Founding year: the first Homer post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
History grade
What drives Homer’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Homer is more historic than 78% of U.S. towns. Its share of homes from before 1940 holds the grade up; its National Register listings pull it down.
A−
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Homer’s overall grade.
Few Illinois towns list much on the Register (a typical Illinois town has 0.5 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Homer’s 0.0 sits below most of its state (28% of Illinois towns have fewer) while its 0 listings outnumber those of 23% of U.S. towns.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from B− to A+. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±7.0 points). The founding year is the first post office, not a stated founding date.
Founding year: the first post office (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about Homer’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Homer grew from a settlement named Union, which was on the Fort Clark or State Road running between Danville and Urbana, nearly three miles north of the present town. Union was little more than several cabins built in 1829–30, but it served as a post office and meeting place in what was Vermilion County prior to the creation of Champaign County in 1833. Moses Thomas, a native of Pennsylvania, built a mill on the Salt Fork creek southeast of Union in 1834 and began to mill grain. A young merchant traveling from Indiana, Michael Doctor Coffeen, built a store adjacent to the mill, and with Thomas created the village of Homer on January 26, 1837. The post office was moved to Homer with M. D. Coffeen as postmaster in 1841.
Fire insurance maps drew every building, what it was made of and what it was used for, so insurers could price the risk of fire. Pick a year, then a sheet.
Between 120 and 1,354 people in every census since 1850.
17 censuses, 1850–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Homer’s Wikipedia page.
Places that used to be
Places now gone and burying grounds
Homer’s post office has been open since 1841.
Gone or out of use
Homer Airportairport
1cemetery inside Homer
Homer Grand Army of the Republic
US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock, CC0). Places and cemeteries from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
Questions about Homer’s history
What year was Homer founded?
The Homer post office opened in 1841, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
How does Homer rank for history?
Homer is more historic than 78% of U.S. towns. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
How old are the homes in Homer?
53% of Homer’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±7.0 points), against a typical 11% for an Illinois town; the median home was built in 1938.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
From Wikimedia Commons (2), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
2021
