Proposed New Counties for Illinois

Calumet County

County Seat: Justice
Formed from: Cook
Proposed legislation to divide Cook County up into two or more new counties comes along every few years, but none of it ever goes very far. It would make sense to split the county, though -- it is the second most populated county in the United States, and Chicago is so dominant that the suburbs often suffer. This is my proposal to split off some of the south and west suburbs into their own county. The Calumet River flows through the eastern part, and I chose Justice for the seat because of its central location. Plus, the name sounds appropriate for a government center.

Des Plaines County

County Seat: Des Plaines
Formed from: Cook
Des Plaines County would be formed from the north and northwest suburbs within old Cook County. The Des Plaines River flows through its center, and the city of Des Plaines is the only one in it with the look of an older, county-seat type community. The most recent (1999) legislative proposal for splitting Cook County called for naming the four new counties after famous Illinois politicians, but Stevenson would be confused with the current county of Stephenson (Freeport is the county seat), and Ronald Reagan isn't dead yet. I found another use for Lincoln County (below), but thought natural features would be provide more appropriate names in these two cases.

Fox County

County Seat: Ottawa
Formed from: LaSalle
This county is what is left of LaSalle County after I split off the western and southern parts into new counties. Since the city of LaSalle would move to a new county, I shifted the name to that county and gave the remainder of old LaSalle County a new name based on the Fox River.

Lincoln County

County Seat: Hoopeston
Formed from: Iroquois and Vermillion
Both Iroqouis and Vermillion Counties are rather large. Hoopeston is a sizeable town alone by itself in northern Vermillion County, and I chose to make it the seat of its own county. Illinois's favorite son Abraham Lincoln is the county's namesake.

Maizonia County

County Seat: Gilman
Formed from: Ford, Iroquois, and Livingston
The counties in this part of the state are generally large and sometimes have an odd shape. I've always thought that Ford County is especially odd, and so its northern panhandle becomes part of a new county, along with significant chunks of neighboring Iroquois and Livingston Counties. Gilman is small, but it is the largest community in the new county and also finds itself located at the intersection of the two most important roads, US 24 and Interstate 57. As for the name, Illinois is at the heart of the "Corn belt", and this was my attempt to come up with something suitably corny.

Prairie County

County Seat: Streator
Formed from: LaSalle and Livingston
Like Hoopeston and LaSalle-Peru, Streator is a fairly large community on the periphery of a county with a faraway county seat. This county combines parts of two large counties and Streator, at the center, gets a court house. The landscape of central Illinois provides the inspiration for the county name.

The counties shaded pink have been modified slightly. LaSalle lost territory to the new Fox and Prairie counties, but gained some back from Bureau County and shifted its county seat to Peru. Ford lost its panhandles, but gained some land from Iroqouis and even more from Champaign, enough to shift its county seat to Rantoul, a city that could use some good news for once.

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