Illinois
Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Suburb
- Metro Area
- St. Louis
- Politics c. 1860?
- Unions, Organized Labor?
Sundown Town Status
- Sundown Town in the Past?
- Possible
- Was there an ordinance?
- Yes, Strong Oral Tradition
- Sign?
- Yes, Strong Oral Tradition
- Year of Greatest Interest
- Still Sundown?
- Surely Not
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | ||||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
| 1950 | ||||||||
| 1960 | ||||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 11,490 | |||||||
| 2000 | 11,296 | 11,021 | ||||||
| 2010 | 10657 | 155 | 67 | |||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
Main Ethnic Group(s)
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
According to former residents and a town sociologist, Wood River was sundown and overwhelmingly white.
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A long time resident of East Alton, which shares a high school with Wood River, wrote “Until the mid 90s, there were at least two signs (on wood river avenue)that cited a city ordinance prohibiting blacks from being in town after sundown.
As far as I know, that ordinance hadn’t been enforced since the 70s but the signs were still up until at least 1995.
The high school’s” email; March 2011