Colfax is a village in McLean County, Illinois, United States.

[5] Anderson was born in Indiana and had come to McLean County about 1855 as State Missionary for the Christian Church.

After many false starts the Clinton, Bloomington, and Northwestern Railroad began making its way westward from Kankakee.

It was aided by contributions in cash and land for the right-of-way by many local farmers.

For two years the track extended only from Kankakee to Colfax, and a turntable was installed to send the trains back eastwards.

[7] Colfax is one of several communities in the United States named for Schuyler Colfax, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives during the terms of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson and Vice President during the Ulysses S. Grant presidency.

The original town of Colfax was a rectangle on the north side of the railroad tracks.

These faced a widened area of railroad land, which ran the full length of the original town.

Frank Seymour and Sons were paid fourteen dollars a foot to sink the shaft.

They encountered problems with water and cave ins and were soon slowed by the need to blast their way through limestone layers before reaching the coal seams.

[11] The organization of a company to open a second shaft, this one east of town, began in December 1891, but it was June 1894 before digging could begin.

In 1901 and 1902 almost 60,000 tons of coal were being taken out of the mines, but increased difficulty with finances soon reduced production.

Mining at Colfax proved to be a deadly business; between 1889 and 1902 eleven miners died, most of them crushed by falling rock.

Four churches began soon after the town was founded: Christian, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic.

[16] After the mines closed, Colfax settled into a quieter life as the commercial hub of a prosperous grain-growing area.