Pomeranian immigrants who settled this area in the 1840s and 50s named the village Trechel after the village in Germany from which they came. In 1910, the railroad was routed through the village and declared it Lebanon Station, while the original village of Lebanon, two miles south, was renamed Old Lebanon. Over the years this village was also known as New Lebanon and simply Lebanon. It became a busy place where horse-drawn vehicles came to conduct business, supported by a butcher shop, post office, bank, hardware store, dry goods store, hotel, stockyards, lumber yard, two taverns, barber shop, telephone company, blacksmith shop, implement dealer, railroad depot, ice house, and wagon painting establishment. Daily passenger trains stopped at the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad Depot eleven yards southeast of here, and cattle and grain were loaded onto trains at the siding.