The area around La Grange was first settled in the 1830s, when Chicagoresidents, already fed up with the rapid population increase in thatcity in the decade since its incorporation, moved out to the west. Thefirst settler, Robert Leitch, came to what is now La Grange in 1830, afull seven years before the city of Chicago was incorporated in March1837. La Grange's location, at approximately thirteen miles fromChicago's Loop,is not considered far at all from the city by today's standards, but inthat time the residents enjoyed the peace of rural life without muchcommunication with urban residents.

Incorporated on June 11, 1879, the Village of La Grange was the dream of Franklin Dwight Cossitt, born in Granby, Connecticut and raised in Tennessee, who moved to Chicago in 1862 and built a successful wholesale grocery business.

In 1870, Cossitt purchased several hundred acres of farmland in Lyons Township, along the Chicago-Dixon Road, known today as Ogden Avenue (U.S. Highway 34). Ogden Avenue, on the site of a defunct Native Americantrail, was also referred to as the "Old Plank Road". Planks were oftenstolen by settlers to be used as building material, which made travlingvery bumpy. When the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad came to town, La Grange was a milk stop called Hazel Glen. A few miles to the south, through present day Willow Springs, the Illinois and Michigan Canal had emerged as a major shipping corridor, connecting Chicago and the Great Lakes with the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers.

Cossitt set out to build the ideal suburban village - laying out streets, planting trees, donating property for churches and schools, and building quality homes for sale. He also placed liquor restrictions in the land deeds he sold to prevent the village from becoming a saloon town.

When Cossitt began his development, the area was served by a post officeknown as Kensington. But upon learning of another community alreadywith that name in Illinois, Cossitt decided to name his town in honorof La Grange, Tennessee, where he had been raised as a youth on an uncle's cotton farm. However, today Kensington remains the name of one of the village's major streets.

After the Great Chicago Fireof 1871 destroyed much of that city, thousands of its citizens soughtnew homes and opportunities far from the city's ills but within aconvenient commute. La Grange was ideally situated to accommodate them.