Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Lemont, IL

Lemont is a village spanning Cook, DuPage and Will counties (listed under Cook County in this dataset), a southwest suburb of Chicago set on a hillside along the south bank of the Des Plaines River.

Settled in 1836, Lemont is one of the oldest American communities in northeastern Illinois, and it incorporated on June 9, 1873, celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2023.

The village was first known as Keepataw, after a Potawatomi chief, then as Athens and Palmyra, before the name Lemont — French for 'the mountain' — was chosen in 1850.

Lemont's history is bound to the Illinois and Michigan Canal, completed in 1848, which created a continuous waterway from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River; by 1848 the canal town already had about 3,000 people.

Canal diggers uncovered an exceptionally fine yellow dolomite limestone, and quarrying Lemont limestone — marketed as 'Athens Marble' — became the town's chief industry from about 1850 to 1900.

Lemont limestone was used to build the Chicago Water Tower, one of the few buildings to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, as well as Holy Name Cathedral and part of the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield.

Thirty-eight limestone buildings survive in the Lemont Downtown Historic District, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016 and remains in continuous use.

The village's old quarries have been reinvented as The Forge: Lemont Quarries, an adventure park set in the Heritage Quarries Recreation Area.

The Lemont area is home to Argonne National Laboratory, the U.S. Department of Energy's major research center, and the village overlooks the bluff savanna of Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve across the Des Plaines River.

The 2020 census counted 17,629 people in Lemont, up from 16,000 in 2010, and Census Bureau figures count about 6,400 households, with nearly 88% of homes owner-occupied.