Every state in America has at least one ghost town, and Illinois is no exception. In fact, this heartland state has a slew of intriguing abandoned places, from urban explorer hotspots in Chicago to the National Historic Site marking where the town of New Philadelphia once stood. Another of the more than 80 ghost towns spread across Illinois was also named for a different, larger city: the former mining town of Cardiff, tucked between Naperville and Peoria.
Like many ghost towns, Cardiff started and flourished thanks to a single valuable resource. In this case, that resource was coal, which was discovered in the area in 1899. At its peak, the Cardiff mine produced more than 200,000 tons of coal a year, but that success was short-lived. The mine operated for only about 13 years, and the town that grew around it didn’t last long after the reason for its founding disappeared.
Today, Cardiff is what Ghost Town USA classifies as a barren site. There are almost no visible traces left of the once-bustling community that occupied the area. Still, it remains a fascinating destination for anyone interested in Illinois’ industrial past and how coal mining shaped the lives of the people who lived there.
Cardiff’s swift rise and fall
In 1899, the White Breast Fuel Coal Company wanted to mine coal near the Livingston County village of Campus. When Campus residents objected, the company turned its attention to undeveloped farmland known as Colopy’s Corners, about 4 miles north. Work on the mine began in early May 1899, and coal was quickly discovered about 250 feet underground. By fall 1899, the mine was producing about 50 tons of coal a day. Buildings sprang up, and the new town was named Cardiff after the capital of Wales, which was a global coal hub at the time…