Elgin, Illinois

Elgin (pronounced (IPA)) is a city 40 mi. (64.5 km) northwest of Chicago, Illinois on the Fox River. Most of Elgin lies within Kane County, Illinois, with a portion in Cook County, Illinois. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 94,487, making it the eighth largest city in Illinois. Elgin is a diverse and rapidly growing community that was profiled in a 1997 issue of Money Magazine as a microcosm of the United States.

History

The Black Hawk Indian War of 1832 set the stage for the founding of Elgin by bringing thousands of militiamen and soldiers of Gen. Winfield Scott's army into the Fox River valley. Accounts of oak-clad hills, fertile prairie soils, gentle rivers and flowing springs soon filtered east. In New York, James T. Gifford and his brother Hezekiah Gifford heard tales of this area ripe for settlement, and travelled west to found Elgin in 1836. The Giffords chose this site along the banks of the Fox because it was on the stagecoach route from Chicago to the booming lead mining town of Galena, Illinois and the river could be bridged there.

Related Topics:
Black Hawk Indian War of 1832 - Gen. Winfield Scott - Fox River - James T. Gifford - Hezekiah Gifford - 1836 - Chicago - Galena, Illinois

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Early Elgin was famous for the butter and dairy goods it provided to Chicago, approximately 40 mi (60 km) away. Gail Borden established a condensed milk factory here in 1866, and today the local library bears his name. The dairy industry became less important with the arrival of the Elgin Watch Company, also known as The National Watch Company. The watch factory employed three generations of Elginites from the late 19th to early 20th century, when it was the largest producer of fine watches in the United States. Today, the clocks at Chicago's Union Station still bear the Elgin name.

Related Topics:
Chicago - Gail Borden - Elgin Watch Company

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In the 1840s, the family of young Charles Ingalls moved from New York to the tallgrass prairie of Campton Township, just west of Elgin. Ingalls is better known as "Pa" from the Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Related Topics:
Charles Ingalls - Tallgrass prairie - Little House on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder

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Elgin has a long tradition of education and invention. Elgin is home to the Elgin Academy, the oldest coeducational, non-sectarian college preparatory school west of the Allegheny Mountains, as well as Elgin High School, which boasts five navy admirals, a Nobel prize-winning chemist (Paul Flory), a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a chief executive of General Motors among its alumni. Elgin resident John Murphy invented the modern streetsweeper, and later formed the Elgin Sweeper Corporation. Pioneering African-American chemist Lloyd Hall was an Elgin native, as was the legendary marketer and car stereo pioneer Earl "Madman" Muntz and Max Adler, founder of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, America's first planetarium.

Related Topics:
Elgin Academy - Allegheny Mountains - Elgin High School - Paul Flory - General Motors - Streetsweeper - African-American - Lloyd Hall - Earl "Madman" Muntz - Max Adler - Adler Planetarium

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Beloved local historian E.C. Alft has written several books and has an ongoing newspaper column about Elgin's history.

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