July 19 Illinois History Minute

It’s July 19th. The site across the Mississippi River from St. Louis that we call Cahokia Mounds was a pre-Columbian Native American city, believed to have been at its height around the year 1100 (eleven-hundred), with a population of ten to twenty thousand. On this day in 1965, Cahokia Mounds was designated a National Historic Landmark and placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The last undisputed descendant of Abraham Lincoln died on this day in 1985. Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith died in the Chicago suburb of Riverside at the age of 81. He was the grandson of President Lincoln’s eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln.

The eastern tiger salamander is one of the largest of the terrestrial salamanders. And on this day in 2005, Governor Rod Blagojevich signed a bill making it Illinois’ official state amphibian.