Looking Back

Located about 50 miles west of Chicago in Kendall County at the confluence of Waubonsee Creek and the Fox River, Oswego was settled, at least in part, for its transportation potential. A limestone shelf creates a natural, smooth-bottomed, ford across the river just above the mouth of the creek, making it a favored crossing first for Native Americans and then for the American settlers who began arriving in the 1830s.

William Smith Wilson and his wife, Rebecca, were the first settlers on the site of what is now Oswego. Wilson and his brother-in-law, Daniel Pearce, scouted the area in 1832 before moving their families to their claims in 1833. The area began a period of fast growth that year. In 1836, two newly arrived businessmen, Lewis B. Judson and Levi F. Arnold (who became Oswego’s first storekeeper and postmaster), platted the original village of Oswego. The same year Oswego was platted, the Temple, later Frink & Walker, stagecoach line began regular mail and passenger service on the western branch of the Chicago to Ottawa Road through Oswego. A year or so later, the road from Joliet to Dixon and Galena passed through town on its way across the Fox River.

At first, the community had no formal name. Settlers from New York favored "Hudson," while those from Ohio liked "Lodi." The U.S. Postal Service established a post office at Oswego in 1837 with the provisional name of "Lodi." But that same year, a referendum was held and the new village received its official name: Oswego.

The ford across the Fox River was an economic draw from the very beginning. Decoalia Towle and his wife Elizabeth established an inn and tavern at Oswego on the road to the ford, joining Arnold’s general store and, after 1837, post office, in Oswego’s growing business district.

The extension of the Fox River Branch of the Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroad through the village in 1870 proved another economic boost. In 1910, the Aurora Elgin & Yorkville Railway, an interurban trolley line, made another connection to Oswego from Aurora to the north and Yorkville to the south. With the advent of automobiles in the early years of the century, and the paved roads they required, Oswego once again found itself to be a transportation hub where two state highways— Illinois Route 25 and Illinois Route 31—originated and through which a U.S. highway—U.S. Route 34—passes.

In the mid-1950s, Caterpillar, Inc. and Western Electric (then the telephone equipment manufacturing arm of AT&T), announced plans to locate facilities within Oswego Township close to the village. The proximity of the two large industrial plants led to the development of the Boulder Hill Subdivision just north of Oswego in unincorporated Oswego Township. For the next 40 years, Boulder Hill was the largest community in Kendall County.

Then in the mid 1980s, the homebuilding boom in Naperville and Aurora spread west, and housing developments began to spring up around Oswego. Oswego extended its boundaries west of the Fox River for the first time in its history, and grew east and north to U.S. Route 30. In the 1990 U.S. Census, Oswego’s population stood at 3,875. Just ten years later, the census showed its population had risen to 13,326, making it the largest community in Kendall County.

The village is now experiencing another period of economic and population growth very similar to that which took place 160 years ago.

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