Do you know of Elk Prairie ???

This page is an orphan - a placeholder until we can discover more about Elk Prairie. When we encounter a name that is new to us, we add it to our Gazetteer with the hope that we'll discover more information in the future. Such is the case with Elk Prairie.

Our sources for Elk Prairie (see Mentions and References below) indicate that it was a community with a post office by the same name. Unfortunately our sources aren't clear about the location of Elk Prairie other than they indicate that Elk Prairie would be found somewhere in Jefferson County, Illinois.

This entry could have originated in error. It might be that a source had a misprint, was simply wrong or we made a transcription error while referencing it. Many of the documents we reference are from the 1800s and the early 1900s, with some easier to read than others.

Part of the difficulty in identifying whether a name is a post office or a community lies with how Post Offices were named. We've prepared an article with our understanding of how post offices were named: Naming of Post Offices.

Communities Also Named Elk Prairie ...

We found two communities that share the name Elk Prairie.

Within Illinois, the name Elk Prairie is unique.

Beyond Illinois, we know of another two communities that are located throughout in the United States and Canada. Of these two communities, one is located in the United States and the other in Canada.

Communities Elsewhere In North America ...
- British Columbia
  - Please visit our profile page for the British Columbia community of Elk Prairie.
- Missouri
  - Phelps County
  - We found mention of this community, but have little information.<1> For the information that we do have, please visit our profile page for the Missouri community of Elk Prairie [Phelps County].

Miscellaneous References and Mentions for Elk Prairie ...

We've created the following list to keep track of the sources that proved useful in adding to our knowledge about Elk Prairie:

Business Atlas and Shippers' Guide (1895)
Published by Rand McNally & Co.

A note taken from the Shipper's Guide for Elk Prairie - Services available: had a Post Office, no Railroad mentioned

List of Post Offices in the United States (1870)
Published by the Government Printing Office

Table of U.S. Post Offices in the United States (Jan. 1851)
Published by W. & J.C. Greer, Printers

U.S. Post Offices (Oct. 1846)
Published by John T. Towers

Rand McNally Map (1881)
Published by Rand McNally & Co.

More Orphans in Jefferson County ...

Can you help?

As we explained above, when we encounter a name that might be a community or a post office we add it to our Gazetteer. If we have little information to go with the name, we call them Orphans. Below are Orphans that we believe to be located in Jefferson County.

Footnotes ...

<1>

If we encounter the name of what might be a community, our methodology is to add that name to our Gazetteer as a placeholder. As we find more information about that community, it will be added to our Gazetteer.

Just as a reminder: Our definition of a community is rather broad and includes those places (or areas) where several families lived and had a name which identified that place. For example, you might hear somebody say that they are going over to Rock Creek to see Pete ... Rock Creek is just a gas station and a couple of homes at the crossroads. While it might not be on the map, everybody in the area knows it by that name.

Places of interest include buildings at a crossroad, several families clustered in a hollow or maybe the location of a way station. It also includes places like mines, lumber camps, ferry crossings, etc. The community might still exist, is now gone or only existed for just a short period of time.

Also keep in mind that Elk Prairie could have been on the original document by mistake, misspelled, the original/alternate name of a community that we've listed elsewhere or was placed in the wrong county. Sometimes a post office or train station would have a different name than the community where it's located, so two names might be referring to the same community - we're working to straighten it all out.