A Farm-and-Rail Village, Not a Mill Town
Gilberts began with land claims filed by E.R. Starks and Elijah Rich in Rutland Township in spring 1836; Albro Gilberts arrived in 1839 and put down a farm at what is now the center of the village. A post office opened around 1852 near the new Chicago & Northwestern Railroad station, known as Gilberts Station, and the rail line made the settlement a shipping point for milk collected from surrounding farms bound for Chicago; the village was platted in 1855 and incorporated in 1890.
Kane County's Clay Till Is the Story Here, Not the River
Unlike the Fox River mill towns a few miles east, Gilberts grew up around a rail depot serving dairy farms on open township land, so its housing stock and grading sit further from any riverbank and closer to open farmland contours. The water table concern for a Gilberts basement or crawl space usually traces to how field drainage and modern subdivision grading move water across Kane County's clay-heavy glacial till, rather than to a nearby river's water level.