| Burr Ridge (formerly
Harvester) is an affluent suburb of Chicago, in Cook
and DuPage Counties, Illinois. The population was 10,408
at the 2000 census.
Burr Ridge's gently rolling hills
were carved by glaciers at the end of the last ice age,
and most of the village lies on the Valparaiso Moraine.
Flagg Creek, a tributary of the Des Plaines River, runs
through town. Joseph Vial erected a log cabin near Wolf
and Plainfield Roads in 1834.
The first Democratic Convention
in Cook County was held here in 1835. After 1848, farmers
shipped their goods to Chicago along the Illinois and
Michigan Canal. A small settlement of German farmers
also inhabited Flagg Creek by the 1880s.
In 1917 the International Harvester
Company purchased 414 acres (1.7 km2) for an experimental
farm, where it tested the world's first all-purpose
tractor, the Farmall. Also in 1917, the Cook County
Prison Farm (also known as the Bridewell Farm) began
operation in what is now Burr Ridge. In 1947 developer
Robert Bartlett, whose company also developed Beverly
Shores and Countryside, established the Hinsdale Countryside
Estates out of a former pig farm.
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