Strasburg, Illinois

Where it sits

Strasburg is on Route 32 in southern Shelby County, with Stewardson a few miles south and Effingham about twenty minutes beyond it. Shelbyville, the county seat, is a manageable drive north, and Mattoon is comparable. Like its neighbors along that road, it is a village whose people mostly work elsewhere and come home to somewhere quiet.

With Hidden Springs a few miles west, Lake Shelbyville's south shore a few miles north and Wolf Creek State Park within easy reach, Strasburg sits at the center of the best outdoor recreation cluster in Shelby County. That is a real draw for hunters, anglers and families who want a few acres near public land.

Origins

The first settler was David Elliott, who arrived in 1825; his brother Jacob followed, and the two set up a horse mill and a still house to grind their own grain. Charles Ostermeier put up the first general store, named the settlement for Strasburg on the Rhine, and laid out a village on forty acres around his store. The plat was recorded on March 7, 1874, and Strasburg incorporated in 1882.

The town grew up on a rail line that ran south from Bement through Lovington and Windsor; the last train passed through, northbound, on November 10, 1938. The 1974 centennial history is titled Hundertjahrfest, which tells you how thoroughly German the place has always been. That heritage still shows in the surnames, the Lutheran congregations and the farms around the village.

The turnaround

By the mid-2000s Strasburg faced the same slow slide as hundreds of Midwestern villages. In 2007 residents held a town meeting to confront it, and out of that came the Strasburg Community Action Network, or SCAN, which set priorities including economic development and organized volunteers into committees. The village followed with a tax increment financing district, and the results came quickly: new business on the highway, the York Acres subdivision, a Governor's Home Town Award for beautification, and recognition of SCAN's work as a model at the state's Rural Community Economic Development Conference.

Today the village's daily needs are covered close to home, with Eddy's Grab n Go serving food and the Third Base bar still holding down its corner on Route 32.

The gnomes

SCAN needed an icon for its newsletter, and resident Les Sentel found it in a gardening-magazine piece on German heritage titled "Gnome Place Like Home." The village adopted the gnome as its mascot in 2009, the newsletter became the Strasburg Gnome News ("Gnome News is Good News"), and it went on to win an Innovative Project Award at the Rural Community Economic Development Conference. SCAN still publishes it every other month. The village logo features a gnome named Gnorman, a resident is chosen each month to receive a garden gnome, and Sentel molds concrete gnomes himself.

In 2010 Strasburg ran its first Gnome Census, modeled on the U.S. Census, and counted a few hundred. By the 2020 count the gnome population had more than tripled, and gnomes now outnumber people roughly three to one. The stunt drew coverage from Chicago to national outlets, and as one local business owner put it, it has been the cheapest and most effective publicity a revitalizing town could ask for.

Hidden Springs State Forest

A few miles west of the village, Hidden Springs gives Strasburg something most towns its size cannot claim: twelve hundred acres of public woodland at its back door. The tract was first planned as a state lake until Lake Shelbyville made that redundant, and it was renamed for the seven natural springs that early settlers used for drinking water and that vegetation has since largely hidden from view. Richland Creek runs diagonally through the entire length of the forest, and the terrain rolls from creek bottomland up through wooded ravines, pine plantations and prairie openings.

The Big Tree Trail passes a sycamore seventy-eight inches across, one of the largest in Illinois; the three-mile Rocky Spring Trail reaches one of the surviving springs; the Possum Hollow Nature Trail carries thirty-five interpretive stations; and seventeen miles of fire lanes open the remote sections to serious hikers. There is primitive camping at Possum Creek, picnicking at Rolling Meadows, stocked ponds for bass, bluegill, redear and channel catfish, and firearm and archery hunting on all but the acreage around the headquarters and campground. It survived a 2008 state budget closure list and remains one of the quieter outdoor destinations in central Illinois.

Schools and community

Strasburg shares the Stewardson-Strasburg Community Unit School District with the village to its south. The high school sits on Route 32 between the two, and the Hatchets wear forest green and white. The village also runs a Santa Brigade at Christmas, and the SCAN committees keep a steady calendar of beautification and community projects going year-round.

A Strasburg mailing address is not a reliable guide to the school district, though. Some addresses here fall into the Shelbyville or Windsor districts depending on the parcel, which is worth checking before it matters rather than after.

Living here

The housing stock runs from well-kept older homes on village lots to newer construction at York Acres, with rural acreage around the village and toward the forest. Effingham's jobs, hospital and shopping are about twenty minutes south, and Mattoon and Shelbyville are comparable drives.