Homes for sale in
Markham.

Markham grew up along the railroad. The village was incorporated in 1925 with a population under 300 and was named for Charles H. Markham, president of the Illinois Central Railroad from 1911 to 1918 and again from 1919 to 1926. In the mid-1930s the Croissant Park subdivision was built and the population jumped from 349 to 1,388, and after World War II it doubled again to 2,753 residents by 1950 as the community developed into a bedroom suburb where residents sought homes rather than industry. On August 24, 1967, Markham was incorporated as a city.

Markham's identity is rooted in the prairie that predates the town itself. The area sits along one of the historic Indian Treaty Boundary Lines surveyed in the early 1800s, and within the city limits are roughly 500 acres of virgin and restored tallgrass prairie known as the Indian Boundary Prairies. The Gensburg-Markham Prairie, about 105 acres of high-quality tallgrass prairie, was dedicated as a National Natural Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior in 1988 and is owned by Northeastern Illinois University with restoration support from The Nature Conservancy. In 1860 a German immigrant named Lawrence Roesner planted six Black Forest pine seedlings along the boundary line, and the surviving Lone Pine Tree was adopted as the official city symbol in 1985.