Biohazard Cleanup Near Lake Devonshire Champaign, IL

Champaign was founded in 1855 as 'West Urbana,' springing up when the Illinois Central Railroad laid its tracks two miles west of Urbana, and it took the name Champaign when it received its city charter in 1860.

Champaign had 88,302 residents at the 2020 census, making it the tenth-most populous municipality in Illinois, and it anchors a metropolitan area of about 236,000 people with its twin city, Urbana.

Champaign shares the flagship campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with Urbana - the university was founded in 1867 as the Illinois Industrial University under the Morrill Land-Grant Act.

Champaign is also home to Parkland College, so students make up a huge share of the population during the academic year.

Because of the university and its cluster of technology startups, Champaign is known as a hub of the 'Silicon Prairie,' and Fortune 500 companies including Abbott, ADM, Caterpillar, John Deere, Dow and IBM keep offices there.

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois released the Mosaic web browser in 1993, the first browser to display images inline with text, which helped popularize the World Wide Web.

Champaign has about 36,800 households, but only about 44% of its homes are owner-occupied - a renter-heavy profile driven by its enormous student population.

The Cattle Bank building, constructed in 1858, is the oldest surviving building in Champaign.

The Champaign Park District maintains 60 parks, 11 trails and 14 facilities totaling more than 654 acres, including West Side Park near downtown.

Champaign's public high schools are Central High School and Centennial High School, both run by Champaign Unit 4 School District, and the city also has the private St. Thomas More High School.