Editing Burbank, Illinois (section)

==History==
In 1850, the area which would become the city of Burbank, then largely uninhabited and agrarian, became part of [[Lyons Township, Cook County, Illinois|Lyons Township]]. Over the next hundred years the area remained largely undeveloped, though several times large plans were laid out for the area, never to come to fruition. In the late 19th century, a railroad investor named A. B. Stickney planned a large railroad transfer center which included what became the northern part of Burbank, but his ideas were never realized due to an [[Panic of 1893|economic depression in 1893]].

In the 1920s, the area became an attractive site for real-estate developers who bought up farmland and built subdivisions. However, ongoing drainage problems, practically nonexistent water and sewage systems and the [[Great Depression]] kept Burbank largely unbuilt and empty until the 1950s.

In 1952, the area became part of [[Stickney Township, Cook County, Illinois|Stickney Township]]. Though still unincorporated, this led to massive development in the area, and by 1960 the population of the area had reached 20,720, nearly triple the population of a decade earlier. The area was incorporated into a city in 1970, partly to resist [[Municipal annexation in the United States|annexation]] by the [[City of Chicago]]. The city was named after [[Luther Burbank]] Elementary School, an institution which had served the area since the 1930s. The area's population peaked in 1976 at 29,448.<ref name="chiencyclopedia" >{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/187.html |title=Burbank, IL |last1=Gurlacz |first1=Betsy |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Chicago |access-date=July 27, 2010}}</ref>