Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Chatsworth, IL

Chatsworth is an incorporated town in Livingston County in north-central Illinois, and its motto is the "Bluebird Capital of Illinois."

Chatsworth was laid out on June 8, 1859, by Zeno Secor and Cornelia Gilman, both from New York, and it is perhaps named for Chatsworth House, the home of the Duke of Devonshire.

Chatsworth's founder Zeno Secor was a railroad director and civil engineer best known for building ironclad warships for the Union Navy, and he later became president of the Toledo, Peoria and Western Railroad.

Chatsworth was incorporated on March 8, 1867, and grew so fast that it already had about 1,000 people by 1870.

On August 10, 1887, the Great Chatsworth Train Wreck occurred just east of town when a Niagara Falls excursion train carrying hundreds of vacationers hit a fire-weakened trestle bridge, killing about 85 people and injuring hundreds in one of the worst train disasters in American history.

Plattdeutsch-speaking East Frisian settlers arrived in the Chatsworth area beginning in the late 1850s and established the Zion Lutheran Church.

One block of Chatsworth's original plat was set aside as City Park and was eventually planted with over 500 maple trees, with a pavilion added in 1962.

Chatsworth had a population of 1,185 at the 2020 census, living in 603 households.

U.S. Route 24, paved through town in 1924 as part of the old Corn Belt Trail, remains Chatsworth's main east-west highway.

Chatsworth students are served by the Prairie Central school district, which joined several Livingston and McLean county communities together.