The Chicago suburb of Naperville, Illinois, today has over one hundred forty thousand residents and is considered a "boomburb" because of its double-digit percentage growth over several decades. How did it reach this point? Explanations of urban growth—including the Chicago School and political economy perspectives; categories of suburbs, like boomburbs and edge cities; and narratives within Naperville itself—highlight different mechanisms at work. This study considers the factors that influenced Naperville’s growth and how each narrative fits the suburb’s development. The implications for future studies of suburban growth include the unpredictability of growth as it is happening, recognizing the limits of categorizing suburbs, undertaking comparative studies of suburbs across types or within regions, and not relying heavily on analyses of suburban outliers and unusual cases (like Naperville).