Homes for sale in
Inverness.

The Inverness area was first settled in 1836 by George Ela and was originally known as Deer Grove. The modern village took shape in 1926, when Arthur T. McIntosh, one of Chicago's leading land developers, bought the Temple farm, the first of eleven parcels he would acquire. Combined with the former Cudahy Company golf course, his holdings totaled about 1,500 contiguous acres. McIntosh named the development Inverness after the McIntosh clan's home region in Scotland, and his vision was a distinctive, country-style community for young families. A minimum lot size of one acre was established from the start, and the first new homes were occupied by 1939, mostly clustered around the Inverness Golf Club.

A key early figure was Way Thompson, who preserved the natural beauty of the land by laying out a road system that followed the rolling contours and by subdividing lots to fit the terrain rather than imposing a grid. He personally approved house plans and their placement on the lots, and in the post-war years the McIntosh Company kept tight control over both the sale of lots and the resale of homes to protect the community's character. Inverness was incorporated as a village in 1962, with its first board meeting held that July. Through the 1970s and 1980s the village grew faster than predicted, annexing existing unincorporated Cook County neighborhoods, and Williamsburg Village, started in 1981, became the village's only business development.