A town of approximately 35,000 people located on the banks of Mississippi River in southern Illinois, across the river from Cape Giradoux, MO. Originally a lawless waterfront community of prostitutes, gamblers, conmen, thespians, and circus performers who had settled there to attract passengers and crews from traveling riverboats, by the 1920s Edgerton had become a settled, prosperous community of bankers, shopowners, clerks, and teachers. The campus of Albertus College, a fine educational institution, is found in the northern part of the town, adjacent to Archer Street.

Younger and more intrepid visitors to this charming town might wish to sample the delights of its Old Town, located immediately east of the Mississippi. Here, Word and Low Streets invite the visitor into a maze of tine lanes and passageways with names like Veal Yard, Fish Street, Treacle Street, Button Street, Pitch Lane and Midden Street. These colorful by-ways are lined with taverns, pawn-shops, lodging-houses, abandoned warehouses, and other diversions for the hardy traveler. Tourists are advised on no account to drink the water available in Old Town, nor to place their trust in any explanation of how the water got that way.