Forgottonia

Forgottonia (also Forgotonia or Republic of Forgottonia derived from english forgotten, forgotten ' ) is the name of a fictional U.S. state, the American student Neal Gamm 1971 cried out in protest about Transport in the western part of Illinois.

History

In the late 1960s, early 1970s, large investments were made in the infrastructure of the State of Illinois, with the bulk of the money went into the development of transport routes in the Chicago area. The inhabitants of the western part of the state felt neglected, the regular train service from their region to Chicago was stopped and the construction of a highway from Chicago to Kansas City twice rejected by their home region. A new version of the Constitution of Illinois of 1970 allowed the merger of several counties to enable them to better represent regional interests. The first of these mergers was the Western Illinois Regional County, which consisted of six counties in western Illinois. At whose territory bordered on the 16 counties that were part of the 25 - year-old student from Neal Gamm 1971 proclaimed Republic Forgottonia. Gamm proclaimed himself governor and certain Fandon, a small unincorporated settlement south of the town of Colchester in McDonough County to the capital. His supporters printed the name Forgottonia on stamps and presented at the boundaries of the fictional state signs on, motorists it stated that they were now in Forgottonia. The forget -me-nots became the state flower, the Albatros chosen as the heraldic animal. Visibility reached Forgottonia by the Mayor of Canton, who regarded the action as effective statehood and publicly opposed it, however. More attention was given to the initiative by Douglas Kane, a member of the House of Representatives from Illinois, who calculated that the western counties of Illinois had more to receive state money than they pay in taxes. In the summer of 1972, after about a year the public interest in Forgottonia subsided and with the creation of Amtrak train services were resumed. Even today, one of the West of Illinois to the most underdeveloped regions of the U.S. and the inhabitants call them still Forgottonia.