Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Thebes, IL

Thebes is a village on the Mississippi River in Alexander County, Illinois, established on October 15, 1835, when it was known as Sparhawk Landing, after early landowners George and Martha Sparhawk.

Thebes was platted on March 2, 1846, and served as the county seat of Alexander County from 1846 until 1859, when the seat was moved to Cairo at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

Like nearby Cairo, Thebes is named after the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes - part of why southern Illinois is nicknamed 'Little Egypt.'

The Greek Revival Thebes Courthouse, built of local limestone in 1847-1848 for $4,400 atop a bluff overlooking the Mississippi, still stands as a museum and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Abraham Lincoln practiced law at the Thebes courthouse, and local legend holds that Dred Scott, whose freedom suit reached the U.S. Supreme Court, was once held in the courthouse jail.

Thanks to a deep stretch of the Mississippi at its landing, Thebes became a busy steamboat port, and Union troops passed through it during the Civil War.

The Thebes Bridge, a major railroad bridge across the Mississippi River, opened for rail traffic in 1905 and is still in use today.

In 1923 Thebes elected Nora Gammon as mayor along with an all-woman slate of aldermen, running on a law-enforcement platform.

Thebes peaked at 857 residents in 1920, but the 2020 census counted only 208 people in the village - in the 2000 census it had 478 residents in 171 households.

Thebes is the fictional home village of Captain Andy Hawks and his family in Edna Ferber's 1926 novel Show Boat.