Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near East Macomb Macomb, IL

Macomb is a city in western Illinois and the county seat of McDonough County, situated about 75 miles southwest of Peoria.

Macomb was first settled in 1829 on a site tentatively named Washington, and it was officially founded in 1830 as the county seat on land grants in the Military Tract, named after Alexander Macomb, a general in the War of 1812.

Macomb is the home of Western Illinois University, founded on April 24, 1899 as the Western Illinois State Normal School and opened in 1902, whose Sherman Hall is the city's best-known landmark.

Western Illinois University enrolls roughly 6,300 students and is Macomb's dominant employer, and Spoon River College also operates a campus in the city.

Macomb's population was 15,051 at the 2020 census, down sharply from 19,288 in 2010 as university enrollment declined, after peaking at 19,952 in 1990.

Macomb has around 6,500 households in recent Census Bureau estimates, and its median age was just 29 years at the 2020 census, reflecting the large student share of its population.

Lizzie Magie, the inventor of The Landlord's Game, the precursor to the board game Monopoly, was born in Macomb, and in 2024 the city unveiled Macombopoly downtown, which it calls the world's largest Monopoly board.

Macomb has been visited and addressed by an unusual number of presidents and future presidents for its size, including Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama both spoke there before their elections.

The St. Louis Rams of the NFL held their summer training camp at Western Illinois University's Hanson Field in Macomb from 1996 to 2004.

Macomb's minor-league Macomb Potters hosted two exhibition games against the Chicago Cubs in 1909 and 1910, with 2,964 fans watching the defending champion Cubs win the first game in what the local paper billed as the greatest day in McDonough County baseball history.