Biohazard Cleanup Near West Joppa Joppa, IL

Joppa is a village in Massac County, Illinois, sitting on the Ohio River in far southern Illinois, downstream from Metropolis and about 20 miles northwest of Paducah, Kentucky.

In the early 1800s the site of Joppa was a riverboat stop known as Copeland's Landing, long before any town existed there.

Joppa was laid out in the early 1870s by prominent landowner A. J. Kuykendall and sawmill operator Jesse Baccus, who named their new town after the Biblical city of Joppa in modern-day Israel.

When the railroad arrived in 1900, Joppa boomed as a river-to-rail transloading station where Ohio River freight was transferred to trains, and the village incorporated in 1901.

Joppa's population peaked at 734 in the 1910 census, during its transloading heyday, and has declined for a century since, reaching 350 residents in 2020.

The 2000 census counted 409 people in 165 households in Joppa, and the village today retains a school but has lost most of the stores of its river-trade era.

Just west of Joppa stands the Joppa Generating Station, a coal and natural gas power plant operated by Electric Energy, Inc., long a landmark on this stretch of the Ohio River.

Joppa is part of the Paducah, KY-IL Metropolitan Statistical Area, tying the little Illinois river village to the economy of Paducah, Kentucky.