Dwight is a village located mainly in Livingston County, Illinois, with a small portion in Grundy County. The population was 4,032 at the 2020 census. Dwight contains an original stretch of U.S. Route 66, and from 1892 until 2016 continuously used a railroad station designed in 1891 by Henry Ives Cobb. Interstate 55 bypasses the village to the north and west.
Geography
Dwight is located in northeastern Livingston County at (41.092975, -88.427273). It extends north into southern Grundy County to include the commercial area near the northern exit with Interstate 55. I-55 leads northeast to Chicago and southwest to Bloomington. Illinois Route 17 passes through the center of Dwight as Mazon Avenue, leading east to Kankakee and west to Wenona. Illinois Route 47 (Union Street) passes through the east side of Dwight, leading north to Morris and south to Gibson City.
According to the 2010 census, Dwight has a total area of , of which (or 99.69%) are land and (or 0.31%) are water.
Climate
History
Founding
Dwight was laid out on January 30, 1854, by Richard Price Morgan Jr. (1828-1910), James C. Spencer (1828 – after 1890), and John Lathrop (1809 – 1870). Each of these three men took a quarter of the land. All were working as engineers for the Chicago and Mississippi Railroad. The final quarter was jointly owned by two Bloomington brothers, Jesse W. Fell (1808 – 1878) and Kersey H. Fell (1815 – 1893). All five men had links to the railroad which was to open from Bloomington to Joliet in 1854.
Spencer was born in the Hudson River valley south of Albany; his ancestors included a United States Supreme Court Chief Justice and two governors of New York State; he was later to have an important career in Wisconsin railroads. Lathrop was a civil engineer with a long history of working with canals and railroads in New York; he would soon return to Buffalo. Morgan was the son of a noted civil engineer, and he later became nationally known for his work on electric railroads in New York. The Fell brothers were Bloomington land developers who had been active in helping found many central Illinois towns including Clinton, Normal, Pontiac, and Towanda. They were employed by the railroad as land agents; the Fells had a role in persuading Abraham Lincoln to write his autobiography.
The plan of the founders was to purchase a block of land along the route of the railroad, and to divide it into four equal parts. Morgan would then take charge of the operation. He would draw up a plan of the new town, sell the lots, and divide the proceeds among the others. The station was to be placed at the point where the four quarters met. Any unsold lots would be divided among the partners. The other men seemed to believe that Morgan was acting in the interest of the railroad. The town was named for Henry Dwight, who had funded most of the construction of this part of the railroad. The Chicago and Mississippi soon became the Chicago and Alton Railroad. Attempts in 1858 to rename the settlement "Jersey", "Beckman", or "Dogtown" failed.
Early Dwight
When the surveyors, working for the railroad's chief engineer, Oliver H. Lee, reached the proposed location of the town in 1853, the speculators found that the tracks would pass slightly east of the planned central point and would go through lands in Morgan's area. This would have made Morgan's lots more valuable than the others. The men revised the plan so that everyone would convey their lots to Morgan, who would then sell the lots and split the total profits. This was done. In 1855 the partnership was dissolved and all unsold lots were divided among the five men. To announce to the public that a town would be located here, a tin pan was placed on top of a telegraph pole. Railroad workers flooded into the townsite. Morgan was afraid that they would cover lots with “Irish shanties” and make the lots unsellable. Therefore, he had John Campbell erect a boarding house. This was the first building in Dwight. The first house in town was built by Augustus West in June 1854. The first passenger train reached Dwight on July 4, 1854, and regular traffic on the railroad began in August of that year. The first store was a two-story building put up by David McWilliams in 1855 and painted white to attract customers. The first item sold was a pattern for a "lawn dress" that one of the workmen purchased for the wife of the station master. In 1857 John Spencer began buying grain and erected a grain warehouse. A grain elevator soon followed, and a large stone mill was built in 1859.