Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near North Colfax Colfax, IL

Colfax is a village in eastern McLean County, Illinois, laid out on March 22, 1880, by James E. Wood, who had come to the county around 1855 as a state missionary for the Christian Church.

Colfax was named for Schuyler Colfax, who served as Vice President of the United States under Ulysses S. Grant.

The first train reached Colfax on July 4, 1880, and the rail line's terminus was at Colfax for its first few years, helping the new town grow rapidly.

Coal mining arrived in 1886, when a company was organized to open the first of two mines at Colfax, and mining anchored the local economy until the mines closed and the village settled into life as a grain-country commercial hub.

A tile factory built in the northeast corner of town in 1892 eventually gave Colfax a small park on its former grounds.

Colfax was one of the McLean County towns that excluded saloons in the era when they were licensed in many other places.

Colfax had 996 residents at the 2020 census and is part of the Bloomington-Normal metropolitan area, though its population peaked at 1,158 back in 1900 and has stayed close to 1,000 ever since.

The 2000 census counted 395 households in Colfax.

Colfax students attend Ridgeview High School in the village, part of Ridgeview Community Unit School District 19, formed when the Colfax, Cooksville, and Anchor school districts consolidated in 1948.

The journalist and Northwestern University professor Elmo Scott Watson was born in Colfax in 1892.