ELMHURST, a city of Du Page county, Ill., U.S.A., 16m. W. of Chicago. It is served by the Chicago and North Western, the Chicago, Aurora and Elgin, the Chicago Great Western, and the Illinois Central railways, and has a commercial airport, Eagle field. The population was 4,594 in 1920, and was 14,055 in 1930 by the Federal census. Stone quarries, woodworking and steel mills, brick-yards, and greenhouses constitute the leading industries of the city. It is the seat of Elmhurst college for men (Evangelical) established in 1871. Elmhurst was incorporated as a city in 190o. ELMINA, a town on the Gold Coast, British West Africa, in 5° 4' N., 1° 20' W. and about 8 m. W. of Cape Coast. Pop. (1921) under 5,000. Facing the Atlantic on a rocky peninsula is Fort St. George, considered the finest fort on the Guinea coast. It is built square with high walls, and has accommodation for 200 soldiers. On the land side were formerly two moats, cut in the rock on which the castle stands. The houses in the native quarter are mostly built of stone, that material being plentiful in the vicinity.
Elmina was the first permanent European settlement on the Gold Coast. Diogo d'Azambuja was sent by John II. of Portugal to the coast for that purpose and he began, in 1481, the building of a fortress called Sao Jorge da Mina. One of the officers with d'Azambuja was Bartholemew Diaz. It was on this occasion or very soon afterward that Christopher Columbus visited the Guinea coast; his son records his father's statement "I have stayed in the Portuguese fortress of St. George of the Mine." It took 8o years before the fort was completed. Another defensive work is Fort St. Jago, built in 1666, which is behind the town and at some distance from the coast. (In the latter half of the i9th century it was converted into a prison.) Elmina was captured by the Dutch in 1637, and ceded to them by treaty in 1640. They made it the chief port for trade with Ashanti. With the other Dutch possessions on the Guinea coast, it was transferred to Great Britain in April 1872. The king of Ashanti, claiming to be ground landlord, objected to its transfer, and the result was the Ashanti war of 1873-1874- Up to the close of the i9th cen tury the greatest output of gold from this coast came from Elmina. The annual export is said to have been nearly L3,000,000 in the early years of the 18th century, but the figure is probably exaggerated. The building of the railway from Sekondi to the gold mines took the trade away. Prempeh, the ex-king of Ashanti, was detained in the castle (1896) until his removal to the Seychelles. (See ASHANTI : History, and GOLD COAST : History.)