About Mount Prospect

Like all the rest of the towns here, the land that is now Mount Prospect was originally inhabited by Native Americans. It’s thought that originally there were temporary or semi-nomadic settlements in the area, but by the 1700s it was settled by the Potawatomi tribe. They held control over it until shortly after Black Hawk’s War, when the 1833 Treaty of Chicago ceded those lands to Yankee settlers.

They cleared the land and established farms, but by 1850 most of them had left for various reasons including the California gold rush. It was German immigrants that replaced the Yankees, mostly Lutherans from southern Germanic states, who had a lasting impact on the character of the area. Intent on preserving their culture in the New World, the new inhabitants created a mostly German-speaking farming community and in 1848 erected Saint John Lutheran Church.

The railway came through the area in 1850, but it wasn’t until the 1870s that an entrepreneur named Ezra Eggleston built a train station, laid roads, divided the land into city blocks, and gave Mount Prospect its name. He had planned to sell the land off after this development at a profit, but his timing was bad—after the Chicago Fire in 1871 and the Panic of 1873 (called the Great Depression at the time), everyone was too busy rebuilding their lives to buy new land.

Nevertheless, after Eggleston sold off his share of the land, people started trickling in. Non-Germans started arriving and building homes and businesses, diversifying the population and kick-starting the local economy. The village was incorporated upon reaching a population of 300 in 1917, but the real population growth was still to come, in the land speculation of the 20s, the postwar suburban migration, and the baby boom.

Mount Prospect has since flourished in the modern era. Randhurst Village, as it’s now known, was built in the early 60s and was the Midwest’s first air-conditioned indoor mall. Today it’s a major retail and tourism center in the area, complementing the Kensington Business Center, home to many national and international companies.

Next year, Mount Prospect will be celebrating one hundred years since incorporation—only time will tell what prospects the next hundred will bring.