Manteno is a village in Kankakee County, Illinois, United States. The population was 9,210 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Kankakee-Bourbonnais-Bradley Metropolitan Statistical Area.

History

Origins of village name

Manteno was named after Manteno (Mawteno), a daughter of Francois Bourbonnais Jr. (thus her grandfather was the man for whom the city of Bourbonnais was named) and his Potawatomi wife. A Potawatomi name, it is a possible anglicization of manito or manitou, a Potawatomi word for "spirit". Oliver W. Barnard, an early settler in this area, spelled her name "Mantenau" in a poem, romanticizing the Potawatomi maiden. Other 19th century books spell it "Mawteno" and "Manteno".

Because she was of Potawatomi descent, Mawteno (spelled phonetically in the treaty, "Maw-te-no") was given a section of land, now part of Kankakee County, near Soldier Creek, by the treaty of Treaty of Tippecanoe of 1832.

Incorporation

Both Kankakee and Iroquois counties were part of Will County, Illinois, before the State Legislature granted a plea of Kankakee's citizens and permitted them to incorporate in 1853.

The present township of Manteno was then the east half of the township of Rockville. On March 12, 1855, the town's petition that the area become the township of Manteno was granted by the county's board of supervisors.

The village was incorporated in 1869.

Geography

Manteno is located in northern Kankakee County and is bordered to the south by the village of Bourbonnais. The average elevation is .

Interstate 57 passes through the west side of the village, with access from Exit 322. I-57 leads south to Kankakee, the county seat, and north to Chicago. Illinois Route 50 passes through the center of Manteno as Locust Street and leads north to Peotone and south to Bradley.

According to the 2021 census gazetteer files, Manteno has a total area of , of which (or 99.37%) is land and (or 0.63%) is water.

Demographics

2020 census

As of the 2020 census, Manteno had a population of 9,210. The median age was 44.2 years. 21.2% of residents were under the age of 18 and 21.3% of residents were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females there were 96.1 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 92.2 males age 18 and over.

99.2% of residents lived in urban areas, while 0.8% lived in rural areas.

There were 3,802 households in Manteno, of which 27.6% had children under the age of 18 living in them. Of all households, 51.6% were married-couple households, 16.9% were households with a male householder and no spouse or partner present, and 25.1% were households with a female householder and no spouse or partner present. About 28.7% of all households were made up of individuals and 14.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.

Manteno is home the Diversatech Industrial Park is on the east side of town. It contains many diversified industrial plants and warehousing complexes.

Manteno State Hospital, one of the largest psychiatric hospitals in the country when it opened in 1928, was located southeast of the village. It received its first patients in 1930 and closed in 1985. That closure and the 1983 closure of Hilman Hospital, a general medical hospital, brought economic stagnation to the town. The north half of the original campus of the state hospital has been turned into a veterans' home. Some buildings have been torn down and housing has been put up. A lot of the buildings have been renovated, and very few buildings on the south side of the campus are left in original condition, but are still abandoned.

Education

Manteno Public Schools are part of the Manteno Community Unit School District 5. The district has an elementary school, middle school and high school. Students attend Manteno High School. The schools together have about 2,200 students.

Transportation

River Valley Metro provides bus service on Route 9 connecting Manteno to destinations in the Kankakee area.

Although the village once had direct access to Chicago via a interurban line, the Chicago & Interurban Traction Railway, that railroad hasn't operated since the 1920s. The Metra Electric station in University Park, north of Manteno, is the closest rail access.

==Notable people==<!--consensus reached to standardize this heading per WP:WikiProject Cities/US Guideline -->

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  • Fred Sylvester Breen, Arizona newspaper editor and politician, born in Manteno
  • George R. Lawrence, photography and aviation pioneer; lived in Manteno and is buried there
  • John Moisant, aviator, lived in Manteno
  • Charles A. Spring, son of Samuel Spring; helped establish the First Presbyterian Church of Manteno (1859)
  • Elizabeth Packard, crusader/activist for married women's property rights and the rights of the mentally ill.

References

Manteno (Images of America series). Written by Melanie Holmes. Published February 10, 2020. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9781467104487

  • City-Data.com