Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Moweaqua, IL

Moweaqua is a village straddling Shelby and Christian counties in central Illinois, on the Illinois Central Railroad line about 16 miles south of Decatur.

Moweaqua's name is unique in the United States, and the village's slogan is 'the one and only Moweaqua.'

Moweaqua was named after a small stream about 1.5 miles south of the station, called Moweaqua by Native Americans - a Potawatomi word meaning 'she that weeps.'

Moweaqua was settled in the 1820s by pioneers who arrived in ox-drawn wagons and built log houses on the prairie.

A large coal seam was discovered at Moweaqua on October 3, 1889, after two months of drilling, ground was broken for the mine shaft on December 21, 1891, and coal mining dominated the village's economy from 1891 until the mine closed for good in 1935.

On the morning of December 24, 1932, a methane gas explosion in the Moweaqua mine killed all 54 miners of the day shift; one of the dead, Tom Jackson, had been scheduled to play Santa Claus at a party for the townspeople that evening.

The Moweaqua disaster helped lead to the passage of mine safety legislation and the phaseout of open-flame carbide miners' lanterns in United States coal mines.

The Moweaqua Coal Mine Museum, dedicated on May 25, 1986, preserves artifacts and documents of the disaster, and the village still recalls each lost miner by name in ceremonies held at Christmas and on Memorial Day.

Moweaqua had a population of 1,764 at the 2020 census, living in 742 households, and its median age of 44.7 years makes it an older community than most Illinois small towns.

Scenes from the 2009 film The Informant!, starring Matt Damon and based on the ADM price-fixing scandal, were filmed in Moweaqua.