The Rogers Park and West Ridge community areas of the City of Chicago are among the most diverse in the country by any yardstick. The history is wide and extremely varied. We are the curators of this history for present and future generations.

Rogers Park/West Ridge Historical Society was formed in 1975. At first we met in a local library. We then bought a building which allowed us the space needed to conduct our activities, including the establishment of a museum. This building had more problems than we could afford to address and moved to our present location which is too small. We are in the process of acquiring a new home which will enable us to perform all of our activities while providing sufficient space to display our extensive collection of artifacts of our joint communities.

Named after Philip McGregor Rogers, Rogers Ridge, as it was called for a time, was originally 600 acres of land located along the Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad's right-of-way (today Metra). A lakeshore road was planned to run in front of the village and this land lay 22 feet above Lake Michigan and was being drained by tile sewers put in at a cost of $7,000. Mr. Rogers, by the time of his death in 1856, had acquired alomost 1,600 acres in what would become Rogers Park, West Ridge, and Ravenswood. The price was $1.25 an acre, when he first began to purchase this land from the U.S. Government in the mid-1830s