Growing
At the end of the Black Hawk War in 1833, the United States government bought up land in northeastern Illinois previously occupied by the Potawatomi tribe. The land was surveyed and sold to farmers, many of them immigrants from New England and Germany. The area’s rich prairie soil was ideal for cultivation and soon agriculture became a way of life in the area now known as Des Plaines.
The nineteenth century farms of Des Plaines focused on grain and dairy production. Farmers transported their surplus yields via wagon to Chicago, which was a rapidly growing city during the mid-1800s. When the Illinois & Wisconsin Railroad extended its service to Des Plaines in 1854, farmers were able to take advantage of rail transportation to move their goods into the city.
Rising production costs and falling milk prices marked a shift in farming during the twentieth century. Local farmers began to focus on the production of fresh vegetables including onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, corn, carrots, beans, asparagus, beets, and parsnips. These small family farms were known as truck farms–small scale farming operations that typically produced several kinds of crops during each growing season.
Going
In the early part of the 20th century, suburban communities began to grow as city dwellers reacted against the crowded and sometimes dangerous conditions of urban life. Tantalizing advertisements encouraged Chicagoans to move to the suburbs where the air was clean, streets were safe and well-lit, and schools were of the highest quality.
During the 1920s, planned housing developments like The Homerican Villas began to dot Des Plaines’ landscape. “The Villas,” was conceived in the late 1920s, and the oval-shaped street layout replaced what used to be a family farm. Several residences were constructed during this period, but the majority of the homes were not built until the early 1950s.
Des Plaines continued to produce agricultural crops during the World War II era, but rapid change was afoot. In the early 1940s the Douglas Aircraft Company purchased farm land near Des Plaines and began producing C-54 Skymaster airplanes for the War effort. Other light industry began to move to the suburbs which displaced many farmers as their land was worth more as real estate than for crop production.
Susan Golland 