Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near West Olney Olney, IL

Olney is the county seat of Richland County in southeastern Illinois, a city first settled around 1815 when Thaddeus Morehouse built a log cabin along the stagecoach route between Vincennes, Indiana, and St. Louis.

Olney was chosen as the county seat when Richland County was organized in 1841 out of Clay and Lawrence counties, and Judge Aaron Shaw suggested the town's name to honor his friend Nathan Olney.

Olney was incorporated as a village in 1848 and had 8,701 residents at the 2020 census, down from 9,115 in 2010.

Census Bureau survey figures put Olney at about 3,599 households in recent years, averaging roughly 2.3 people per household.

Olney's official motto is 'Home of the White Squirrel,' because the city supports one of the world's best-known colonies of albino eastern gray squirrels, with white fur and pink eyes.

Olney's white squirrel colony traces to 1902, when albino squirrels found by local farmers were displayed in the window of Jasper Banks' saloon before being released into the town's woods.

The white squirrel population peaked at roughly 1,000 in the 1940s and now holds at around 200, and volunteers conduct an annual squirrel count every October to track both the white and gray squirrels.

Olney protects its squirrels by law: the city banned dogs from running at large in 1925 and extended the same rule to cats in 1997, because roaming pets are the colony's main threat.

The 1950 census found the population center of the entire United States at a spot just north of Olney near Dundas.

Olney is home to Olney Central College, a public two-year college that opened on September 3, 1963 with 154 students and was the first junior college in America founded through a working arrangement with an established university, Eastern Illinois University.