Forgottonia
Forgottonia (also Forgotonia or Republic of Forgottonia , derived from English forgotten 'forgotten') is the name of a fictional US state that the American student Neal Gamm proclaimed in 1971 in protest over the transport links in the western part of Illinois .
history
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, major investments were made in the infrastructure of the state of Illinois, with the majority of the money flowing into the expansion of transport routes in the Chicago area . Residents of the western part of the state felt neglected, regular trains from their area to Chicago were suspended, and the construction of a highway from Chicago to Kansas City through their home region was rejected twice. A 1970 revision of the Illinois Constitution enabled several counties to merge to better serve their regional interests. The first of these alliances was Western Illinois Regional County , which consisted of six counties in western Illinois. The 16 counties that belonged to the Forgottonia Republic proclaimed in 1971 by the 25-year-old student Neal Gamm bordered their territory . Gamm named himself governor and Fandon, a small unincorporated settlement south of Colchester in McDonough County, the capital. His supporters printed the name Forgottonia on postage stamps and posted signs on the borders of the fictional state to warn motorists that they were now in Forgottonia. The forget-me-not became the state flower, the albatross the heraldic animal. Forgottonia achieved publicity through the mayor of Canton , who saw the action as an effective state establishment and publicly opposed it. The initiative received further attention from Douglas Kane, a member of the Illinois House of Representatives , who calculated that the western counties of Illinois received more state money than they pay in taxes. In the summer of 1972, after around a year, public interest in Forgottonia waned and with the establishment of Amtrak , train services were resumed. Even today, western Illinois is one of the most underdeveloped regions in the United States and the locals still call it Forgottonia.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c James L. Erwin: Declarations of Independence: Encyclopedia of American Autonomous and Secessionist Movements . Greenwood Publishing, 2007, ISBN 978-0-313-33267-8 , pp. 51 .
- ^ A b c Richard Moreno: Illinois Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff . Globe Pequot, 2011, ISBN 978-0-7627-5861-6 , pp. 134 f .
- ↑ James D. Nowlan: From Lincoln to Forgottonia . In: Illinois Issues . September 1998, p. 27-30 ( online ).
- ^ Nathan Woodside, When We Seceded: Remembering Forgottonia. (No longer available online.) The McDonough County Voice, December 28, 2010, archived from the original October 26, 2011 ; accessed on October 24, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Michael Kleen: Haunting the Prairie: A Tourist's Guide to the Weird and Wild Places of Illinois . Black Oak Media, 2010, ISBN 978-0-9790401-4-6 , pp. 62 .
