The Burns Settlement was not a town but a community of rural estates settled by a Burns family. It was located about a mile northwest of the present village of Crab Orchard. William Bums erected a horse powered grist mill here in 1819. It was the second such mill in Williamson County; He also built a cotton gin there the same year.

William Burn’s grist mill and cotton gin became a gathering place on “Mill Day” and ginning time. The area has been strip mined and no trace of the community can be found.

(Ghost Towns of Southern Illinois, by Glenn J. Sneed, published 1977)