Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Bartonville, IL

Bartonville is a village in Peoria County founded in 1878 by W. C. H. Barton and incorporated on December 9, 1903.

Bartonville is a suburb of Peoria in the Peoria metropolitan area, with a population of 5,945 at the 2020 census, living in about 2,600 households.

The village boomed in the 1950s, jumping from 2,437 residents in 1950 to 7,253 in 1960, a rise of nearly 198 percent in a single decade.

Bartonville was home to the Peoria State Hospital, which opened in 1902 as the Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane on a hilltop campus south of Peoria.

The hospital's superintendent, Dr. George Zeller, rejected the idea that patients were incurable and had the institution renamed, first the Illinois General Hospital for the Insane and then Peoria State Hospital.

At its peak in the 1950s the hospital housed about 2,800 patients across a campus of 63 buildings, with its own farm and patient cemeteries; it closed in 1973, and only about 13 of the buildings survive.

The old hospital grounds are now a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places, part of the land was redeveloped as an industrial park, and the surviving Bowen Building is known for museum and paranormal tours.

Bartonville sits on U.S. Route 24 and Interstate 474, along the Illinois River Road: Route of the Voyagers National Scenic Byway.

The village covers about 8.6 square miles, of which roughly 5 percent is water, reflecting its position near the Illinois River across from the Peoria area.

Local children attend schools in Bartonville Grade School District 66, one of the village's own small school districts.