Before Thursday, many people probably never heard of the small town of Fairdale, Ill., barely identifiable on a map.
At 7:15 p.m. Thursday, a tornado touched down, damaging every building in the small unincorporated town in the northwest corner of DeKalb County. Two women were killed. Of the 71 structures, 17 were knocked off their foundation.
Vincent Kilcullen, the supervisor of Franklin Township, calls it a rural farm town, only about “three blocks wide and five blocks deep.”
“It’s an older, rural community,” Kilcullen said. “There’s not much history with the town, it’s just been there for as long as I know.”
What little was there, Kilcullen said, “is now three-quarters leveled.”
Les Bellah, the mayor of the village of Kirkland, just a few miles west of Fairdale, would prefer to call it a “bedroom community.”
There are only residences, and he said people work outside the tiny town, either in Rockford or elsewhere in DeKalb. Of the less than 200 people who inhabited the town before the tornado hit, he said there was a mix of older and younger people, many of whom had grown up there and were now raising their own families.
Most people, he said, chose to live there because of the laid-back environment, where there’s “no government, no nothing.”
As rescue crews continue to sift through the rubble, Bellah said the Kirkland community was trying to provide support for its close neighbors who he called “part of the family.”
The history of the unincorporated town remains mostly unknown. A reference book, “Place Names of Illinois” published in 2009 by Edward Callary, a Northern Illinois University professor, lists only a few details: The town was formally established by Henry A. Koch. Before it was plotted as Fairdale on Nov. 14, 1895, it was known as Fielding, named after an Albert Fielding. The entry says a post office was established Sept. 30, 1875.
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William Furry, the executive director of the Illinois State Historical Society, said it is not uncommon for a tiny town to fall off the radar. “There are a lot of towns that exist only on maps,” he said.
Many areas in Illinois, especially in rural environments, exist as “only an intersection,” where “two county roads come together,” he said.
“They’re not on the main highways,” he said. “It might just be a hub where a particular family and relatives have stayed on. All these towns, there’s not much to hold them together anymore.”
Bellah isn’t sure about the future of Fairdale. Though he said he has been overwhelmed by support from mayors and communities across Illinois, it will take a large effort to patch up the small town.
“It takes money to rebuild, and there’s just not a lot of money in Fairdale,” he said.
Twitter: @paulina_milla