Elmhurst is an
affluent suburb of Chicago in DuPage County, Illinois.
The population is 43,298 (2006 Special Census.)
Members of the Potawatomi Indian
tribe, who settled along Salt Creek just south of where
the city would develop, are the earliest known settlers
of the Elmhurst area. Around 1836, European immigrants
settled on tracts of land along the same creek. At what
would become Elmhurst City Centre, a native of Ohio
named Gerry Bates established a community on a tract
of "treeless land" in 1842.
The following year, Hill Cottage
Tavern opened where St. Charles Road and Cottage Hill
Avenue presently intersect. In 1845, the community was
officially named Cottage Hill when a post office was
established. Four years later the Galena and Chicago
Union Railroad was given right-of-way through Cottage
Hill giving farmers easier access to Chicago. The community
changed its name to Elmhurst in 1869.
Elmhurst was incorporated as
a village in 1882, with a population of 1,050, and legal
boundaries of St. Charles Road to North Avenue, and
one half mile west and one quarter mile east of York
Street.
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