Buffalo Grove, Illinois - History

History

Illinois became a state in 1818. The Buffalo Grove area was opened for settlement after the Treaty of Chicago (1833) where the United Nation of Ojibwe, Ottawa and Potawatomi ceded their Illinois lands to the United States.

During the 1830s, the area saw its first settlers, mostly land speculators. By the 1840s, they sold their land to German Catholic dairy farmers; it is believed that either Melchior Raupp or Jacob Weidner were the founders of the community. Eventually, other families came to the area and they formed a close community. The settlers built the first St. Mary's Church in 1852 and St. Mary's School in 1855. However, both eventually burned to the ground. By 1869, they were rebuilt, and a small downtown formed with the addition of the Weidner General Store and the Firnbach Tavern, built in 1899. The tavern still stands today and houses a Lou Malnati's Pizzeria.

The origin of the name "Buffalo Grove" is uncertain, but the traditional account is: "When the English, French, and Pottawatomi Indians were ranging through northeastern Illinois, so were the buffalo. The buffalo left the Wheeling woods in the morning and grazed their way diagonally to Long Grove. Noon found them in a grove of trees along the creek—drinking and resting. A buffalo skeleton was found beside the 'Buffalo Creek,' as it soon became called."

Apart from a downtown which centered around the intersection of Buffalo Grove Road and Lake-Cook Road, Buffalo Grove served as a key farming community. The community gained a special reputation for supplying milk, cheese, and other dairy products to Chicago. The Weidner Cheese Factory was one of the key settlements. By 1926, the Public Service Company of Northern Illinois offered electric power to the area farms, and by 1930, the first concrete road in the Northern Illinois was built. This road was located in south Buffalo Grove, Dundee Road.

Following the end of World War II, there was a great demand for modestly sized homes for returning GIs. In the late 1950s, Al Frank, a developer, built hundreds of homes, some costing as little as $16,900, along Buffalo Grove Road, west along Bernard Drive as far as the current Park District headquarters, formerly Louisa May Alcott School. With a booming population, on March 7, 1958 Buffalo Grove was incorporated as a village. By 1961, new homes west of Buffalo Creek and the school were added as far west as Greenwood Courts North and South, north through neighborhoods including Cherrywood and Cottonwood Roads and south through White Pine Road. These earliest homes, in the Cook County section of the village, are sometimes referred to as "Old Buffalo Grove". Older housing stock is often surrounded by larger, newer houses, apartments and condominiums due to pockets of formerly undeveloped farmland being surrounded by housing. Over time, the holdout parcels were sold and developed.

The fledgling village grew rapidly in the 1960s with the development of Ranch Mart Shopping Center, and a Mobil Oil gas station, near the corner of Buffalo Grove Road and Dundee Road (State Route 68). In the late '60s, the center contained a grocery store (Jewel Foods), a dime store (Hornsby's), a dry cleaner, a shoe store, a bakery, and a Walgreens Agency drug store/pharmacy (Mark Drugs). Nearby, on Dundee Road, stood a bowling alley (originally "Rick Casares' Rose Bowl, named for the former Chicago Bear's player who had an interest in the alley, which was later sold & renamed "Striker Lanes"). In 1970, the enclosed Buffalo Grove Mall, which included a grocery store ("Elm Farms," a subsidiary of National Tea), a dime store ("Scott's" of the TG&Y chain), an ice cream shop ("Baskin Robbins"), and a Radio Shack, opened. Both of these complexes have undergone significant physical renovations and tenant changes in the intervening years. During this time, numerous other shopping centers were developed, but primarily in Cook County. With rising taxes, along with rapidly increasing land values, farm families were encouraged to sell farms for residential and commercial development. By the early 1970s Buffalo Grove had approximately 15,000 residents.

It was during the 1980s and 1990s that village saw its largest population boom. The village had begun as early as the 1970s, annexing unincorporated regions of Lake County, and were now beginning to develop the land into residential developments. Helping encourage further growth into Lake County was the extension of Buffalo Grove Road past McHenry Road (IL Route 83). Today, Buffalo Grove Road ends at U.S. Route 45 in Vernon Hills. In the late 1980s, Buffalo Grove created the Town Center retail development along McHenry Road north of Lake-Cook Road. However, the development has faced numerous challenges over the years, and there had been talk of either redevelopment of the property or building another similar development elsewhere in the village.

Because of the rise in the population, in 1992, the United States Postal Service established a free-standing post office in the village. Towards the late 1990s, the village made a major road improvement at the heavy intersection of Milwaukee Avenue and Lake-Cook Road, by having Lake-Cook serve as an overpass over Milwaukee. In addition, the village extended Deerfield Road west to Busch Parkway. A short time later, Busch Parkway was rerouted to allow for the new Deerfield Road addition to serve what remained of Busch Parkway (to Checker Road). With the improvements to Deerfield Road and the population boom, Chicago's train service, Metra, opened the North Central Service which stopped at a new station in Buffalo Grove on Deerfield Parkway. In 2005, the village had upwards of 43,000 people in it.

Today, most of the village is developed. There are no working farms left in the village. There are farms in the area, though, such as Didier Farms in unincorporated Prairie View and Horcher's Farm in Wheeling. The village continues trying to annex land of unincorporated Prairie View (Vernon Township), which is surrounded by Buffalo Grove. Buffalo Grove has often sparred with neighboring Wheeling over the Chevy Chase County Club, located north of the intersection of Milwaukee Avenue and Lake-Cook Road, along with the Arlington Club development, which is an apartment and condominium development located north of the intersection of Buffalo Grove Road and Dundee Road. Buffalo Grove has attempted to annex both properties multiple times, but it continues to fail. The village's primary annexation interests are of Prairie View to the north and unincorporated Deerfield property to the east.

During the 2010 elections, Buffalo Grove made history by recalling the first public official in Illinois history, with nearly 70% of the voters agreeing to the recall. After only a year and a half as a trustee on the Buffalo Grove Village Board, Lisa Stone was recalled for being disruptive during board meetings in which she accused fellow board members of taking part in illegal political activities. Stone was also accused of bypassing the board on certain issues, and instead going directly to private agencies.