Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Roanoke, IL

Roanoke is a village in Woodford County, Illinois, in the Peoria metropolitan area, that was laid out on December 17, 1872, as a 15-block plat bounded by Main, Front, Ann, and Pleasant Streets.

Roanoke officially became a village in 1874, and its first election, held August 15, 1874, chose six trustees - six trustee seats the village has filled continuously ever since.

Roanoke was named for Roanoke, Virginia, the home of some of its earliest settlers.

The second coal shaft sunk in Woodford County went down in Roanoke in 1881; at its peak the mine employed around 300 men and hoisted 500 tons of coal a day.

Mining in Roanoke was dangerous work - in June 1906 four men fell 400 feet to their deaths in the main shaft - and the mine finally closed for good in 1940 over safety and maintenance problems.

Roanoke still bears a giant reminder of its mining days: the 'Jumbo,' a massive mound of mine slag on the south side of the village, topped with an electric star that is lit each Christmas season, and an estimated 800,000 tons of its slag have been hauled away over the years for road and town construction.

On July 13, 2004, an F4 tornado flattened the Parsons Manufacturing plant about four miles west of Roanoke while more than 200 people were inside - remarkably, there were no serious injuries or fatalities.

After the railroad through Roanoke was retired and dismantled in the mid-1980s, its original rail station was left standing as a historic building near Main and Mill Streets.

Roanoke had a population of 1,960 at the 2020 census, with 798 households and a median age of 41.8 years.

Roanoke students attend Roanoke-Benson Community Unit School District 60; bandleader Glen Gray, a 1917 graduate of Roanoke High School, went on to lead one of the big bands of the swing era.