Biohazard Cleanup Near West Cuba Cuba, IL

Cuba is a small city in Fulton County, Illinois, that began as two rival towns - Middletown and Centerville - platted practically across an alley from each other in the 1830s.

The rival settlements merged, and the town took the name Cuba, after the island of Cuba; a post office has operated at Cuba since 1837, and the town was incorporated under the Cuba name in 1853.

Cuba had 1,184 residents at the 2020 census, down from a coal-era peak of 2,019 in 1910.

Fulton County is underlain by coal, and the Fulton County Coal Company, organized in 1870 near Cuba's Toledo, Peoria and Western Railway depot, opened the local mining era.

Deep shaft mining brought a building boom to Cuba in the early 1900s, and a 1946 photograph of the United Electric Coal Company's Cuba Mine showed what was then the largest dirt-moving machine in the United States working its strip mine.

Cuba became known as the strip mining capital of the world, but the last shaft mine closed in 1941, and when the strip mines later wound down the town's commerce and population declined.

Cuba covers only about half a square mile, centered on a town square with a park and bandstand.

An Amish community farms the countryside around Cuba, reflecting the town's dual identity of farmers and miners.