Mokena: The Mud Turtle Town

The name Mokena comes from a Native American word meaning mud turtle, likely Potawatomi or Ojibwe, and the area has carried it since Native peoples lived along these Illinois prairies. The first non-Native settler arrived in eighteen thirty-one, and the community grew slowly until the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad came through in eighteen fifty-two. That first wood-burning locomotive run put Mokena on the map as a railroad stop.

Settlers of German and Swiss origin made up much of the early population, farming the rich soil around the rail line. The village formally incorporated on June sixteenth, eighteen eighty, after at least two earlier failed attempts at incorporation, with a population of five hundred twenty-two residents ready to govern themselves.