Ottawa, Illinois

In 1838, workmen from the canal project were causing public unrest.

Joseph Stout and James Stout, later stood trial in Chicago for violating the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

In 1855, while serving in the Illinois State Senate, Reddick commissioned the construction of a large Italianate house for the then-large sum of $25,000 (~$664,619 in 2024).

Ottawa was the site of the first of the Lincoln–Douglas debates on August 21, 1858.

Ottawa was the site of a famous 1859 extrication of a runaway slave named Jim Gray from a courthouse by prominent civic leaders of the time.

Zeller founded the Zeller Inn and Court Place Tavern in 1871, at 615 Columbus Street.

On February 8, 1910, William Dickson Boyce, then a resident of Ottawa, incorporated the Boy Scouts of America.

The contamination likely originated from the processing of wastes and demolition debris from the Radium Dial Company between 1918 and 1936 and from Luminous Processes, Inc.

In 1922, the Radium Dial Company (RDC) moved from Peru, Illinois to a former high school building in Ottawa.

RDC went out of business in 1936, two years after the company's president, Joseph Kelly Sr., left to start a competing company, Luminous Processes Inc., a few blocks away.

between 1937 and 1978.

In 1973, the mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places, as part of the Washington Park Historic District.

The original Zeller Inn was demolished in 1982.

The employees of the company suffered radiation toxicity, as chronicled in the 1986 documentary, Radium City.

The Ottawa Scouting Museum, on Canal Street, opened to the public on December 6, 1997.

The older of the two, The Times, was formed in 2005, when the Streator-based Times-Press merged with The Daily Times, based in Ottawa.

SABIC recently(2007) purchased GE Plastics, a successor to Borg-Warner automotive glass manufacture, operates a large plastics facility in Ottawa, and is a major employer.

The second was a weekly newspaper called Ottawa Delivered, which closed in 2012.

== Demographics == As of the 2020 census there were 18,840 people, 7,764 households, and 4,658 families residing in the city.

Formerly concentrated in automotive glass, the plant now manufactures specialty glass and underwent a $50 million (~$74.6 million in 2024) renovation in 2006.

In 2025, EPA started cleanup of this final remaining site, the NPL-8 Landfill and Frontage Property, located at U.S.

=== Only one radium cleanup site remains as of 2026 === The Ottawa Radiation Areas site, located in LaSalle County, Illinois, consisted of 16 areas contaminated by radioactive m...