Wyanet, Illinois: A Town That Kept Changing Its Name

The small Bureau County village of Wyanet went through three names before it found the one that stuck. Settlers first called the spot Center around eighteen twenty-one. When the Chicago Rock Island and Pacific Railroad arrived in eighteen fifty-three, it was renamed Kingston in honor of the family that donated the land.

Then the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad completed its competing line in eighteen fifty-five and simply bestowed its own name, Wyanet, on the station. The village platted formally in eighteen fifty-four and incorporated in eighteen fifty-seven. The CB and Q's name won out, and it has remained Wyanet ever since, a farm village of about nine hundred people set among the cornfields of north-central Illinois.