The Chicago, Wheaton and Western Railway, a lightly built interurban electric railway, came in from the east, running down the middle of Junction and Depot (now both Main) streets, then curved back west toward Geneva. In 1909, one more railroad came to West Chicago. The community continues to attract quality business and residential development that contributes to the culturally diverse community that exists today. By 1910, the population was 2,378 and several new industries had located here, including the Borden's milk condensing plant, the Turner Cabinet Company and the Turner Brick Company. At the turn of the century, West Chicago was number two in population in DuPage County, behind Hinsdale. Area businessmen, particularly Charles Bolles, reasoned that the new name sounded more cosmopolitan, and would help draw prospective factory owners.Īs industry located in West Chicago and new jobs opened up, the population increased. As part of the effort to attract industry, the community changed its name in 1896 to the Village of West Chicago. It offered free factory sites for any industry willing to locate along its right-of-way. In 1888, a new railroad, the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern, built a freight line through town. These two “towns” became informally known as Turner Junction.īy 1873, the community had taken on a substantial and permanent character, so the residents incorporated as the Village of Turner. They recorded their plat as the Town of Turner in honor of the railroad president. Joseph McConnell and his wife Mary platted a second portion of town just north of John B. The community continued its growth, although the one-room schoolhouse built a mile outside town in 1835 would become the state's last surviving one-room schoolhouse when it closed in 1991. He therefore recorded the community's first plat in 1855 under the name of Town of Junction. As more people settled in Junction, Turner recognized the chance to make a profit by platting his land and selling off lots. Turner, president of the G&CU and a resident of Chicago, owned several acres of land in what is now the center of town. The original settlers were primarily English and Irish, with Germans arriving in the 1860s and Mexican immigrants by the 1910s. As a result, a number of new employees and their families located to this community. īecause of the number of trains passing through town, water and fuel facilities for locomotives and a roundhouse were built here, as well as an early eating-house and hotel for travelers. In 1854, the G&CURR opened the “Dixon Air Line” branch West thru Geneva. In 1850, the Aurora Branch Railroad (predecessor of the CB&Q) built southwest, making America's first railroad junction point west of Chicago. In 1849, the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad (predecessor of the C&NW) reached the site of present-day West Chicago, then continued northwest to Elgin. A pioneer cemetery on the old Gary Homestead, where a sawmill had been built by the Garys, just north of Gary's Mill Road, and north of its terminus at Illinois Route 59, was built over with apartment buildings in the 1960s. Gary also helped bring brothers Jesse and Warren Wheaton, founders of nearby Wheaton, Illinois, the DuPage County seat, from Connecticut to the Midwest. Steel, and for whom Gary, Indiana, is named. His son became "Judge" Elbert Henry Gary, the first CEO of America's first billion-dollar corporation, U.S. Erastus Gary, of Pomfret, Connecticut homesteaded 760 acres (310 ha) on the banks of the DuPage River, just south of West Chicago's present day city limits in the 1830s.
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