yung 🐱 lb.-er. Ya'll're in fo a real treat. Did ya'll'know that Cairo, IL - the southernmost town in Illinois - was once on track to become bigger than any of the large river cities in the region like Pittsburg, St. Louis, or Cincinatti? Charles Dickens visited in the early 1800s and it is featured in Huckleberry Finn. Despite its prominence in the 1800s, Cairo depopulated rapidly in the latter half of the 20th century due to civil unrest between its white and black citizens, many of the latter being the descendants of refugees from the postwar South. Today, Cairo is little more than a ghost town, with just over 2,000 residents. With residents and local businesses gradually leaving for greener pastures, it seems unlikely that this historic river town will survive into the next century.