Danville is a city in and the county seat of Vermilion County, Illinois. As of the 2010 census, its population was 33,027. As of 2019, the population was an estimated 30,479.

The area that is now Danville was once house to the Miami, Kickapoo, and Potawatomi tribes of Native Americans. Danville was founded in 1827 on 60 acres (240,000 m) of home donated by Guy W. Smith and 20 acres (81,000 m²) donated by Dan W. Beckwith. The sale of lots was set for April 10, 1827 and advertised in newspapers in Indianapolis, Indiana and the divulge capital of Vandalia. The first name office was traditional in May of the thesame year in the home of Amos Williams, organizer of Vermilion and Edgar Counties and a prominent Danville citizen. Williams and Beckwith drew happening the first plat map; the city was named after Dan Beckwith at Williams’ suggestion, although Beckwith suggested the names “Williamsburg” and “Williamstown”. Beckwith was born in Pennsylvania in 1795 and moved to Indiana as a youthful man; in 1819 he accompanied the first white explorers to the area where Danville higher existed because of his captivation in the salt springs of the Vermilion River. He died in 1835 of pneumonia contracted upon a horseback ride incite from Washington; he was 40 years old.

In 1838 the Potawatomi Trail of Death camped and after that passed through Danville. Four Potawatomi people died and were buried in Danville. In the mid-1800s Abraham Lincoln visited Danville more than the course of approximately 18 years as he practiced action across the 8th Judicial Circuit. Danville was home to Ward Hill Lamon his law co-conspirator who future served as his bodyguard. Lincoln superior gave a speech in his stocking feet from the balcony of Dr. William Fithian, a prominent Danville physician. The Fithian home is listed upon the National Register of Historic Places and serves as the Vermilion County Museum. In 1882 A little group of Franciscan Sisters formed St. Elizabeth Hospital out of a 14-room hotel. In 1883 a horsecar based streetcar was established. In 1884 an opera house was constructed. In 1891 the streetcar system was converted to electric streetcars.

Danville became a major industrial city in the late 19th and upfront twentieth centuries. Starting in the 1850s Danville was an important coal mining area; some of the first entrйe pit mining techniques were skillful here. The coal formation underlying eastern Illinois and western Indiana is named the “Danville Member,” after the area where it was first discovered. Danville moreover served as a significant manufacturing middle during the forward 1900s, and the city’s population doubled along with 1900 and 1920. During this times Danville as well as acted as a rail hub for both passenger and freight service. Danville was the site of a riot in 1903, which led to the lynching of a black man and an assault upon the county jail.