Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near South Hurst Hurst, IL

Hurst is a city in Williamson County in southern Illinois, founded in 1903 as a stop along the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway, which had extended a line to the area from De Soto.

Hurst was named for William Charles Hurst, a railroad official and assistant superintendent of the railroad's Illinois division, after founder Thomas Philip Russell found that his own family name, Russell, was already taken by other Illinois towns.

The town of Hurst was platted in 1903 on land donated by Thomas P. Russell, John Edmonds and Johnson Hubbs, and its first building, a lumber yard, was finished on July 4, 1903.

Hurst's post office opened on January 24, 1905, a village charter was secured on December 29, 1905, and Hurst later became a city when its city charter was granted on February 25, 1919.

Hurst grew as a booming small coal mining community from the 1900s until the early 1980s, and the city diminished after the closing of the coal mines.

Hurst had a population of 764 at the 2020 census, down from 795 in 2010, and far below its coal-era peak of 1,222 residents counted in 1920.

At the 2000 census, Hurst had 805 people living in 360 households.

Hurst and its neighbor Bush were incorporated as separate villages after a dispute over the railroad station's location left the combined community known as Hurst-Bush, a name that only the shared school district retained.

Hurst-Bush High School, whose teams were the Hummingbirds, opened in 1922 and closed in 1966, after which Hurst students attended high school in nearby Herrin.

The Carterville-Hurst Bank was organized as a private institution in 1908 by John Edmonds, M. W. Sizemore of Carterville and town founder Thomas P. Russell.