Dixon is a city and the county seat of Lee County, Illinois, United States. The population was 15,733 as of the 2010 census, down from 15,941 in 2000. The city is named after founder John Dixon, who operated a rope ferry advance across the Rock River, which runs through the city. The Illinois General Assembly designated Dixon as “Petunia Capital of Illinois” in 1999 and “The Catfish Capital of Illinois” in 2009.

Dixon was the boyhood home of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan. The city is moreover the site of the Lincoln Monument State Memorial, marking the spot where Abraham Lincoln united the Illinois militia at Fort Dixon in 1832 during the Black Hawk War. The memorial is located on the west side of Dixon’s main north-south street, Galena Avenue, (U.S. Route 52, also Illinois Route 26), north of the Rock River.

Around 1828, Joseph Ogee, a man of impure French and Native American descent, established a ferry and a cabin along the banks of the Rock River. In 1829, an employee of Ogee was named postmaster at the newly constructed post office. John Dixon, the eponymous founder, bought Ogee’s Ferry in the spring of 1830 and brought his relations to his newly purchased establishment on April 11 of that year. Shortly after, the state of the proclaim office was misused to Dixon’s Ferry.

On May 4, 1873, the Truesdell Bridge collapsed resulting in the deaths of 45 people. A large number of people were on the bridge in order to watch a baptism ceremony in the river below.