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is a suburb of Chicago in DuPage County, Illinois. The population is 43,298 (2006 Special Census.)
Members of the Potawatomi Indian tribe, who settled along Salt Creek just south of where the city would develop, are the earliest known settlers of the Elmhurst area. Around 1836, European immigrants settled on tracts of land along the same creek. At what would become Elmhurst City Centre, a native of Ohio named Gerry Bates established a community on a tract of "treeless land" in 1842.
The following year, Cottage Hill Tavern opened where St. Charles Road and Cottage Hill Avenue presently intersect. In 1845, the community was officially named
when a post office was established. Four years later the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad was given right-of-way through Cottage Hill giving farmers easier access to Chicago. The community changed its name to Elmhurst in 1869. Elmhurst was incorporated as a village in 1882, with a population of 1,050, and legal boundaries of St. Charles Road to North Avenue, and one half mile west and one quarter mile east of York Street. Elmhurst Memorial Hospital was founded in 1926 as the first hospital in DuPage County.
The Memorial Parade has run every Memorial Day since 1918, and the Annual Elmhurst St. Patrick's Day Parade continues to be the third largest parade of that sort in the Chicagoland area, following the more famous parades downtown and on the city's South Side.
The Keebler Company's corporate headquarters were in Elmhurst until 2001, when the Kellogg Company purchased the company. The city is home to the headquarters of Sunshine Biscuits and McMaster-Carr Supply Co.