Homes for sale in
South Holland.

The area now occupied by South Holland was first settled in 1846 by immigrants from the province of South Holland in the Netherlands, part of a chain migration in which a large share of Dutch migrants from that region settled in just a few American towns. The settlement was built on low ground near the Calumet River and was originally called de Laage Prairie, or Low Prairie, to distinguish it from a Dutch settlement on higher ground to the north, now Chicago's Roseland neighborhood. The community formally incorporated as a village on May 12, 1894, with a population of about 1,000. It began as a general farming community, later specialized in vegetable growing, especially onion sets, and by the 1940s South Holland was known as the Onion Set Capital of the World.

South Holland grew rapidly in the mid-20th century, with its population rising from 2,272 in 1940 to over 10,000 by 1960 and peaking near 24,000 around 1970. The village's conservative Dutch Reformed religious roots shaped a long-standing dry tradition in which no alcohol was sold anywhere within village limits, a remnant of its founding that endured until the village granted its first liquor license only in recent years. Over the following decades the community transitioned demographically, and by the 2020 census it had become a predominantly Black middle-class suburb, with Black or African American residents making up roughly 80 percent of the population.