24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Paris, IL

Paris is the county seat and largest city of Edgar County, Illinois, sitting about 165 miles south of Chicago and 90 miles west of Indianapolis.

Paris was established in 1826 on land donated by Samuel Vance specifically to serve as the county seat, and it was incorporated as a village in 1849.

Despite its French-sounding name, Paris most likely got its name from the word "Paris" carved into a jack oak tree in the middle of what became the town, not from the capital of France.

The 2020 census counted 8,291 people in Paris, down from a peak of 9,971 residents in 1970.

Paris had 3,663 households in the 2020 census, and about 21.5% of its residents were aged 65 or older, giving the city a median age of 43.

Paris has a humid subtropical climate with about 43 inches of precipitation a year, and its weather records stretch back to 1893, with extremes of 109 degrees Fahrenheit and minus 23 degrees.

Two brothers, Walter Booth and Newton Booth, both served as mayor of Paris in the mid-1850s, and Newton Booth later moved west and became governor of California and a United States senator.

In the 1950s Paris was home to the Paris Lakers, a minor league baseball team affiliated with the Chicago Cubs that won the 1956 Midwest League championship.

Paris Cooperative High School, which serves the whole community, became the first cooperative high school in Illinois when it was formed on July 1, 2009.

Paris is unusual in having two public school districts, Paris Union School District 95 inside the city limits and Paris Community Unit School District No. 4 outside them, both feeding into the same high school.