Nauvoo
"Nauvoo has been reinvented three or four times, and somehow all of its old lives are still visible at once."
A Mississippi River bluff town that was briefly one of the largest cities in Illinois, built by Mormon settlers who fled after a decade, then reinvented by French utopians, then by winemakers and blue cheese makers. Lia and I came for the history and left with a wheel of cheese we had to eat in the car.
Nauvoo is a strange layering of histories for a town of fewer than a thousand people. Founded by Latter-day Saints in 1839, it briefly rivaled Chicago as the largest city in Illinois before its residents were driven out in 1846, after which a group of French Icarian utopians moved into the abandoned brick houses and tried, for a while, to build a communist paradise on the same bluff. Lia and I walked streets where you can still trace both stories in the architecture, one right on top of the other.
The Nauvoo Temple and Historic District
The rebuilt Nauvoo Temple, a near-replica of the 1846 original destroyed by fire and tornado decades later, now dominates the bluff and is visible for miles up and down the river. Below it, the Historic Nauvoo district preserves dozens of original 1840s homes and shops, staffed by costumed volunteers who told us about blacksmithing and bread-baking with a sincerity that outlasted our attention span more than once. It’s earnest in a way that grew on us — less theme park than genuine attempt at preservation.
Blue cheese caves and river bluff wine
What we hadn’t expected was the food. The Icarians who followed the Mormons brought winemaking traditions with them, and Nauvoo still has small vineyards and a winery working old limestone cellars dug into the bluff. Even stranger, those same cool cellars turned out perfect for aging blue cheese, and a local dairy has been making it in caves under the town since the 1930s. We toured the cheese cave, bought far more than we needed, and ate it on a bluff overlooking the river with a bottle of the local wine, which felt like the most unexpected pairing of our whole Midwest trip.
Getting There
The nearest airport with regional service is in Quincy, Illinois, about forty-five minutes south, with major connections through St. Louis, roughly three hours south via US-61 and Highway 96. A car is essential — Nauvoo is remote river country, and there’s no public transit linking the historic district, the cheese caves, and the vineyards.
Keep exploring
More of Illinois