2011 Winnetka-Northfield Community Guide - Communities

History of Winnetka
Winnetka-Northfield Community Guide
Legend tells us that in 1674 Father Marquette and an Indian guide
voyaged up the shores of Lake Michigan. They paused to admire the
lush and lovely scene which the guide described in his own language:
“Winnetka!” It meant Beautiful Land. It still does.
In 1836, covered wagons from Vermont were traveling northward on the
Green Bay Trail when they stopped in Winnetka. Erastus Patterson, his wife,
Zernah, and their five children stayed behind to settle here. Within a year
of building their two-room cabin, stagecoach service began between Chicago
and Milwaukee.
The Patterson’s built a tavern across the Trail from their cabin and named it
The Wayside Inn. By the 1850’s it was renamed, the Pattern Tavern, and was
a regular stop for the twice-weekly scheduled stagecoaches that traveled the
Green Bay Trail.
Charles and Sara Peck, who are considered the founders of Winnetka, moved
to Winnetka in 1853. Charles and his friend, Walter S. Gurnee, president of
the newly formed Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad, platted 300 acres in New
Trier Township. Sara organized the first school by hiring a fifteen year old
teacher from Chicago who came to live with the Pecks. The Pecks donated
the land in Winnetka now known as the Village Green.
When John Garland, a Methodist minister from England, arrived in 1869,
he purchased both the Patterson home and tavern. On the steep hill home
site of the Patterson’s log cabin, Garland built a union meeting hall for all
religious denominations in Winnetka. Gravestones of the Erastus Patterson
family remain on this original site. One hundred years later, in 1969 Winnetka
incorporated as a Village.
Winnetka is 18 miles north of Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan. The
four Shopping Districts of Winnetka - Hubbard Woods, West Elm, East
Elm, and Indian Hill - are easy to get to from anywhere in the Northern
Chicagoland area.
BY CAR FROM CHICAGO: take I-94 West to Willow Road East exit,
continue East to Green Bay Road. Or drive along the Lake following Lake
Shore Drive and Sheridan Road to Elm Street. Take Elm Street West to
Green Bay Road.
BY CAR FROM THE NORTH: take US Highway 41 South to Tower
Road, then East on Tower Road to Green Bay Road.
BY CAR FROM THE WEST: Take Palatine/Willow Road East.
BY TRAIN - Metra has three stops for Winnetka: Indian Hill, Winnetka
(serving West Elm & East Elm) and Hubbard Woods.
In all four districts, come and discover Winnetka’s charming, tree-shaded
streets and inviting shops. Delight in the latest fashions and enticing gifts
among the myriad of unique specialty shops. Relax and enjoy any one of the
many attractive restaurants. You’ll find this a village of friendly people skilled
in the art of pleasing!
New Trier Republican Organization
509 Park Drive, Kenilworth 60043 • www.ntro.org
Phone: 847-251-6100 • Fax: 847-251-2143
T. Tolbert Chisum, Township Committeeman
Northfield was a remote swamp when settlers first arrived in the 1850s to
farm. Residents of neighboring communities often called Northfielders the
“river folks” because they struggled to get to church or the beach in their
wagons while crossing the Skokie Lagoons and the Middlefork of the north
branch of the Chicago River.
Early pioneer families included the Brachtendorf family, for whom Bracken
Lane is named. They arrived in 1857, and their family home still stands at
2264 Willow Rd. Dennis Donovan, who lived just east of the Brachtendorfs,
arriving with his family in a coal wagon in 1855. Charles Metz came in 1861
and settled where Somerset Lane is today. His family farmed on that land
until the 1950s. John Happ, for whom Happ Road is named, was a blacksmith
who came with his nine sons and daughter in the late 1850s. The arrival of the
railroad in Winnetka in 1854 prompted him to close his blacksmith shop and
move to Northfield to farm. Happ’s grandson John became Northfield’s first
village president in 1926.
During the last half of the nineteenth century, farm products included hay and
grain, packing straw from the Skokie Swamps, mushrooms and horseradish.
History of Northfield
Winnetka-Northfield Community Guide
In the early 1920s, the community changed dramatically when Samuel Insull,
a powerful Chicago entrepreneur who headed the electric firm later named
Commonwealth Edison, built the Skokie Valley Line of the North Shore
Railway. He held a contest to name the village, which was incorporated in
1926. The name Wau-Bun was chosen. Wau-Bun is an Indian word meaning
dawn, which was also the name of a Wisconsin Indian Chief who camped
in the area as part of the Pottawatomie tribe in the late 1700s. Locals always
disliked the name. In 1927, Wau-Bun was formally dropped in favor of
Northfield, which referred to the community’s location from Chicago.
From this small beginning, the Village began to attract other north shore
families who liked its small size and remote country atmosphere. Its population
surged from 320 residents in 1930 to 4,887 in 1980, and today has grown to
5,726 per a special census in 2006. A village hall was built at the intersection
of Happ and Willow Roads in 1936 and was used for 31 years. A much larger
facility is now located on the same site.
26 Winnetka-Northfield Chamber of Commerce | 847-446-4451 www.winnetkachamber.com | www.northfieldchamber.org 27
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