Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Blue Island, IL

Blue Island is a city in Cook County, Illinois, nicknamed 'The City on the Hill' for its position atop the Blue Island ridge, 16 miles south of Chicago's Loop.

Blue Island got its name because the dense forest at the north end of its ridge looked blue, like smoke, from early Chicago, and a prevailing mirage made the timber appear to be land surrounded by water - an island.

Blue Island was established in the 1830s as a way station for settlers traveling the Vincennes Trace, and Norman Rexford became its first permanent settler in 1836 when he established the Blue Island House inn a day's journey from Chicago.

Blue Island was incorporated on October 26, 1872.

Rich clay deposits around the ridge made Blue Island a brick-making center beginning in the 1850s - by 1900 the Clifton Brickyard alone was producing 150 million bricks a year, earning the city a reputation as the brick-making capital of the world.

Beginning in 1883, Blue Island hosted the car shops of the Rock Island Railroad, and its breweries used caves on the east side of the hill to store beer before refrigeration, until Prohibition shut them down in 1919.

Blue Island has been a point of entry for generations of immigrants - by 1850, half of its population was foreign-born or the children of foreign-born residents, beginning with a large German community and later including Italians, Poles, Swedes and Mexicans.

Blue Island had a population of 22,558 at the 2020 census, living in 8,278 households.

Blue Island is one of only eleven incorporated areas in Illinois to have been designated by the White House as a 'Preserve America' community.

Blue Island's Vermont Street station, built in 1868, is one of the oldest stations in the entire Metra network.