Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near West Oregon Oregon, IL

Oregon is a city in northern Illinois and the county seat of Ogle County, sitting on the Rock River about 95 miles west of Chicago.

Oregon's motto is 'Gem of the Rock River Valley.'

The city was founded in 1833 by pioneer John Phelps, a sawmiller who built the area's first cabin and helped create its first church, school, store, blacksmith shop and post office.

The town was certified as Oregon City in 1838, was renamed Florence for about three years after a visitor compared the Rock River scenery to the Italian city, then reverted to Oregon in 1843.

Oregon was organized as a city on April 1, 1869, and its City Hall, built in 1920, still anchors the commercial district.

The Ogle County Courthouse, built in 1891 at Washington and Fourth Streets, remains the centerpiece of downtown Oregon.

In 1898 sculptor Lorado Taft founded the Eagle's Nest Art Colony on a bluff overlooking the Rock River just north of Oregon, and colony members helped add an art gallery to the Oregon Public Library in 1908.

Between 1908 and 1911, Taft erected the 50-foot Black Hawk Statue — originally named The Eternal Indian — on a bluff in what is now Lowden State Park, immediately north of Oregon.

Former Illinois Governor Frank Orren Lowden, the state's 25th governor, kept an estate on the Rock River just outside Oregon.

Oregon's population was 3,604 in the 2020 census, down from a peak of 4,060 in 2000.