Schiller Park history

For anyone who's ever enjoyed the sweet, savory, cream-filled goodness of a Hostess Twinkie, you'll be happy to know Schiller Park is where the delectable sugar-packed recipe originated. The notable snack cake was invented right here in Schiller Park by a local baker during the Depression as an economical dessert. Over the years the distinctive yellow sponge cakes have became a symbol of classic Americana. While the popularity of the Twinkie has grown to worldwide fame, its birthplace remains a modest Chicago suburb with a tasty bit of history to its name.

Schiller Park is a mid-sized Chicago suburb located on the far northwest edge of the city, just south of O'Hare International Airport. The village has well over 11,000 residents and is an active transportation nexus for planes, trains and automobiles. The Tri-State Tollway (I-294) and the largest air travel hub in the region hug the west side of Schiller Park, while the Metra North Central Service runs directly through the middle of town, housing a massive train yard near the northern end.

But before Schiller Park was known as Twinkie's hometown; and prior to the time when you could reach the region by any type of transport imaginable, the suburb was nothing more than a vast expanse of fields and woodland along the Des Plaines River. Back in the early 1800s, the land surrounding the waterway was occupied by several Native American tribes, including the Ottawa, Ojiba and Potawatomi. In the late 1820s, a little over 1,200 acres of the territory were deeded to Alexander Robinson (a tribal chief whose mother was Ottawa Indiana and father was a Scottish trader). Robinson's sprawling forested parcel straddled the river and was an ideal spot to settle down with his family.

Little by little, Robinson sold off pieces of his extensive property, which pretty much covered the area of present-day Schiller Park. During the 1850s some immigrants started to move into the region, headed up by a sizeable group of German farmers. After Robinson died in 1872, the small settlement swelled with a new wave of newcomers who were mainly from Poland, Italy and Spain. By 1900, the community was a cookie-cutter of westward expansion with pockmarked mud roads, a hardworking blacksmith, two dusty saloons, a one-room schoolhouse, backyard well pumps, livestock corralled outside front porches, and wood outhouses tucked behind the buildings. In 1910, the population grew to 258 and Schiller Park was incorporated as a village in 1914.

Schiller Park's list of 'firsts' includes more than the creation of a spongy plastic-wrapped treat, the state's first woman mayor also came out of this small suburban settlement. In 1931, Julia Marenga Kolze was elected mayor of Schiller Park and in doing so was the first-ever female in Illinois to take the title. A couple decades later, the town experienced a post-World War II population explosion that brought the number of inhabitants up to 5,000. The construction of the Tri-State Tollway and O'Hare Airport in the '60s nearly doubled the amount of residents in Schiller Park again. Things finally leveled off in the 1980s although the village continued to grow in community pride and infrastructure with the addition of a Metra commuter train station, beautification efforts in the form of newly planted trees, a planned housing development for senior citizens, and a commitment to maintain a 'small town feel with the world at its touch.'