Big Foot Prairie is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

and

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

in McHenry County, Illinois, United States. It was named a CDP for the 2020 census, at which time it had a population of 65. It is located in Chemung Township. Big Foot Prairie is located on

U.S. Route 14 U.S. Route 14 or U.S. Highway 14 (US 14), an east–west route, is one of the original United States Numbered Highways of 1926. It is about long. It is roughly parallel to Interstate 90 (I-90). The highway's eastern termin ...

, north of

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

. The community extends north into Walworth County, Wisconsin, where there is a CDP of the same name in the town of Walworth.

History

The community is named for Big Foot, a

Potawatomi The Potawatomi (), also spelled Pottawatomi and Pottawatomie (among many variations), are a Native American tribe of the Great Plains, upper Mississippi River, and western Great Lakes region. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, ...

leader who resided on nearby Kishwauketoe (today Geneva Lake in Wisconsin) until his band was forcibly removed by the United States in 1836. It once had a

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

, which opened on May 15, 1848.

Demographics

Big Foot Prairie first appeared as a

census designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

in the 2020 United States census.

References

Census-designated places in Illinois Census-designated places in McHenry County, Illinois Chicago metropolitan area Populated places established in 1848 Majority-minority cities and towns in McHenry County, Illinois {{McHenryCountyIL-geo-stub