Fox River Grove, IL USDA Eligibility

Fox River Grove (FRG) is a village in Algonquin Township, McHenry County and Cuba Township, Lake County, Illinois, United States. As per 2020 census, the population was 4,702. In 1919, the village of Fox River Grove was officially incorporated, becoming the ninth village in McHenry County. The Grove is situated along the southern shore of the Fox River. Residents refer to themselves as “Grovers.”[citation needed]

Long before the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans called the land within Fox River Grove home. The Ojibwe (also known as Chippewa) people continued to winter in the Fox River Valley into the 1860s. The women traded beadwork and purses with local settlers while the men trapped muskrat and mink, selling the pelts in nearby Barrington, Illinois. The area’s proximity to Northwest Highway (Route 14), a major military and trade road, enabled such commerce to thrive. The men also made fence posts for local farmers and would “spear fish at night using torches attached to the ends of their birchbark canoes.” When spring came, they traveled north to their summer lands in Wisconsin. Between 1816 and 1833, the Ojibwe and U.S. governments engaged in peace talks, resulting in several land cession treaties being signed. Eventually, the federal government took control of all Ojibwe land in Illinois. The rapid increase of European-American settlers, coupled with pressures from the government and military, eventually forced this dynamic and proud people to leave the lands that would soon become the FRG and relocate west of the Mississippi River.

Pioneers built homesteads in the Fox River Valley between 1830 and 1860. They were originally drawn to the area that would become Fox River Grove for its scenery and abundance of water. Some of the first settlers to call the Grove home were Czechoslovakian immigrants who—by way of Chicago—established a Bohemian enclave along the Fox River. Attracted to the area for its prime fishing spots and access to 19th-century entertainment venues, Czechs built cottages among the village’s hills and on the river’s southern bank.

In 1850, ethnic-Czech, Frank Opatrny purchased 80 acres (32 ha) of land on the southern shore of the Fox River. Considered to be the patriarch of the village’s founding family, Frank’s son Eman Opatrny put FRG on the map by turning his homestead into the regionally known Picnic Grove.

The Czech community established St. John’s Nepomucene Catholic Church and Cemetery on the southwest fringe of Fox River Grove in 1861. Named after a patron saint of Bohemia, the sanctuary’s construction began in 1871 and was finished in 1874. Because of the church’s small congregation, St. John’s did not support a resident priest. Instead, a Chicago-based priest would visit the congregation once a year; for the rest of the year, Bohemian-speaking members of the church would conduct services. While St. John’s stopped hosting worship services in 1914, the cemetery remains open to this day.