Tune-in Thursday, October 26 to WGN Radio as our Your Hometown series features Deerfield.

Located on the North Shore within Lake and Cook counties, Deerfield is about 28 miles from the Loop and is the hometown of WGN Radio’s very own Steve Bertrand and Dave Eanet. Lou Manfredini, who grew up in neighboring Highland Park, went to Deerfield High School.

Native peoples who lived on this land were of the Potawatomi, Miami, Kickapoo, and Peoria tribes. A Trail Tree that was a marker for indigenous peoples still stands and is located within Trail Tree Park at the intersection of Carlisle and Shenandoah.

In 1835, Jacob Cadwell and his family were the Europeans to come to Deerfield and called it Cadwell’s Corner, settling along present-day Deerfield and Waukegan Roads. In 1837, the Ott family built several log cabins along Saunders Road. One of those one-room cabins, the Caspar Ott Log House, still stands and is the oldest building in Lake County. The cabin is part of the Deerfield Historic Village (517 Deerfield Road) that encompasses five buildings, dating from 1837 to 1905.

Around 1840, the name was changed to “Leclair” and changed one final time to “Deerfield” after the town in Massachusetts. Deerfield incorporated in 1903.

The Deerfield Park District maintains parks, playgrounds, pools and recreation centers and Deerfield Golf Club that offer events and activities for residents. Jewett Park (836 Jewett Park Drive) was the the village’s first public park created in 1947.

National Boss’s Day (October 16) was created in 1958 by a secretary working at a Deerfield insurance company. Deerfield is the former home of the Kitchens of Sara Lee that operated near Waukegan and Lake-Cook Roads from the mid-1960s until 1990 and current headquarters for several companies including Baxter International, Walgreens, and Fortune Brands.

Your Hometown Deerfield is sponsored by McDonald’s,