Western Springs is a village located in Cook County, Illinois, United States, and is a suburb of Chicago. As of the 2010 census, the village had a total population of 12,975. It is twinned with Rugeley, Staffordshire, United Kingdom. In July 1962, the towns made telephone history on national television when the chairman of Rugeley Urban District Council made the first telephone call via the new Telstar satellite to the mayor of Western Springs. History Western Springs, an affluent suburb located along the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (formerly the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad) between Chicago and Aurora, encompasses roughly the area between Willow Springs Road (Gilbert Avenue), Ogden Avenue, Interstate 294, and West Plainfield Road. Named for local mineral springs on the southwest side of town, Western Springs originally consisted of flat prairie land with a swamp on its western border. Around the turn of the 18th century, nomadic Potawatomi Native Americans settled in the Western Springs area. Whether they built a village is unclear, but evidence of temporary campsites has been found near Flagg Creek in Forest Hills. The natives were gone by the end of 1835, but Potawatomi artifacts may still be found buried in the Springdale neighborhood. The last Cook County campground of the Potawatomi was within what is now the Timber Trails subdivision. The first known settler in the area near Western Springs was Elijah Wentworth. By 1834, after the Black Hawk War, farmer Joseph Vial had moved from New York and built a cabin along what is now Plainfield Road, a former Native American trail in the south of Western Springs. This cabin served as a stagecoach station, hotel, general store, and post office for the entire area. In 1872, Hill moved to the area from Chicago, and the community began organizing to attract more commuters. Residents built a wooden schoolhouse (1872) and a post office (1873). The CB&Q Railroad built a line through Western Springs in 1863, filling in much of the westside swamp in the process. In 1870, the Western Springs Land Association, consisting of promoter Thomas Clarkson Hill, William Page and two sons of Phillip F. W. Peck, bought the three tracts that make up the area for $105,000. In 1885, the Grand Avenue School replaced the wooden schoolhouse, and the office of village marshal was created as a combination policeman, dogcatcher, and groundskeeper. In 1886, the Friend's Church (razed in