DuPage

Formed February 9, 1839 (80^th county)

DuPage (932,877), Wheaton (53,920), Naperville (149,559)

A Modern style brown brick structure was built in 1990 to support DuPage County.  The facility is located in western Wheaton on County Farm Road.  Illinois State Highway 38 is ½ mile south of the complex.  Wight and Company and Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum are the combined architects.  An Administration Center, built in 1973, augments the courthouse.  The structure is on a lake with veteran memorials on the opposite side.  The county was formed on February 9, 1839 out of Cook County as the 80^th county.  There was an 1896 courthouse prior to the new structure.  Naperville was the first county seat until 1867 when Wheaton assumed the role.  DuPage County is named for the river.  The county seat is named for two settlers, Warren and Jesse Wheaton. 

DuPage County government consists of a sheriff, an attorney, a coroner, a clerk, a treasurer, and an assessor (executive).  It has 19 Board Members (legislative.)  Forty-six Circuit Court Judges and a court clerk serve DuPage County (judicial.)   The county is in northeast Illinois just to the west of Chicago, Illinois.  The county center is 2.6 miles East of Wheaton in Glen Ellyn.  The county is surrounded clockwise by Cook, Will, Kendall, and Kane counties. 

The area of the county is 327 square miles.  It is 87 out of 102 in the state.  It ranks 2 out of 102 in population in the state.  It has a density of 2852.8 persons per square mile making it 2 out of 102 in the state.  DuPage County has 89.7% of its population in its incorporated areas.  Interstate Highway 55 crosses the extreme southern part of the county east to southwest from Cook County to Will County.  Interstate Highway 88 originates in the county and heads west into Kane County.  United States Highway 20 enters from the east, Cook County, and exits to the north, back into Cook County.  United States Highway 34 comes from Cook County and travels southwest into Kane County.  The county is a rectangle with a foot sticking out of the southeast corner.  Wheaton is in the western half of the county.  Naperville is in the southwest corner of the county.  Wheaton is the county seat and Naperville is the largest city.  Wheaton is 5.8% of the county population while Naperville is 16.0% of the county population.  The county is pronounced DUE PAEG.  The largest city is pronounced NAE-PER-VIL.  This county is in the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet Metropolitan Statistical Area.