Retiring Guy's Digest: Disappearing cities of the United States: Cairo, Illinois (2022 census update)

Cairo's population has decreased 90% since its peak of 15,203 in 1910. The city now has fewer residents than it did in 1860.

Sources: Wikipedia, Illinois Demographics

KFVS, 5/11/20230

The grand opening for Rise Community Market in Cairo will be Friday, June 16.
Organizers say the event will start at 10 a.m. at 3010 Sycamore Street with a ribbon cutting.
This will be the first time a grocery store has opened in town in seven years.
The store will be a co-op style, which means residents will hold ownership.

Postcard from Retiring Guy's collection

1/18/2022 update starts here

Wikipedia

Cairo's population decreased 40% from 2010 to 2020. As it result, the city now has fewer people than it did at the start of the Civil War. Its population has decreased 89% since its 1920 peak.

Wikipedia

Related reading:

KFVS, 8/13/2021

Alexander County lost a third of its population between 2010 and 2020. A local health and housing officials who said the smaller population means less government funding, and fewer health and housing opportunities.
“We don’t want the dollars that were earmarked for our region to go somewhere else,” Shawnna Rhrine with Southern 7 Health Department said.
According to the U-S Census, more than 36% of the population in Alexander County Moved away over the last ten years.
It’s not the first time the areas seen a decrease in the population. When the people go, Rhine said so does the state funding.
“We saw a 12 million dollar drop in funding to our region due to the last census,” Rhrine said
Cairo is the county seat of Alexander County.

Pontiac Daily Leader, 9/24/2021

The main street leading into town is dotted with one empty building after another — buildings that used to be gas stations, convenience stores, local eateries, even a grocery store. There is no place left in town to buy gasoline or groceries. A single barbeque restaurant — said by locals to be excellent — is the only place for dining.

This city at the confluence of two of the mightiest rivers in the United States, the Ohio and the Mississippi, is the county seat of Alexander County, which once boasted a population of more than 25,000. It is now down to just 5,240, according to the 2020 U.S Census. That was a drop of 36.4 percent just in the past 10 years, the biggest population decline of any county in the nation. [emphasis added]

Original 1/5/2019 post starts here