Maywood is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States, in the Chicago metropolitan area.

[4] There was limited European-American settlement in the Maywood area before a railroad was built after the American Civil War, which stimulated the rise of Chicago.

At least one house in what became Maywood is known to have been used as a station on the Underground Railroad, to aid refugee African-American slaves in escaping to freedom in the North.

Some settled in the free state of Illinois; others went on to Canada, which had abolished slavery, seeking further distance from slavecatchers.

The plaque is located at today's Lake Street and the Des Plaines River bridge.

[5] This early West Side suburb of Chicago was developed along the oldest railway line that led away from the city.

It attracted real estate developers because of its open grass prairie and scattered groves of ancient trees.

In 1870 it organized the platting of streets, and began construction on the north side of the Chicago Great Western railroad tracks.

The ash is nicknamed "The Great Dane", after Jens Jensen, founder of the Midwest's prairie ecology movement a century ago.

[citation needed] With settlement underway, the village was founded on October 22, 1881, by Colonel William T. Nichols.

Maywood boasts 17 homes and properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Loyola University Medical Center was developed on the site of one former airport, at the southwest corner of First Avenue and Roosevelt Road.

[11][12] Given such losses, Ian Smith, who headed the history department at Proviso East High School, said that "World War II hit the town of Maywood really hard.

The Village of Maywood is served by the Metra commuter railroad Union Pacific West Line.

It was the first U.S. rail-to-trail conversion in the nation in the 1960s, adapting a former right-of-way for the old Chicago Aurora & Elgin electric railroad.