Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near North McCook McCook, IL

McCook is an industrial village in Cook County and a suburb of Chicago, and with a population of just 249 at the 2020 census it has the lowest population of any municipality in Cook County.

The village was named for John J. McCook, a former Civil War officer who became a director of the Santa Fe Railroad, which served the town's McCook station.

McCook was incorporated in 1926, the same year U.S. Route 66 was created, and the old Route 66 alignment passed through the village.

The Outlaws Motorcycle Club, one of the world's best-known outlaw motorcycle clubs, was established in McCook in 1935.

McCook's 2020 census count of 249 people lived in just 107 households, yet the village's heavy industry gives it an outsized tax base for its size.

The Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) locomotive plant in McCook — known as the LaGrange plant because McCook has no post office of its own — built most of EMD's locomotives from 1935 to 1991 and still serves as EMD's U.S. headquarters making engines and parts.

The village hosts part of the Vulcan Materials McCook Quarry, a limestone quarry complex of more than 600 acres, along with UOP's operations; quarrying along the Des Plaines River here dates to the 1880s.

The former Universal Oil Products Riverside Laboratory in McCook was designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark in 1995.

In 1958, six people were killed in an explosion at a Reynolds Metals plant in McCook.

McCook students attend schools outside the village, including J. Sterling Morton West High School in Berwyn and Lyons Township High School, and Pace bus Route 330 serves the village.