Oak Park, IL news and local guide

By 1850 the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, later the Chicago and North Western, ran through the settlement on its way to Elgin, and in the 1850s the land became part of the new Chicago suburb of Cicero. Population boomed in the 1870s, as Chicagoans resettled after the Great Fire of 1871. Oak Park got its own depot in 1872, and by 1877 thirty-nine trains a day ran to Chicago. It grew from 500 residents in 1872 to 1,812 in 1890, 9,353 in 1900, 20,911 in 1910 and 39,585 in 1920, becoming a leading Chicago suburb. Streetcars and elevated trains supplemented the railroads. The Chicago, Harlem and Batavia "dummy" line, whose small steam locomotives were disguised to avoid frightening horses, began running in 1881 along roughly the route of today's Eisenhower Expressway and offered direct service downtown from June 1888, and a wider streetcar network opened in 1890. Sources Wikipedia: Oak Park, Illinois