Westville High School - Janus Yearbook (Westville, IL)

Page 14 text:

 J Right in the edge of estville three hig mines were located. A short distance east of the high school stands the slack pile of old number four. The picture below shows this mine on lire in 1922. It was so badly destroyed by the fire at that time that it was never again o[»erated. Old Kelly No. 4

Page 13 text:

With the building of the C. E. 1. railroad and the coming of the train in 1880 the mining camp of Westville began to grow. There are two stories told for the origin of the name of our city : one is the fact that it was just west of Himrod , another is that the town was named after Mr. West, who ran a general store here in the 90's. At the turn of the century the Big hour railroad and the Lyons vards were located here, making Westville c|uite a railroad center and this was further boosted by the construction of an interurban line. When the Himrod mine failed, the houses of that village were jacked up and moved into that part of Westville known as “Sardine Patch”, and Westville was now the center of a vast mining area. The Kelly mine interests had been purchased by a syndicate for three million dollars. Also, the Dering Coal Company had opened mines just south of town. In 1907, Little ermilion Company was organized and in 1908 the Bunsen Coal Company, a subsidiary of I’. S. Steel, located a mine here and soon afterward acquired possession of the Dering, Vermilion, and Old Kelly properties. Westville grew by leaps and bounds and soon became a city of four thousand inhabitants and it all came about through the building of the railroads and the tapping of our natural resources.

Page 15 text:

The Hegeler Zinc Plant In 1906 the Hegeler Zinc plant w as built just north of our city. This location was selected because of the available coal deposits. It is cheaper to ship the ore into this location from Missouri than to ship the coal out there. It was not until 1908 that the factory started production. The picture atxn-e shows the rolling mills in operation. Around this smelting plant a young village has sprung up and Mr. Hegeler has been mighty good to our educational systems, having just re cently transferred some more land to the McMillan Grade School for school grounds.