Native American groups in the Shirley area included the Illini, Peoria, Sauk, Kickapoo, and others, though historical erasure makes detailed information about their involvement difficult to find. There was little settlement in the roadless prairie around Shirley until the railroad between Springfield and Bloomington was completed on October 16, 1853, and the Shirley school district was established in 1854. In later years, many students were Civil War refugees from Kentucky, and the 1859 McLean County Directory showed 24 households in the area, including early families such as the Moberly, Quinn, Park, Lain, and Boulware families from Madison County, Kentucky. In 1866, when John Foster plotted the Village of Shirley, it lay on both sides of the railroad, and there is also evidence of a hotel used by railroad workers. Before travel to Bloomington became easy, Shirley had Hutchinson's store and J.P. Walter's store for groceries. The Shirley Farmers Grain & Coal Company was organized in 1903, and important roads later included Route 4, which passed by Shirley from 1922 until it became part of Route 66 and later I-55. The local land sits atop a moraine formed by glaciers, and for many years Shirley and the surrounding area were a tall grassland biome with plants such as honeysuckle, elderberry, trillium, may apple, shooting star, spiderwort, beebalm, wild senna, big bluestem, coneflower, milkweed, rattlesnake master, prairie dock, cup plant, compass plant, goldenrod, and prairie dropseed, along with animals including prairie chickens, pheasants, snakes, and countless species of birds and butterflies. Prairie grasslands provide habitat, species diversity, soil quality, natural beauty, water absorption, carbon and sediment capture, and strong support for pollinators, yet less than 1% of Illinois's original remnant prairies remain. Fire, whether from natural wildfires or controlled burns, is an important part of prairie ecology because it reduces dead organic matter, prevents trees from taking over, and allows dormant plants to regrow, though this prairie cannot be burned because it is too close to the interstate. Before 1909, the Shirley, Atlanta-Lawndale, and Bloomington hills were difficult for trains to climb and required two engines for the steep grades. On July 31, 1909, in Alton, Illinois, 8,000 feet of track were shifted to a lower level using a steam shovel, and the spare dirt was used to fill the right-of-way north of Shirley. On August 1, 1909, a team of 200 workers began shifting tracks to a newly cut lower path through the Bloomington hill, while the larger Shirley hill project, worked on by 60 men, took until late spring to early summer 1910 to complete because of sand and water. A steam shovel made a 2-mile cut, with its deepest part about 20 feet deep, near where the old depot had stood east of the tracks. The depot was later moved to the west side of the tracks along with Shirley's post office and most businesses, and a staircase and large bridge were built to reach the new arrangement. Passenger service at the Shirley depot ended in 1970, and in 1975 Robert Rehymeyer bought the depot and moved it to Funks Grove for use as an antique shop. A single train track still runs through Shirley.