Cairo Egyptians

The city of Cairo, Illinois (pronounced Care-o or Kay-ro), is all but a ghost town now, but at one time it boasted a Kitty League baseball team known for most of its 18 seasons as the Egyptians, though it also sported the Giants and Champions names for a couple of seasons.

Cairo is so named because it sits at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, which reminded early settlers of the Nile delta. The town seemed well situated to become a major shipping and railroad hub, but over the years the railroad was routed across a bridge at nearby Thebes and other towns became more important to river shipping. Its location also made it very susceptible to flooding. Few visitors left Cairo impressed; Charles Dickens visited in 1842 and promptly modeled the fraudulent settlement of Eden in his novel Martin Chuzzlewit on the town. During the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant occupied the city and had a fort built at the confluence to protect the strategic point.

Professional baseball came to Cairo in 1897 in the form of a Class C Central League team named the Egyptians. This first try at minor league baseball lasted one season, disbanding in July with a 30-39 record.

The Egyptians came back as a Kitty League team in 1903 and lasted until 1906. Other Kitty League runs for the Egyptians were 1911-14, 1922-24, and finally 1946-50, playing the last two years as the Cairo Dodgers.

Today Cairo has a population of about 1,700, down from a peak of nearly 20,000 in the early part of the 20th century.