Le Roy (also styled "LeRoy") is a city in McLean County, Illinois, United States.

Both would later serve in the Illinois General Assembly, and Gridley would eventually become McLean County's first millionaire.

[5] LeRoy was the first of eight towns to be laid out within the present boundaries of McLean County during the great Illinois town-founding boom which peaked in the summer of 1836.

The chief problem confronting Gridley and Covell was a place called Munroe, which consisted of a single store run by John W. Baddeley (24 June 1794 – 19 February 1871).

He had quickly entered a thousand acres (4 km2) of land in Empire Township and seemed on his way to becoming a wealthy and important man.

Baddeley was offered twenty-seven prime lots in LeRoy if he would move his store to the newly established town.

The circle at LeRoy featured streets which joined the public area midway along each side and is very similar to squares platted at Mt.

Except for some rounding at the corners to ease the flow of traffic, the square today retains its 1835 shape.

The original street names selected for LeRoy are virtually identical to those in the town of Lexington, which Gridley also co-founded: Center, Cedar, Cherry, Chestnut, East, Elm, Main North, Oak, Pine, Vine, Walnut and West.

They published a lengthy advertisement in the Sangamon Journal which is both the earliest description of LeRoy and a statement of why the two men had selected this location for a town.

The reader is first told that Leroy was located on the north side of Buckle's Grove on Salt Creek.

"The site of the town is as beautiful as can well be conceived – situated on the margin of a rolling undulating prairie on an eminence gently descending in every direction and commanding an extensive view of the surrounding country, with an open expanse of prairie scenery on the north and west relieved by occasional groves of timber.

They go on to write that LeRoy is "... located in the heart of a rich and flourishing settlement with a large amount of timber of quality inferior to none in the state in its immediate vicinity... it is believed that no interior town possesses superior advantages."

During the fall of 1836, several log cabins were built in the town and Edgar Conkling erected a frame store.

[14] After the Civil War, the citizens of LeRoy were convinced that only a railroad could assure the prosperity of their town, and they took the lead in campaigning for what would eventually become the Indiana, Bloomington and Western Railway.

It ran down the center of Oak Street eastward to Rantoul, in Champaign County, where it joined the Illinois Central.

[16] By 1900, LeRoy had two newspapers, four churches, one hotel, two grain elevators, three doctors, three lawyers, and twenty-five stores.

[18] In the early 1970s, Interstate 74 was completed and new businesses began to develop near the highway exit.

However, by the end of the century the population of LeRoy had more than doubled as the town increasingly became a residential center for both Bloomington–Normal and Champaign–Urbana.