40 Fun Facts About Arlington Heights, Illinois

Steve Chen, whose family settled in Arlington Heights after leaving Taiwan, co-founded which video-sharing website?

YouTube made Chen its chief technology officer. He spent his freshman year at John Hersey High School before moving to the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy.

Which graduate of John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights won the Best Actress Oscar at 21?

Marlee Matlin won for Children of a Lesser God, becoming the first deaf performer to win an Academy Award. She has been deaf since she was 18 months old.

Which NFL team completed its purchase of the former Arlington Park racetrack property in February 2023?

The Bears paid $197.2 million for the 326-acre site, and demolition of the racetrack's grandstand was finished that September.

Which Hall of Fame running back trained on an Arlington Heights hill, a former landfill, later renamed in his honor?

Walter Payton ran the slope at Nickol Knoll, now a golf course. After his death it became Payton's Hill, with two plaques marking where he trained.

A 2010 remake of which horror film shot school scenes at John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights?

A Nightmare on Elm Street filmed at Hersey and at nearby Elk Grove High School, though neither campus is identified by name on screen.

Mitsuwa Marketplace, the Arlington Heights supermarket that opened as Yaohan in 1991, sells food from which country?

Japan is the specialty: the store is the chain's only Midwest location and the largest supermarket of its kind in the region, renovated in 2019 with new food-court restaurants.

Frontier Days, an Arlington Heights festival with a carnival and parade, leads up to which holiday?

Independence Day caps the festival at Recreation Park, which also brings food stalls and concerts and reached its 50th annual edition in 2026.

What destroyed the grandstand and clubhouse at Arlington Park on July 31, 1985, weeks before the Arlington Million?

A fire that started small spread out of control. The race still ran 25 days later in front of temporary bleachers, earning the track a special Eclipse Award.

Which 1973 Triple Crown winner did Arlington Park lure with a race created for him, the Arlington Invitational?

Secretariat won easily before 41,223 fans, and a year later the track launched a turf race for three-year-olds that carries his name.

Despite 77,676 residents at the 2020 census, Arlington Heights is incorporated as which type of municipality?

A village is its legal form, even though the 2020 census count of 77,676 made it the 15th-most populous municipality in Illinois.

Before becoming Arlington Heights in 1874, the settlement carried the surname of which pioneer who lured the railroad?

Dunton was the name. William Dunton persuaded the Illinois & Wisconsin Railroad to build through his land and sold it 16 acres for $350 in 1853.

Which Native American nation kept a seasonal camp in present-day Arlington Heights before ceding the land in 1833?

The Potawatomi used the camp for about six weeks a year while moving between summer and winter grounds. Their descendants live on a reservation in Mayetta, Kansas.

Civil War veteran Charles Sigwalt co-founded an Arlington Heights company that built about 40,000 of which product?

Sewing machines left the Sigwalt factory from 1878 to 1883. Sigwalt, who had fought at Chickamauga, later served as mayor and has a street named for him.

Many farmers who settled the future Arlington Heights in the 1840s were immigrants from which country?

Germany sent so many settlers, many of them from Saxony, that the area's makeup had changed by 1850. One, John Klehm, began as a potato farmer and opened a tree nursery in 1856.

Which commuter rail system serves two Arlington Heights stations, one of them built for the Arlington Park racetrack?

Metra's Union Pacific Northwest Line stops at both, and the Arlington Park station sits on the main line even though it was designed just for race crowds.

Arlington Heights lies primarily in which Illinois county, with a small portion reaching into Lake County?

Cook County holds nearly all of it, mostly in Wheeling Township, with further territory in Elk Grove and Palatine townships.

Highways along the south and west edges of Arlington Heights give quick access to which nearby international airport?

O'Hare is the nearby hub: Interstate 90 runs along the southern edge of Arlington Heights, and Illinois Route 53 follows the western edge.

Which newspaper based in Arlington Heights did former teacher Hosea Paddock buy for just $175 in 1889?

The Daily Herald stayed a weekly for its first century, and four generations of Paddocks ran it before selling their stake to employees in 2018.

Which 1986 teen film starring Corey Haim and Charlie Sheen shot scenes at the former Arlington High School?

Lucas filmed inside and outside the building after the public school closed in 1984, and the movie gave Winona Ryder her screen debut.

The former Arlington High School building in Arlington Heights, closed in 1984, has since housed which private school?

Christian Liberty Academy, founded in neighboring Prospect Heights in 1968, bought the empty building for $1.51 million in April 1985.

