McCook, IL

McCook is a village in Cook County, Illinois, and an industrial suburb tucked into the Chicago metro. The 2020 census counted 249 residents. The village’s footprint is small, but its working map is not: the McCook Quarry, UOP, and the Electro-Motive Diesel locomotive plant occupy major industrial ground around the homes and streets. Lyons School District 103 serves part of the village, and Morton West High School in Berwyn serves local high-school students.

ATTRDavid Wilson / CC BY 2.0

McCook was named for John J. McCook, a late-nineteenth-century Santa Fe Railroad director and former Civil War officer. General Motors’ Electro-Motive plant opened in the middle 1930s and built locomotives at the LaGrange plant for decades, making the village a place where few residents sit beside a large industrial base. Its tax base comes from the work happening around the village and beyond its residential streets. McCook’s story is Chicago-area industry in miniature: quarry stone, locomotive history, research and manufacturing, and a village government handling a compact residential community.