Homes for sale in
Summit.

The Summit area sits on the Chicago Portage and was traveled for thousands of years before the Marquette and Joliet expedition reached the portage just north of present-day Summit in 1673. Land was surveyed in 1821 and offered for sale by the Illinois and Michigan Canal Commission, and by 1835 a small settlement had a tavern, blacksmith shop, and stagecoach stop at Summit Corners, where Archer Avenue turned south. Chicago politician Long John Wentworth bought much of the surrounding land for farming. The Illinois and Michigan Canal was dug through the area between 1836 and 1848, largely by Irish laborers, and in 1856 a railroad was built along the canal's south bank, which today carries Metra's Heritage Corridor line. Summit was incorporated as a city in 1890, after Wentworth's death, when residents feared annexation by Chicago.

In 1907 the Corn Products Refining Company, now Ingredion, began building what would become one of the world's largest corn-processing plants just south of Summit, and a company-town neighborhood called Argo, named for the factory, was subdivided north and south of 63rd Street. Summit annexed Argo in 1911, though the Argo name remains in widespread public and private use. The plant transformed Summit from a rural town into an industrial one: between 1910 and 1920 the population more than tripled from 949 to 4,019, then reached 6,548 by 1930. The Argo facility produced brands including Argo Corn Starch, Karo syrup, and Mazola oil. The town's Argo neighborhood is also where civil-rights figure Emmett Till lived as a child with his mother Mamie Till, a graduate of Argo Community High School.