Plainfield is a village in Will and Kendall counties, Illinois, United States. The population was 44,762 at the 2020 census. The village includes land in Will County's Plainfield and Wheatland townships, as well as Na-Au-Say and Oswego townships in Kendall County. With the growth in the Chicago suburbs in the 1990s and 2000s, the village has seen a population increase, from 4,500 in 1990 to 28,000 in 2000 to nearly 45,000 in 2016. It is between the cities of Naperville and Joliet. The village has established a community Preservation Commission and historic preservation ordinance. It is the home of the Lake Renwick Preserve, a county forest preserve used for birdwatching and other activities. Located south of Village Hall is Settlers' Park, which includes a lake, war monument, open space, and more. The park presents outdoor concerts to the public in the summer. History The area was called "Walkers' Grove" until it was platted as "Plainfield" in 1841. It was originally settled by a large community of Potawatomi people, and the land was later bequeathed to the United States as part of the Treaty of St. Louis (1816) with the Council of the Three Fires. Indian Boundary Road aligns with the western border of the tract of land originally ceded. The earliest Europeans in the area were French fur traders. The first European-American settler in the area was James Walker, who with his father-in-law, Methodist minister Jessie Walker, traveled here in 1826 where he established a small mission for the Potawatomi people. James Walker, Jesse Walker's son-in-law, traveled with him and became the first European-American to claim land in the area in 1828. In 1828, James Walker, in the company of several men, erected a sawmill around which the settlement of Walkers' Grove developed. Plainfield is identified as the oldest community in Will County because the earliest settlement of Walkers' Grove was established on the banks of the DuPage River by 1828. However, the actual village of Plainfield was platted immediately north of Walkers' Grove in 1834 by Chester Ingersoll. The separate community of East Plainfield was platted in June 1836 by James Mathers, who began selling lots in July 1836. He also constructed a gristmill and a mill race west of Water Street, which would later become Plainfield-Naperville Road. Ingersoll's "Planefield" (Plainfield) which comprised lots in Section 16, along with Mather's East Plainfield lots in Section 10 and Levi Arnold's