Which horse won the first Arlington Million in 1981, edging 40–1 longshot The Bart in a photo finish?

John Henry won by a nose, a finish cast in bronze as Against All Odds, a statue that overlooked the Arlington Park paddock. He took the race again in 1984.

Which two-time Horse of the Year tied a modern record of 16 straight wins before 34,000 fans at Arlington Park in 1996?

Cigar matched the streak in the Arlington Citation Challenge, a race carded for the occasion and named for the Triple Crown winner whose run he equaled.

Arlington Park hosted which championship event in 2002, then billed as the World Thoroughbred Championships?

The Breeders' Cup arrived two years after Churchill Downs Inc. bought the track, which had just reopened from a two-year shutdown.

Which synthetic racing surface did Arlington Park install for $11 million in 2007 to replace its dirt oval?

Polytrack was meant to make racing safer and stayed in use until the track closed. A horse named Do the Wave won the first race run on it.

Which British band, later famous for the rock opera Tommy, played The Cellar teen club in Arlington Heights in 1967?

The Who played on June 15, 1967, with local band H. P. Lovecraft opening. Cream, The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield also took the club's stage.

The Cellar, a 1960s Arlington Heights teen rock club, was named for its first home beneath what kind of building?

A church basement housed the club at first, under the old St. Peter's Lutheran, before it moved to an empty Buick dealership beside the railroad tracks.

Which hard-rock guitarist attended St. Viator High School in Arlington Heights while leading the Amboy Dukes?

Ted Nugent arrived after his father was transferred to the area in 1965, and his band became a staple at a local teen dance club until it closed.

Chris Nowinski, a football captain at John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, later wrestled for which company?

WWE made him a wrestler, but his later work is brain science: he co-founded the Concussion Legacy Foundation and Boston University's CTE Center.

Which quarterback, born and raised in Arlington Heights, started Super Bowl LIV for the San Francisco 49ers?

Jimmy Garoppolo played at Rolling Meadows High School and Eastern Illinois, then went to New England in the second round of the 2014 draft.

Which actress, raised in Arlington Heights, played Dr. Allison Cameron on House and Emma Swan on Once Upon a Time?

Jennifer Morrison graduated in 1997 from Prospect High School, where her parents worked, and was an All-State clarinet player in its marching band.

Which striker, born in Arlington Heights, became the first American to score at two different World Cups?

Brian McBride scored at the 1998 and 2002 tournaments, and he learned the game with a local youth club, the Arlington Aces.

John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights honors the writer of which 1946 New Yorker report on six survivors?

Hiroshima filled almost an entire issue of the magazine, something it had never done before. Hersey also won a Pulitzer Prize for the novel A Bell for Adano.

Which community college in neighboring Palatine treats every Arlington Heights resident as an in-district student?

Harper College opened in 1967 and is named for William Rainey Harper, the first president of the University of Chicago.

Which suburban bus agency, serving six counties around Chicago, has its headquarters in Arlington Heights?

Pace was founded in 1984 and runs ten bus garages across the suburbs, with its head office in Arlington Heights.

Paul Splittorff, who grew up in Arlington Heights, pitched his entire 15-year major league career for which team?

The Royals kept him from 1970 to 1984. He won 166 games, entered the team's Hall of Fame in 1987 and later became its television color commentator.

A 1977 U.S. Supreme Court case named for Arlington Heights began when local officials refused to rezone land for what?

Multi-family housing was planned on land owned by the Clerics of St. Viator. The Court ruled the refusal constitutional, finding no proof of a discriminatory purpose.

Lake Arlington, a 50-acre human-made lake in Arlington Heights, was built in the 1980s mainly to do what?

Hold stormwater from McDonald Creek: that was the aim of the $9 million basin. The park around it opened in 1992, and swimming is not permitted.

Which TV talent show sent finalist Lee DeWyze to a 2010 hometown concert before about 41,000 fans at Arlington Park?

American Idol staged the homecoming that May, and DeWyze went on to win its ninth season. He lived in neighboring Mount Prospect and attended Prospect High School.

Which downtown Arlington Heights performing arts centre pairs a 350-seat theatre with a ballroom and classrooms?

Metropolis pairs its main-stage shows with arts education, running a School of Performing Arts that offers camps, classes and private lessons.

Which Hall of Fame jockey rode the winner of the first Arlington Million, becoming the first to win a $1 million race?

Bill Shoemaker got home by a nose on August 30, 1981. He retired with 8,833 career wins.