History
In the summer of 1887, a farmer, Nathan Wever, platted a market town on his land. Later that year an elaborate ceremony took place that gave the community its name. The two halves of the Santa Fe Railroad, one from Kansas City, the other from Chicago, were linked together at the highest point (some 675 feet above sea level) between the Mississippi River and Lake Michigan. The new town was called Media, or halfway point, instead of Wever.
In the 1890`s oil was discovered nearby, and it was predicted that Media would soon become a metropolis with paved streets and factories. It never happened. Media did become an optimistic forward-looking town and the sponsor of the earliest efforts at higher education in the county, Wever Academy. Media also is the home of Francis Davidson, the inventor of the Monarch tractor engine.