Lanark, Illinois

City: Lanark

County: Carroll

State: Illinois

Lat/Long: 42.1000, -89.8333

Lanark, Illinois is a city in Carroll County, Illinois. Located in Rock Creek Township, on the Western Union Railroad, fifteen miles south of Freeport, Lanark had a post office as early as July 1836, when the U.S. Post Office Department established an office and named it Cherry Grove. The first settler in Lanark arrived in 1844. The first home was built to house the men building the Lanark Hotel. With the certainty of a railroad passing through Lanark, businessmen flooded the new town, and Lanark soon became a town of 1,500 people only a few years after its creation. The Post Office Department changed the name from Cherry Grove to Lanark in December 1861.

The History of Carroll County, Illinois (Chicago: H. F. Kett, 1878), 367-68; Edward Callary, Place Names of Illinois (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 192.