Dupage County, IL

Settlement & growth (pre-1960)

Before European settlement, the area now known as DuPage County was inhabited by the Potawatomi people, who used the DuPage River as a travel and trade route. The first white settlers were primarily of Yankee stock—English-descended Americans from New England and upstate New York—who arrived in the 1830s after the Black Hawk War and the subsequent forced removal of Native tribes. These pioneers founded the county’s earliest towns, including Naperville (1831), Wheaton (1837), and Downers Grove (1832), establishing a pattern of small, self-governing farming communities.

The next major wave came from German immigrants, who began arriving in significant numbers in the 1840s and 1850s, drawn by cheap land and the promise of work on the expanding Galena & Chicago Union Railroad. They settled heavily in Addison and Bensenville, where German remained the dominant language in churches and schools well into the early 1900s. A smaller but notable influx of Irish immigrants arrived during the same period, finding work on railroad construction and settling in Lisle and Glen Ellyn. By 1900, DuPage was a mosaic of Yankee-led towns with dense German and Irish enclaves, its economy still rooted in dairy farming and brickmaking.

The period from 1900 to 1960 saw slower, steady growth. The county remained largely rural and Republican-leaning, with its population hovering around 150,000 as late as 1950. The post-World War II boom, however, transformed it. The construction of the Eisenhower Expressway (I-290) and the East-West Tollway (I-88) opened the county to massive suburbanization. Families—overwhelmingly white, middle-class, and often of German or Irish descent—fled Chicago for new subdivisions in Lombard, Villa Park, and Elmhurst. This wave was driven by the GI Bill, affordable housing, and a desire for larger lots and better schools. By 1960, the population had doubled to over 300,000, and DuPage had become a prototypical American suburb.

Modern era (post-1965)

The 1965 Hart-Cellar Act fundamentally reshaped DuPage’s demographics, though the effects were slower to arrive than in coastal suburbs. The first post-1965 immigrants were East/Southeast Asian professionals—primarily Chinese and Indian engineers and doctors—who came in the 1970s and 1980s to work at the growing corporate campuses in Naperville and Lisle, including Bell Labs (later Lucent/Alcatel-Lucent) and Amoco (now BP). These highly educated arrivals settled in the county’s western towns, drawn by top-ranked school districts like Naperville 203 and Indian Prairie 204.

The Indian-subcontinent community grew explosively after 1990, driven by H-1B visa holders in technology and pharmaceuticals. Today, Indians are the largest non-white group in DuPage at 7.2%, with a strong concentration in Naperville and Aurora (the latter straddling the county line). This community is notably affluent and well-educated, with many families owning businesses in healthcare, IT consulting, and retail. The East/Southeast Asian population (5.4%) is smaller but similarly concentrated, with a visible Chinese and Korean presence in Westmont and Woodridge.

The Hispanic population (15.7%) has a different trajectory. Many are Mexican-American families who arrived in the 1990s and 2000s, drawn by construction and service jobs in the booming suburban economy. They settled in older, more affordable towns like Addison, Bensenville, and West Chicago, where they now form a significant share of the population. Unlike the Asian and Indian communities, the Hispanic population is more working-class and less geographically dispersed, with higher rates of multi-generational households. The Black population (4.9%) is smaller and more recent, with growth driven by middle-class families moving from Chicago’s South Side to towns like Bolingbrook and Naperville since 2000.

Domestic migration has also shifted. Since 2010, DuPage has seen net out-migration of white families to exurban counties like Kendall and McHenry, while attracting new residents from the coasts—particularly California and New York—who are drawn by lower housing costs and strong schools. This has slightly moderated the county’s white share (now 63.1%) while increasing its racial and economic diversity.