Within a decade, settler John Millen proposed a
further name change to Deerfield in honor of his hometown, Deerfield,
Massachusetts and the large number of deer living in the area. At
the time, the alternate name for the village on the ballot was Erin.
Deerfield won by a vote of 17-13.[5] The village's first school,
Wilmot School, was founded in 1847.
Originally a one-room schoolhouse, Wilmot is now an elementary
school which serves 548 students. It is located at the corner of
Deerfield and Wilmot Roads on land donated by Lyman Wilmot. The
village was incorporated in 1903[6] with a population in the low
400s. In the 1850s, the Deerfield home of Lyman Wilmot, which still
stands at 601 Wilmot Road, served as a stop on the Underground Railroad
as escaped slaves attempted to get to Canada.[5] In a 1917 design
by Thomas E. Talmadge of the American Institute of Architects, Deerfield
served as the center for a new proposed capital city of the United
States.[5] By that year, all of Deerfield's original farms had been
converted either to residential areas or golf courses.[5] Pickens
Memorial Plaque.On May 26, 1944, a US Navy plane crashed in Deerfield
on the current site of the Deerfield Public Library, killing Ensign
Milton C. Pickens.[7]
Following World War II, a portion of Waukegan Road (Route 43) that
runs through Deerfield has been designated a Blue Star Memorial
Highway.[8] On June 27, 1962, ground was broken by Kitchens of Sara
Lee (now Sara Lee Corporation) for construction of the world's largest
bakery. The plant, located on the current site of Coromandel Condominiums
on Kates Road, began production in 1964 using state-of-the-art materials
handling and production equipment. It was billed as the world's
first industrial plant with a fully automated production control
system.
President Ronald Reagan visited the plant in 1985. The plant closed
in 1990 as Sara Lee consolidated production in Tarboro, North Carolina.
[9] By 1991, headquarters employees had moved to downtown Chicago.
In 2007, Sara Lee severed its final tie to its former home town
with the closure of the Sara Lee Bakery Outlet Store. In 1982, Deerfield
began an experiment with a community farm.[6] Two hundred residents
applied for plots on a three-acre community garden. The project
had such a strong initial success that the village opened additional
community farms on vacant land in the village. |