MATTOON

city, Coles county, east central Illinois, U.S., on the Lincoln National Memorial Highway, near the Little Wabash River (impounded to form Lake Mattoon). It was founded in 1854 at the junction of the Illinois Central and New York Central railroads and named for William B. Mattoon, a railroad official. A bronze tablet near the Illinois Central rail depot commemorates the mustering into service of Mattoon's unruly 21st Illinois Infantry (June 1861) by Ulysses S. Grant, then in the military service of the state. The city developed as a rail and agricultural centre. Oil, discovered locally in 1940, and manufacturing, notably photo lamps, have boosted its economic growth. Lake Land (junior) College was established in 1966 in Mattoon. Shiloh Cemetery, where Abraham Lincoln's father and stepmother are buried, and the Lincoln Log Cabin State Park are a few miles southeast. Inc. village, 1857; city, 1861. Pop. (1990) 18,441.