Images of America: Des Plaines

by David Whittingham with the Des Plaines Public Library and Des Plaines History Center

128 pages, English

In the 1830s, settlers established a community of farms along the Des Plaines River, initially naming the town Rand for the influential pioneer Socrates Rand. In the 1850s, the Chicago and North Western Railway ran tracks from Chicago to Cary, Illinois, building a station at the Des Plaines River to provide water for steam engines. The station was named Des Plaines, and the community incorporated as Des Plaines in 1869. In addition to providing the community's name, the railroad brought prosperity. Visitors from Chicago flocked to Des Plaines to fish and swim in the river. Businesses sprang up to cater to the tourists and new residents, campers congregated at the Methodist campgrounds, and bands played at Northwestern Park. In turn, farms supplied Chicago with produce and flowers. Des Plaines was nicknamed the "City of Roses" when area greenhouses produced more than one million of the flowers annually. After World War II, houses sprouted in place of farms, and the population burgeoned, turning Des Plaines into the modern suburb it is today.