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Oakwood is a village in Vermilion County in east-central Illinois, part of the Danville metropolitan area, named for Henry Oakwood, an early settler who arrived in 1833.

Oakwood began as Oakwood Station, platted in 1870 when the Indianapolis, Bloomington and Western Railroad arrived; the same railroad platted nearby Fithian and Muncie.

Long before the village existed, Indigenous peoples worked the salt springs near the Vermilion River south of present-day Oakwood, and French travelers documented the salty water as early as 1706.

White settlers opened salt wells in the area in 1819, and Major John W. Vance expanded the salt works from 1824 before competition shut the operation down around 1840.

From the 1860s onward, coal mining became a major source of jobs across Vermilion County, shaping Oakwood's working-class character.

Oakwood had 1,325 residents at the 2020 census, down from its peak of 1,627 in 1980; the village boomed in the 1960s after Interstate 74 arrived, jumping from 861 people in 1960 to 1,367 in 1970.

Oakwood's residents lived in 592 households at the 2020 census.

Oakwood Community Unit School District 76 runs three schools with three different mascots: the Grade School Stars, the Junior High Knights, and the Oakwood High School Comets.

Oakwood voters made the town "dry," banning alcohol sales, in the 1940s and did not repeal prohibition locally until a 1987 vote.

Electricity officially came to Oakwood on November 30, 1912, at a ceremony where the mayor pushed a button and lit all the village streets at once.