6 Quirkiest Illinois Towns You Didn't Know Existed

Six Illinois towns earned their place on this list by leaning into one weird obsession nobody else wanted to copy. Union runs the largest railway museum in the country (Bill Murray's stolen pickup truck from Groundhog Day was filmed against one of the museum's locomotives). Casey is the small Clark County town that holds twelve Guinness Book world records for oversized everyday objects. Bishop Hill is the only intact Swedish utopian-communist settlement left in the United States. Each town below earned its quirk the long way.

Union

Union is a McHenry County village (population about 550) whose entire identity is built on a train collection that completely dwarfs the town. The Illinois Railway Museum, founded in 1953 and relocated to Union in 1964, is the largest railway museum in the United States, with more than 100 acres, over 500 pieces of rolling stock, and 11 covered storage barns. The collection includes the Nebraska Zephyr (the only surviving streamlined Zephyr trainset of its kind), the 1941 Electroliner high-speed interurban, and the 1893 Frisco Decapod steam locomotive, the oldest operating articulated steam engine in the US.

The 1993 Bill Murray film Groundhog Day shot its famous "train tracks" scene at the museum. Phil Connors's stolen red pickup truck plays chicken with an oncoming locomotive (CB&Q 504, still wearing its Burlington Northern paint because it had only recently been donated). The McHenry County Historical Society Museum on Main Street fills out the local story with a one-room schoolhouse and Civil War exhibits. Clasen's Tavern has anchored the village since 1900 with the same wooden bar still in place.

Galena

Galena's quirk runs in two directions. A future US president lived here as a clerk in his father's leather goods store before going off to win the Civil War, and the locals build custom-shaped hot-air balloons. The lead-mining boom in the decades before the Civil War left Main Street with red-brick Italianate storefronts that the National Register has protected as a Historic District since 1969 (more than 85 percent of Galena's buildings are listed in the district). The Ulysses S. Grant Home, a short uphill walk east of Main Street, was presented to the general by town leaders after Appomattox in 1865; the National Park Service runs it as a State Historic Site with original Grant family furnishings.

The Great Galena Balloon Race each June fills the sky over the Galena Territory resort with up to 20 custom-shaped balloons across a three-day weekend, with sunset launches that draw picnic blankets across the surrounding green hillsides. The annual event has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Galena Foundation's diabetes program.

Casey

Casey is the small Clark County town (population about 2,400) that ate Guinness for breakfast. Local businessman Jim Bolin started building larger-than-life versions of everyday objects in 2011 as a way to draw traffic back into the slowing downtown. The rocking chair that started it all is officially recognized by Guinness at 56 feet, 1 inch tall and 32 feet wide, weighing 46,200 pounds. Casey now holds twelve official Guinness records, including the world's largest mailbox, golf tee, wind chime (which actually rings audibly in the breeze), pitchfork, and barbershop pole.

Beyond the twelve official records, the town has more than 20 additional supersized sculptures scattered across its streets, so a walking tour feels like a chapter of Gulliver's Travels. After the giant-everything tour, Fairview Park is the calm reset stop. The annual Popcorn Festival each August fills the streets with parades, music, and tributes to the local agricultural heritage.

Bishop Hill

Bishop Hill is the surviving Swedish utopian-communist colony that quietly seeded much of the Midwest's Scandinavian-American population. Founded in 1846 by religious dissident Erik Jansson and roughly 400 of his Swedish followers fleeing the state Lutheran Church, the community ran on shared property and shared labor for fifteen years before dissolving in 1861. The Greek Revival Colony Church (1848), the brick Steeple Building (1854), the Bjorklund Hotel, the Colony Store, and the Colony School still stand on their original sites, making Bishop Hill a National Historic Landmark district and the most intact 19th-century utopian colony in the country. Jansson himself was shot and killed in the Henry County Courthouse in nearby Cambridge in 1850 over a family dispute, but the colony lived on for another decade.

The Bishop Hill Heritage Museum tells the colony's story through artifacts, paintings by colonist Olof Krans, and reconstructed colony rooms. Jordbruksdagarna each September celebrates the harvest with reenactors threshing wheat, pressing apple cider, and demonstrating Swedish-style colony crafts. The Lucia Nights celebration each December honors the Saint Lucia feast with candle-lit processions and Swedish baking demonstrations.

Arcola

Arcola wears two hats at once: gateway to Illinois Amish country and home to the world's only Hippie Memorial. The 62-foot steel sculpture, created by local artist Bob Moomaw and installed in 2001 outside the old Illinois Central train depot, marks the years of American countercultural history in a long horizontal timeline of welded sheet metal. The depot itself is now the Arcola Welcome Center.

The annual Broom Corn Festival each September draws crowds for the parade led by the Lawn Rangers, a local precision lawnmower drill team that has performed at Major League Baseball games, presidential inaugurations, and the 2016 Chicago Cubs World Series victory parade. From the depot, country roads spread out into Amish farm country with quilt shops, furniture makers, and bakeries selling shoofly pie. The Rockome Gardens recreates an early-20th-century Amish farmstead.

Fulton

Fulton was named for Robert Fulton, the steamboat-navigation pioneer, but the town's quirk runs Dutch rather than American. The 100-foot De Immigrant Windmill on the Mississippi River dike was designed and fabricated in the Netherlands, then disassembled, shipped across the Atlantic, and reassembled in Fulton in 2000. The mill is fully operational; visitors climb the interior stairs to the top and buy bags of rye, wheat, corn, and buckwheat that have actually been ground between the windmill's blue basalt millstones.

The Windmill Cultural Center next door holds 22 model windmills and explains the engineering of Dutch milling. Heritage Canyon, a former limestone quarry repurposed as an open-air museum, recreates Dutch immigrant village life with a one-room schoolhouse, log cabins, a church, and demonstrations of pioneer crafts. The Dutch Days festival in early May fills downtown Fourth Street with parades, traditional Dutch dancing in wooden klompen, and rows of Dutch-themed shops and cafes.

Six Towns, Six Local Obsessions

The six Illinois towns above each made their map by sticking with one quirk long enough for the rest of the country to notice. A 500-car railway collection, a Dutch windmill rebuilt from a Netherlands kit, a still-intact Swedish utopian colony, twelve Guinness records for oversized objects, a Hippie Memorial that nobody else thought to build, and a balloon race nobody else hosts. Pick a corner of the state and at least one sits within reach for a weekend detour.