A Railroad Depot Town, Not a Riverbank One
Bartlett began on a 40-acre parcel owned by Luther Bartlett, who had arrived in Illinois by way of Michigan in 1844, and it grew as a rail town rather than a river town: in 1873 Bartlett gave the Chicago & Pacific Railroad a right-of-way through his land plus a station site, and the depot and surrounding lots were platted and sold jointly by the railroad and the Bartlett family. That original 1873 depot still stands today as the Bartlett Depot Museum, and the Village wasn't formally incorporated until 1891.
Farmland Grading Matters More Than River Level Here
Because Bartlett grew up around a rail depot serving area dairy farms rather than a Fox River millsite, its older core sits on flatter farmland ground instead of a riverbank, so a wet basement near the historic depot district is more often a story about how surrounding grading and old field drainage patterns route water toward the foundation than about a rising river. The same clay-heavy glacial till found across Kane County still shifts with the seasons here, but the water table moves with rainfall and grading changes rather than with the Fox River's level a few miles east.