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Buffalo, Illinois

10 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1954 and the latest in 1985. It stands in Mechanicsburg Township. It lies in ZIP code area 62515. The Survey maps it on the Mechanicsburg quadrangle. 447 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 611 feet above sea level.

Buffalo within Sangamon County

Population over time

2 figures

Buffalo fell from 503 to 447 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

YearPeople Change
2010503
2020447-56 (-11%)

Topographic sheets covering this place

5 surveys from 10 printed sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

In the county-history sources

1,431 words on this township

History of Sangamon County, Illinois; Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Townships ... Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens. History of Illinois, published 1881 names this settlement in its chapter on Mechanicsburg Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

The township of Mechanicsburg comprises township sixteen, north, range three west, and is bounded on the east by Wheatfield, west by Clear Lake, north by Buffalo Plart, south by Cooper township. The surface of the country is rolling, and was originally about three-fourths prairie. The principal water course is Clear creek, which has several small tributaries. The Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad passes through the township, entering from Springfield on section seven, and passing in an air-line east enters Wheatfield from section twelve. There are in the township three villages - Mechanicsburg, Buffalo and Dawson.

Passage source: History of Sangamon County, Illinois; Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Townships ... Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens. History of Illinois, published 1881.

The Mechanicsburg Academy was incorporated and erected a handsome brick building in 1854, two stories in height, and forty by sixty on the ground. The school flourished finely for a time under the care, at intervals, of JProfs. Loomis, Cummings, Hatch and McNutt.

Passage source: History of Sangamon County, Illinois; Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Townships ... Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens. History of Illinois, published 1881.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Mechanicsburg Township - it names this place 1 more 1 time.

Storms near this place

14 since 2001

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Buffalo in 14 storm reports between 2001 and 2025: 7 thunderstorm wind, 6 hail, 1 tornado. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

WhenEvent Place namedHarm What the report says
June 2011Thunderstorm WindBuffalo$55,000Several metal power poles were toppled and high tension power lines were snapped along Old Route 36 between Dawson and Buffalo.
May 2020Thunderstorm WindBuffalo$40,000Several power poles were blown over.
April 2011Thunderstorm WindBuffalo$25,000Two houses suffered roof damage in Buffalo.
April 2013Thunderstorm WindBuffalo$10,000A semi trailer was blown over on Old Highway 36 west of Buffalo. Numerous tree branches were knocked down as well.
August 2023Thunderstorm WindBuffalo-A few trees were blown down.
December 2021Thunderstorm WindBuffalo-Several power poles were blown down.
June 2003Tornado (F0)Buffalo-A tornado briefly touched down in a field. No damage or injuries were reported.
July 2002Thunderstorm WindBuffalo-Numerous trees were blown down in Buffalo.
May 2025HailBuffalo-no account filed
March 2016HailBuffalo-no account filed
April 2011HailBuffalo-no account filed
May 2009HailBuffalo-no account filed
June 2008HailBuffalo-no account filed
August 2001HailBuffalo-no account filed

Every storm recorded in Sangamon County

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Map PlaceDistance Sheets
Dawson2.9 miles10
Mechanicsburg3.0 miles10
Lanesville3.2 miles10
Buffalo Hart4.7 miles11
Saunders5.4 miles10
Haynes6.0 miles10
Barclay6.0 miles20
Riverton7.0 miles20

Elsewhere

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

Wikipedia article on BuffaloAn encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q2669220The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0).

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 405155. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.