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City Of Mount Carroll

302 North Main Street
815-244-4424

History

A visit to Mount Carroll is like a step back in time... you're beckoned here by the lush rolling hills of a corner of Illinois never glaciated, where winding roads and rhythmic farmland contours show off the area's natural splendor.

Just a few miles from the Mississippi River, you find a quaint little city built on a hill... a city abounding with history and a sense of the past... yet looking to the future with the warmth and charm of a community where life moves more slowly.

Mount Carroll's story began in the 1840s with the building of a flour mill so important to all Carroll County settlers. The distinction of the county seat soon followed, as did the founding of Mount Carroll Seminary, later to become a private academy, then a four-year liberal arts college, and currently Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies.

By 1860, the town was a bustling hub of area commerce, the perfect setting for fine homes and impressively built storefronts.

The superior 19th century architecture remains a focal point of Mount Carroll today, with much of the town registered as a National Historic District.

Discover Mount Carroll's Historic District and see one of the United States' finest collections of 19th Century decorative metal facades produced by the Mesker Brothers of St. Louis, a sky-reaching Civil War monument whose Annex is listed in "Ripley's Believe It or Not," superior examples of commercial and residential architecture dating from pre-Civil War days, and Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies, an educational institution unique in this country.