The Big Ones

The Northwest Tollway in 1958 and Route 53 in 1963 brought tremendous growth and development to the suburbs. Both had been in the planning stages for many decades. To raise the roadbed over other roads, fill was excavated creating a number of artificial lakes. Route 53 ran right through a subdivision just north of Northwest Highway. Pretty little Bluebell Estates was only seven years old when its houses had to be moved to Leonard Road. The planned extension of Route 53 north of Lake Cook Road has for years been a battleground between the State of Illinois and the Village of Long Grove. The expressway would split the bucolic village in two.