Cairo

River port in Illinois, USA, at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, 170 km/106 mi southeast of St Louis and 580 km/360 mi southwest of Chicago; population (1996 est) 4,500. The town stands at the lower end of the 1,120 km/696 mi Lower Mississippi Alluvian Valley Wetlands Plan, a major conservation project. It is the commercial and distribution centre of a delta-like, rich agricultural area known as Little Egypt.

After a disastrous flood in 1858, the city was protected by earth levees (embankments), which have since been raised several times in height, and extend along the Mississippi almost continuously to the Gulf of Mexico.

Cairo was an important military base in the American Civil War 1861-65. It was also reputedly the inspiration for Charles Dickens' ‘Eden’, in his novel Martin Chuzzlewit (1844); a satire of US democracy.