Situated in Sangamon County in Central Illinois, Springfield is a vibrant little metropolis with a current population of just over 114,000, which makes it the sixth-largest city in the entire state. When the greater Springfield metropolitan area is included, it boasts a population of over 211,000 people who call the area home.
Spanning just over 66 square miles in size, Springfield also happens to be the state’s Capitol and is the largest city in Sangamon County itself.
Behind the cities of Chicago and Rockford, Springfield is listed as the most populated metropolitan area in the entire midwestern State of Illinois. It is situated smack dab in the middle of the state and is only 80 miles northeast of St. Louis, Missouri.
It is a proud little metropolis whose most famous resident, Abe Lincoln, called the area his home for over two decades, residing in Springfield between the years 1837 and 1861.
Their motto, “Land of Lincoln,” is worn proudly, yet the small city of Springfield, Illinois, has been but a bleep on the Mafia map of the United States since its inception.
I think one reason why they were never a major force in the area may be because the city of Springfield, although large enough an area to support a major borgata, had a total overall Italian population of but 3.5% in the entire city.
They didn’t have a significant enough footprint or pool to catapult themselves to prominence and dominance. Not to mention the fact that their larger neighbor in Chicago stole all the hoopla and front-page headlines through the years because of its murderous reputation and antics, in addition to its most famous resident, Scarface Al Capone.
Despite that fact, elements of what would later become known as the “Springfield Family” of LCN had been in operation since the earliest days of Prohibition. The small “family” operated plenty of illegal alcohol stills that churned out hundreds and hundreds of 5-gallon tins of alky, homemade vats of Guinea-red wine and beer, the occasional additional “legitimate” truck or boatload of liquor smuggled across the Canadian border into its jurisdiction, and their fair share, proportionately speaking, of murderous gangsters and racketeers.
