Hodgkins, IL

Hodgkins is a village in Cook County where the Des Plaines River, old stone quarries, rail yards, and Chicago's southwest industrial belt come together. The village incorporated in 1896, after the Kimball and Cobb Stone Company opened here in 1883; that company later became part of Vulcan Materials. The 2020 census counted 1,500 residents, while the village's wider footprint comes from the work carried on around it. Hodgkins sits beside Bedford Park, McCook, Countryside, Willow Springs, and Justice, so the boundary between village streets and the surrounding industrial corridor is easy to cross.

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Santa Fe Railroad land opened 275 acres for development in the mid-1960s, creating the Santa Fe Improvement Park and room for freight-related businesses. The west end is now home to UPS's Chicago Area Consolidation Hub, known as CACH, the world's largest package-sorting facility, constructed in 1991. A rail intermodal facility and the Vulcan quarry reinforce that working landscape. For daily errands, the Quarry Shopping Center and businesses along Joliet Road and East Avenue sit alongside the logistics uses. The local scoop is that Hodgkins is a small residential village attached to a very large freight-and-shopping corridor, with Chicago's southwest edge built into its local geography.