Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Bull Valley, IL

Bull Valley is a village in McHenry County in the outermost ring of the Chicago suburbs, surrounded by the larger exurban towns of Crystal Lake, Woodstock, and McHenry, and it prides itself on its rural, low-density character.

Bull Valley had a population of 1,128 at the 2020 census, at a density of only about 124 people per square mile, among the lowest of any incorporated Chicago-area suburb.

The village's character was set decades before it existed: in 1955, in an unprecedented move, local landowners voluntarily placed about 3,000 acres, half the Bull Valley area, into three-acre zoning, then the county's largest-lot residential classification.

That preservation effort grew out of the Countryside Improvement Association, organized by neighbors in 1942 to deal with land-use questions, and the village finally incorporated on April 10, 1978.

The village sprawls across parts of four townships, Nunda, McHenry, Greenwood, and Dorr, and has no commercial center, keeping its wooded, horse-farm landscape intact.

Bull Valley is an older community, with a median age of about 54.5 years, well above the Illinois median of about 39.

One of the village's natural assets is Boloria Meadows, a 36-acre nature preserve with trails under the stewardship of the Land Conservancy of McHenry County, named for the Boloria butterflies found there.

The historic Terwilliger House is one of the village's landmark old farmhouses, a reminder of Bull Valley's 19th-century farming roots.