Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Chicago Heights, IL

Chicago Heights is a city in southern Cook County, a southern suburb of Chicago that sits on the high ground of the Tinley Moraine above Thorn Creek.

The first recorded non-Native settlement came in 1833, when Absalom Wells built a cabin on the ridge above Thorn Creek, and by the 1840s a farming community known as Thorn Grove had formed.

In the early 1890s a group of Chicago developers led by Charles Wacker formed the Chicago Heights Land Association to build the community into an outer-ring industrial suburb of Chicago.

Chicago Heights incorporated as a village in 1892 and then as a city in 1900, when its population passed 5,000.

The developers successfully recruited heavy industry, including Inland Steel, the Owens-Illinois Glass Company, and the Ludowici Roofing Tile Company, and the city was the original home of the Inland Steel Company.

Factory growth was explosive: Chicago Heights already had twenty factories by 1897, and its population grew from about 5,000 in 1900 to 22,000 by 1930.

In 1916 city leaders persuaded the Lincoln Highway Association to route the nation's first transcontinental highway through Chicago Heights, earning it the nickname Crossroads of the Nation.

A Ford Motor Company stamping plant arrived in the mid-1950s, employing thousands, and still operates today producing body panels for Ford's Chicago Assembly plant about 15 miles north.

The city's population peaked at about 40,900 in 1970 before heavy industry declined; the 2020 census counted 27,480 residents.

The 2020 census counted 9,261 households and 6,454 families in Chicago Heights, and 38.1% of households included children under the age of 18.