Moved a Mile and a Half, Away From the Water
St. Joseph's original 1849 settlement sat near the Salt Fork River as 'Kelly's Ford,' but the 1867 routing of the Danville-Urbana-Bloomington-Pekin Railroad pulled the entire village a mile and a half north to drier ground by 1870. The village organized formally in 1881 on that relocated, rail-chosen site.
A Basement Story Shaped by a Move, Not a River
Because St. Joseph's present townsite was chosen for rail access rather than water, its older basements don't share the river-proximity drainage issues of a town like Mahomet -- but the grading done to prepare a rail-era townsite in the 1860s and 70s still shapes how water moves around foundations there today. That history is worth knowing before diagnosing a wet basement in the village's oldest blocks.