Village of Lemont history

Other patrons of the dives worked in Lemont`s stone quarries, discovered during the digging of an earlier waterway, the 103-mile Illinois and Michigan Canal, which opened in 1848 and became obsolete a few years later. (Chicago`s Water Tower was built with Lemont stone.)

Lemont proper was not incorporated until 1873, on land previously occupied by the defunct Keepataw.

Sent in 1882 to minister to the Polish settlers, this priest established the cohesive residential community of Jasnagora that sits above Lemont today.

As the high-tech industry of its time, the Illinois Pure Aluminum Company (established 1892) provided a mainstay of employment for exactly a century.

In 1893, Governor Altgeld came to Lemont personally to mediate a strike after a fight between Sanitary Ship Canal contractors and quarry workers led to three more deaths.

Boosters were sure the setback was only temporary and that the village would prosper after the canal opened in 1900.

In 1922 the Globe Oil and Refining Company opened what was then the largest refinery in the state.

By 1980, Lemont`s population had dropped to 5,640, many of them descendants of the immigrant canal and quarry workers from Ireland, Poland, Germany and Lithuania who had stayed in town after their colleagues moved on.

Township officials are projecting 300 housing starts a year in the village and township for the next 10 years, raising the total township population from an estimated 11,500 to 22,500 by 2000.

Incorporated April 17, 2001, the Village of Homer Glen is strategically positioned in northeastern Will County, 25 miles southwest of downtown Chicago.