Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Streator, IL

Streator is a city on the Vermilion River in north-central Illinois, about 81 miles southwest of Chicago, lying mostly in LaSalle County with a portion extending into Livingston County.

Streator began in 1861 when miner John O'Neill established a trading post called Hardscrabble on the river's banks, and it was incorporated as a city in 1868.

Coal was the original engine of Streator's economy from 1866 into the late 1920s, when most of its underground mines closed; the last Streator mine shut down in 1958.

Rich local clay and shale gave rise to Streator's brick, tile and drain-pipe industries, which eventually surpassed coal as the city's leading exports.

Streator was best known for glass: silica from the local St. Peter Sandstone, which is 99.44 percent pure quartz, fed a bottle-making industry that earned Streator the title Glass Manufacturing Capital of the World in the early 20th century, and glass-container manufacturing remains in the city today.

Streator's population peaked at about 17,000 residents in 1960 and has declined since, reaching 12,500 at the 2020 census.

Census Bureau estimates count about 5,500 households in Streator, averaging roughly 2.2 people each.

Streator is the birthplace of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, born February 4, 1906 on his grandparents' farm on the northwest side of town, who attended Streator High School before discovering Pluto at Lowell Observatory in 1930 at age 24, becoming the only American to discover a planet.

Two years after Tombaugh's death in 1997, Streator dedicated its main street to its hometown astronomer.

An 1884 survey by the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 20 percent of Streator's miners owned their own houses, a high rate for a 19th-century mining town.