| St. Charles is
an affluent city in Kane and DuPage counties of Illinois,
United States, and is roughly 40 miles west of Chicago
on Illinois Route 64. According to a 2004 census estimate,
the city has a total population of 32,134. The official
city slogan is Pride of the Fox, after the Fox River
that runs through the center of town. St. Charles is
part of a tri-city area along with Geneva and Batavia,
all far-western suburbs of similar size and relative
socioeconomic condition.
After the Black Hawk War in 1832
opened the Fox River valley to white settlement, Evan
Shelby and William Franklin staked the first claim in
what is now St. Charles in 1833. They came back in 1834
with their families from Indiana, and were joined by
over a dozen other families later that year. The township
was initially known as Charleston, but this name was
already taken by the downstate city of Charleston, Illinois
so the name of Saint Charles (suggested by S. S. Jones,
a lawyer) was adopted in 1839. St. Charles became incorporated
as a city in 1874.
St. Charles was a very isolated
place early on in its existence. The village was located
three days away from Chicago, and the Fox River was
not navigable for large boats. By the 1850s, St. Charles
had begun construction of a plank road to Sycamore...
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