Salt Creek Resource Management Office

About forestry service, 60558, Western Springs, IL, US, Illinois

Western Springs is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States, and a suburb of Chicago. As of the 2020 census, the village had a total population of 13,629. Named for local mineral springs on the southwest side of town, Western Springs originally consisted of flat prairie land with a swamp on its western border. It is located along the BNSF Railway (formerly the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad) between Chicago and Aurora, encompassing roughly the area between Willow Springs Road (Gilbert Avenue), Ogden Avenue, Interstate 294, and West Plainfield Road. == History == Around the turn of the 18th century, nomadic Potawatomi Native Americans settled in the Western Springs area. Whether they built a village is unclear, but evidence of temporary campsites has been found near Flagg Creek in Forest Hills. The natives were gone by the end of 1835, but Potawatomi artifacts may still be found buried in the Springdale neighborhood. The last Cook County campground of the Potawatomi was within what is now the Timber Trails subdivision. The first known settler in the area near Western Springs was Elijah Wentworth. By 1834, after the Black Hawk War, farmer Joseph Vial had moved from New York and built a cabin along what is now Plainfield Road, a former Native American trail in the south of Western Springs.