Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Winnebago, IL

Winnebago is a village in Winnebago County, west of Rockford, that shares its name with its county - both honor the Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) Native American people who once lived in the region.

The community was first settled in 1835, when David Adams Holt arrived at Westfield Corners, a stop on the stagecoach route, becoming the first settler in Winnebago Township.

The settlement was first called Elida in 1849 before residents renamed it Winnebago, and the first school in the township had already opened at Westfield in 1839.

The Galena and Chicago Union Railroad pushed through the village in the early 1850s, and Winnebago's train station was laid out in October 1854, shifting growth from the old stagecoach corners to the rail line.

Winnebago was incorporated as a village in 1878, the same era when its population was still only a few hundred people.

After more than a century of slow growth, Winnebago boomed as a Rockford suburb - its population jumped from 1,840 in 1990 to 2,958 in 2000 and peaked at 3,101 in 2010.

The 2020 census counted 2,940 people in Winnebago, with a median age of about 41.5 years, and the village covers 1.95 square miles.

Winnebago is part of the Rockford metropolitan statistical area and sits just south of U.S. Route 20, the main east-west highway across northern Illinois.

James Weber Linn, a University of Chicago English professor, author and Illinois state representative, was born in Winnebago in 1876.

Winnebago's population actually shrank in the late 19th century - from 504 in 1880 to 405 in 1900 - before the railroad-era farm economy slowly rebuilt it.