Saline County

 

 
 

 
Coming soon we will be bringing you the Eldorado Historical Museum. Planned to be included are; showcasing the various contents of the museum, schedules of exhibits, operating hours, special events, and more. Click on the picture at the right to view our progress.

Around 1775 the numbers of settlers started increasing significantly. Two routes were blazed through southern Illinois, and named the Goshen and the Kaskaskia Trails. The narrow lane  pictured at left, follows the same path of the Kaskaskia Trail for a short distance through the Wolf Creek Cemetery

Saline County was created in 1847, Abraham Lincoln served as the attorney. Saline was named for the saline salt mines and springs in the area. Saline was the 99th of the 102 counties in Illinois to organize. Tobacco was a major crop in the area during the Civil War period and for years after.

1854 - The first slope mine began operation.
1873 - The first shaft mine was mine was started.
1906 - Over 500,000 tons of coal were produced, and 1,000 miners were employed.
 

  

Murder In Little Egypt
 The unimaginable crime of filicide takes on the cast of tragic inevitability in this haunting true tale of violence, greed, revenge, and death. Fusing the narrative power of an award-winning novelist and the detailed research of an experienced investigator, Darcy O’Brien unfolds the story of Dr. John Dale Cavaness, the southern Illinois physician and surgeon who in December 1984 was charged with the murder of his son Sean. Outraged by the arrest of the skilled medical practitioner who selflessly attended to their needs, the people of Little Egypt rose to his defense. In the trial, however, a radically different, disquieting portrait of Dr. Cavaness would emerge. For throughout the three decades that he enjoyed the admiration and respect of his community, Cavaness was privately terrorizing his family, abusing his employees, and making disastrous financial investments as well as brawling and womanizing. What was not revealed in the trial, however, was that seven years earlier, in a homicide that had never been solved, the body of Cavaness’s first born son, Mark, had been found shot dead in the woods of Little Egypt. In addition to a compelling chronicle that uncovers the truth behind two ghastly crimes and lays bare the Jekyll–Hyde psyche of their perpetrator, Murder in Little Egypt brings into stark midwestern light the hidden, gothic underside of an America bred on violence and bathed in blood.