Editing Bureau Junction, Illinois (section)

==History==
The village is named for Michel or Pierre Bureau. Their original surname was probably Belleau, but local aboriginals may have had difficulty pronouncing the "l" sound. One or both of the brothers ran a [[trading post]] near where Big Bureau Creek empties into the [[Illinois River]] from 1776 until 1780 or 1790.<ref name=beuro>[https://books.google.com/books?id=w50A7fpMDF8C&q=%22pierre+de+beuro%2C+an+indian+trader+in%22&pg=PA229 Pierre de Beuro, an Indian trader] ''Pioneers of Illinois'' by Nehemiah Matson, 1882, p. 229</ref><ref name=belleau>[http://www.earlychicago.com/essays.php?essay=7 Jean Baptiste Point de Sable : the founder of modern Chicago] by John F. Swenson, 1999- . Retrieved November 11, 2010.</ref> A man named Buero, of mixed French and Native American descent, and possibly a descendant of one of the earlier Bureau brothers, was operating in this area as a fur trader in 1821.<ref>[https://archive.org/stream/historyofbureauc00brad#page/82/mode/2up History of Bureau County, Illinois]</ref>

In 1874 Bureau Junction had a sizeable railroad operation as the halfway point on the railroad between Chicago and Rock Island.<ref>[http://genealogytrails.com/ill/bureau/Villages/BureauJunction.html collection of 1870s newspaper articles on Bureau Junction]</ref>