Editing Lexington, Illinois (section)

===The pre-railroad era===
Between 1837 and 1854 the survival of Lexington was in doubt. The great land rush that peaked in 1836 gave way to a severe lengthy national depression. True to their word, Gridley and Brown had begun some construction. Their first structure was used as a store, but in less than a year the business had failed and the building was hauled away to Bloomington. The first house was briefly occupied, but it was soon moved to the rival town of [[Clarksville, Illinois|Clarksville]], which was located a few miles downstream. No one was certain exactly what route the Springfield-to-Chicago road would take. Clarksville tried to attract the road by building a bridge across the Mackinaw River and the 1840 town of [[Pleasant Hill, Illinois|Pleasant Hill]], which had been established just upstream from Lexington, was doing its best to attract traffic.<ref>''History of McLean County'', 1879, p. 489.</ref> The county began to demand taxes on the large number of unsold lots in the town; by the early 1850s over 300 Lexington lots were offered for sale to satisfy unpaid taxes.<ref>''Pantagraph'' (Bloomington, Illinois) 15 January 1851</ref> The town square was used for grazing cattle. Yet some continued to believe in the new town. Jacob Spawr (1802–1902) had moved into Lexington a year after the store had departed. He built a house of a type known as a double log pen, a dog trot, or sometimes two-pens-and-a-passage: essentially it was nothing more than two log cabins facing each other with a common roof. This building served as dwelling, post office and tavern. Because Lexington was halfway between the county seats of [[Pontiac, Illinois|Pontiac]] and Bloomington, Spawr's house provided a convenient stopping place: [[Abraham Lincoln]] and [[Stephen Douglas]] were frequent guests. In the [[1850 United States census]] Spawr's occupation is listed as "landlord". By 1854 it was estimated that there were only about a dozen families in Lexington.<ref>''History of McLean County'', 1879, p.490.</ref>