Elburn, Illinois

History

On May 2, 1834, William Lance arrived in the Elburn area and soon built a home there. Shortly thereafter, a man named Henry Warne arrived and opened a stagecoach inn called the Halfway House, since it was halfway between Oregon, Illinois and Chicago.

When the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company built through the area in 1854, the stop at this site was named Blackberry Station after the Township. The village incorporated as Elburn in 1886.

The village was originally named Blackberry Station but was changed at the request of the railroad. The name Elburn itself derives from its originally suggested name, Melbourne, but a suggestion to shorten the name resulted in the dropping of the "M", leaving Elbourne. From there, it was shortened even further to Elburne, and then finally to Elburn.

Once largely rural, the area's population began rapidly expanding in the 1990s with the arrival of large tract home developments. In January 2006, Metra began to provide passenger rail service from Elburn to Chicago on the Union Pacific West Line. The new station replaced Geneva as the western end-of-line and made Elburn one of Chicago's farthest western suburbs. A new station was also constructed in La Fox.

From the History section of Elburn, Illinois on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.