Time Zone
Central
Latitude/Longitude
38.62° /-88.94°
Today's Forecast
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HIGH: 70
LOW: 51
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The seat of Marion County, founded in 1823, was once a center of the southern Illinois oil boom of the 1930s. The village is remembered as the birthplace of two men who by a quirk of fate would meet later in life under less than auspicious circumstances. The Silver-Tongued Orator, William Jennings Bryan, who ran for president three times on the Democratic ticket, was born in Salem in 1860 in a house his father had built from hand-hewn logs. The house is now a museum of memorabilia of the orator's life. Gutzon Borglum's statue of Bryan can also be seen in Bryan Park.The town's other famous offspring, John Scopes, was put on trial in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution to high school students. Prosecuting the case was Bryan, the Great Commoner, who had spoken at Scopes' own high school graduation ceremony in Salem six years earlier. The trial was later dramatized in the play and movie Inherit the Wind.
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