History of Barrington Hills

Historical Overview

The Barrington area was first settled in the 1830s as a farming community, with the Village of Barrington incorporating in 1865. With gently rolling hills, many covered in towering oak trees, natural kettle moraine lakes and ponds, open spaces, the Barrington area in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries attracted affluent Chicago families looking for a summer retreat from the crowded and dirty city, yet within a day’s journey by horse and buggy, and later by automobile or train from Chicago.

These new residents purchased farms and built their estates, continuing to operate “gentlemen farms’ with farm managers to run them. With the completion of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway the travel time from Chicago enabled these residents to live in the Barrington Countryside and work in Chicago. In 1921 a group of these prominent Chicago businessmen purchased the 220 acres for the Barrington Hills Country Club and the nucleus of what was to become the Village of Barrington Hills was born.

Fox Hunt and Gathering of People and Horses at Spring Creek Farm.

As more families moved to the Barrington Countryside, the Country Club, the Riding Club of Barrington Hills, and the Fox River Valley Hunt became the social networks for their rural community with shopping close by in the Village of Barrington.

In the prosperous mid 1950’s, as post war economic development blossomed, and the new network of roads and commuter railroads made the suburbs accessible to many more Americans anxious to move from the cities, large scale housing developments began to sprout up on what had been rural farmland. When developers purchased several thousand acres south of the Barrington area in Bartlett, and then in nearby Carpentersville for hundreds of homes on quarter acre lots, farsighted Barrington Hills residents realized that if the Barrington Countryside was to remain a rural oasis in a sprawling urbanization movement, and retain its five (5) acre minimum zoning, that incorporating as a Village was the only way to preserve this “special way of life” that had been the core of the Countryside since its inception more than 50 years earlier.

Patty & Chuck Meroni's vintage barn - a historical piece of Barrington Hills. Photo courtesy of Beth Mallen.

Andrew Dallstream, a prominent Chicago attorney, and president of the Cook County Zoning Board organized a group of Barrington residents to persuade their friends and neighbors to sign petitions to incorporate as the Village of Barrington Hills. After many months of effort, the Village of Barrington Hills was incorporated on July 5, 1957.

Throughout the Village’s existence there has been pressure to have access to our open spaces; however, a dedicated group of individuals have resisted all efforts to break our five (5) acre zoning, in large part because of our equestrian usage. The Village has 7,000 acres of Cook County Forest Preserve within its borders. The Riding Club of Barrington Hills, founded in 1937, has maintained a trail system throughout the Village with the generosity of landowners who allow members to ride horses across their property.

Vintage Photo of Author and Resident Vicky Fitch Jumping her Horse. Vicky co-authored a book about
the History of the Barrington area: Hark Back to Barrington: Fifty Years with the Fox River Valley Hunt

In today’s busy, often impersonal world, Barrington Hills is an oasis of another time, another way of life, where residents not only know each other, but join together to enjoy their interests and hobbies, participate in village wide events like the annual Polo Match in September, Riding Club parties, Forest Preserve work days and parties, school events, country club events and the many casual neighbor sponsored get togethers.

The Village of Barrington Hills truly has maintained its “special way of life”.