Biohazard Cleanup Near West Catlin Catlin, IL

Catlin is a village in Vermilion County in east-central Illinois and is part of the Danville, Illinois metropolitan area.

The village was founded in 1866, though settlement around it reaches back to the earliest days of Vermilion County.

Catlin had a population of 1,983 at the 2020 census, down from 2,040 in 2010, and Census Bureau survey estimates count roughly 900 households in the village.

Despite its small size, Catlin is fairly dense, packing its residents into well under a square mile at more than 2,300 people per square mile.

James Butler made the first permanent settlement in Vermilion County in 1820 at Butler's Point, just west of present-day Catlin.

The area's first settlers were drawn by salt works established in 1824, where 24 large kettles holding 100 gallons each boiled down brine, at a rate of about 100 gallons of water for every bushel of salt.

The first mill built and used in either Vermilion or Champaign County was erected near Catlin in 1823.

In 1838, the Potawatomi Trail of Death passed through the village, as some 860 Potawatomi people were forcibly removed by militia from north-central Indiana to reservation land in what is now eastern Kansas.

The Catlin Heritage Museum preserves local history in a house built by Amos Woodin, a cooper by trade who settled in the village's early years.