Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Cordova, IL

Cordova is a village on a bend of the Mississippi River in Rock Island County, in the rural northwestern reach of the Quad Cities metropolitan area, with the river on one side and farmland on the other.

Cordova has had a post office since 1839, and the community has sustained itself through its natural resources since the late 1830s.

Cordova was once known as a 'button town' - workers here made buttons from Mississippi River clamshells, before coal mining and logging became the big local industries.

This village of a few hundred people hosts the World Series of Drag Racing at Cordova International Raceway, America's oldest and longest-running drag racing event, which has been held at Cordova since 1956 after first running in Lawrenceville, Illinois, in 1954.

The World Series of Drag Racing predates even the prestigious NHRA U.S. Nationals by a year, and the roughly 190-acre quarter-mile dragstrip accounts for a sizable chunk of the village's land.

Cordova is home to the Quad Cities Generating Station, a nuclear power plant - one of only three nuclear power plants in west-central Illinois - and a 3M plant is among the industrial employers in and around the village.

Cordova's population was 671 at the 2020 census, almost perfectly flat from 672 in 2010, and the village counted 633 people living in 245 households back in 2000.

Cordova was first counted by the census in 1880 with 447 people, and its population peaked at 697 in 1980.

Cordova students attend the Riverdale Community Unit School District 100, based in nearby Port Byron.

Illinois Route 84 runs through Cordova along the river, accompanied by the Great River Trail, a cycling trail that follows the Mississippi through the Quad Cities.