Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Thomson, IL

Thomson is a village in Carroll County in northwestern Illinois, sitting along Illinois Route 84 about one mile east of the Mississippi River.

Thomson proudly carries the nickname 'Melon Capital of the World' for its watermelons and cantaloupes, which were once shipped out by the hundreds of boxcar loads at harvest time.

Just north of the village stands FCI Thomson, a federal prison built by the State of Illinois as Thomson Correctional Center between 1999 and 2001 at a cost of about $140 million — yet its 1,600-bed maximum-security unit sat empty for years because the state never funded its opening.

In 2009 Thomson made national headlines when President Barack Obama ordered the federal government to acquire the prison to hold a limited number of Guantanamo Bay detainees, a plan Congress ultimately blocked.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons purchased the prison from Illinois for $165 million in 2012, and the facility was fully activated in January 2019.

Thomson's official population leapt 173% in a single decade — from 590 in 2010 to 1,610 in 2020 — almost entirely because federal inmates are counted as village residents; the 2020 census recorded only 233 actual households in the village.

For most of its history Thomson was a tiny farming village of roughly 500 to 600 people, counting just 559 residents in 1950 and 590 in 2010.

Thomson's historic Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad depot has been preserved and now serves as a museum.

Thomson is home to the processing plant of Schafer Fisheries, which in December may process up to 300,000 pounds of fish to supply the Polish 'Christmas Carp' tradition, shipping packages across the country and overseas.

The Thomson Fire Protection District traces its roots to a volunteer fire department formed in the 1800s with a hand-pulled hose cart.