Oak Park

History

In 1835, Joseph and Betty Kettlestrings, immigrants from Yorkshire, England, staked out a farm and built a house near Lake Street and Harlem Avenue, west of Chicago. Once their children were born, they moved to Chicago for the schools in 1843, and moved back again in 1855 to build a more substantial home a bit east on their quarter section of land. More farmers and settlers had entered the area. Their land was called by several names locally, including Oak Ridge, Harlem, and Kettlestrings Grove. When the first post office was set up, it could not use the name Oak Ridge, as another post office was using that name in Illinois, so the post office chose Oak Park, and that name became the name for the settlement as it grew, and for the town when it incorporated in 1902. By 1850, the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad (after that, the Chicago & Northwestern and now Union Pacific) was constructed as far as Elgin, Illinois, and passed through the settlement area. In the 1850s the land on which Oak Park sits was part of the new Chicago suburb, the town of Cicero. The population of the area boomed during the 1870s, with Chicago residents resettling in Cicero following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and the expansion of railroads and streetcars to the area. "In 1872, when Oak Park received its own railroad depot on the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, its rapid emergence as a residential suburb of Chicago began. In 1877, the railroad was running thirty-nine trains daily between Oak Park and Chicago; in the subsequent year, more railroads and streetcar lines, with increased service, came to link Oak Park and Chicago. As Chicago grew from a regional center to a national metropolis Oak Park expanded – from 500 residents in 1872 to 1,812 in 1890, to 9,353 in 1900, to 20,911 in 1910,…

Geography

Oak Park is located immediately west of the city of Chicago. The boundary between the two municipalities is Austin Boulevard on the east side of Oak Park and North Avenue/Illinois Route 64 on the village's north side. Oak Park borders Cicero along its southern border, Roosevelt Road/Illinois Route 38, from Austin to Lombard; and Berwyn from Lombard to Harlem Avenue. Harlem/Illinois Route 43 serves as its western border, where between Roosevelt and South Boulevard, it borders Forest Park and between North Boulevard and North Avenue to the west it borders River Forest. The entire village of Oak Park lies on the shore of ancient Lake Chicago, which covered most of the city of Chicago during the last Ice Age, and was the forerunner to today's Lake Michigan. Ridgeland Avenue in eastern Oak Park marks the shoreline of the lake, and was once an actual ridge. As with the geographical setup of the Chicago River, which connects to the present day Lake Michigan just north of the city's Loop, the ancient Des Plaines river once emptied into glacial Lake Chicago, making prehistoric Oak Park a "Plains river Delta" system. One of North America's four continental divides runs through Oak Park. This divide, a slight rise running north–south through the village, separates the Saint Lawrence River watershed from the Mississippi River watershed, and is marked by one plaque on Lake Street at Forest Avenue and another in the northwest corner of Taylor Park. According to the 2010 census, Oak Park has a total area of , all land. *Birthplace of Ernest Hemingway *Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio *Unity Temple, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright *Frank Lloyd Wright–Prairie School of Architecture Historic District *Ridgeland–Oak Park Historic District *Edgar Rice Burroughs homes *Oak Park…

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• American Robin

  Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  135,304
• House Sparrow

  Passer domesticus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  135,123
• Northern Cardinal

  Cardinalis cardinalis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  118,445
• Canada Goose (canadensis Group)

  Branta canadensis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  94,921
• Mallard

  Anas platyrhynchos Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  87,249
• Ring-billed Gull

  Larus delawarensis Ord, 1815 · Aves
  78,727
• European Starling

  Sturnus vulgaris Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  76,611
• Black-capped Chickadee

  Poecile atricapillus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  74,432

Largest nearby schools

• Lane Technical High School
  High · Chicago · 4,496 students · 17.4:1 ratio
• Taft High School
  High · Chicago · 4,464 students · 16.6:1 ratio
• Lyons Twp High Sch
  High · La Grange · 3,842 students · 15:1 ratio
• J Sterling Morton West High Sch
  High · Berwyn · 3,533 students · 17.2:1 ratio
• J Sterling Morton East High Sch
  High · Cicero · 3,445 students · 20.4:1 ratio
• Oak Park & River Forest High Sch
  High · Oak Park · 3,304 students · 14.1:1 ratio
• Curie Metropolitan High School
  High · Chicago · 3,178 students · 16.5:1 ratio
• Niles West High School
  High · Skokie · 2,609 students · 14.2:1 ratio

Most recent

• M 2.9 — 2026-07-08
  21 km ENE of Kenilworth, Illinois
• M 3.1 — 2024-07-15
  2 km WNW of Somonauk, Illinois
• M 2.9 — 2015-03-25
  3 km WNW of Lake in the Hills, Illinois
• M 3.2 — 2013-11-04
  1 km SSW of Lyons, Illinois
• M 2.6 — 2013-06-10
  4 km NNE of Virgil, Illinois
• M 3.8 — 2010-02-10
  2 km NW of Lily Lake, Illinois