Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near West Golf Golf, IL

Golf is a tiny village in Cook County, about 17 miles northwest of downtown Chicago, that owes both its name and its existence to the game of golf.

The village grew up around the Glen View Club, an exclusive private golf club founded in 1897 that built an 18-hole course here.

Around 1830, John Dewes became the area's first non-Indian settler, purchasing 400 acres for 50 cents an acre from Antoine Ouilmette; the brick house Dewes built in 1834 still stands on the grounds of the Glen View Club.

Railroad president Albert J. Earling, a Glen View Club member, used to have his private rail car detached at a siding near the club so he could reach the course, and in 1907 club members from Evanston pooled their money to build a rail line to Golf.

The Village of Golf was incorporated in 1928, and it held its first mayoral election that April with a voting populace of just 45 people.

Golf covers only about half a square mile, and roughly half of the village's land is occupied by the Glen View Club itself.

Golf had a population of 514 at the 2020 census, spread among only about 160 households.

The village is almost entirely residential, with its own police department, post office, and a Metra commuter train stop, but essentially no businesses.

The Western Golf Association, founded in 1899 with the Glen View Club among its founding clubs, kept its headquarters in Golf from the 1950s until 2019.

The Association's Evans Scholars Foundation, which funds college scholarships for caddies, shares the village hall, whose facade reads 'Evans Scholars - Village of Golf.'