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Deer Grove, Illinois

10 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1949 and the latest in 1985. It stands in Hahnaman Township. It lies in ZIP code area 61243. The Survey maps it on the New Bedford quadrangle. 38 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 646 feet above sea level.

Deer Grove within Whiteside County

Population over time

2 figures

Deer Grove fell from 48 to 38 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

YearPeople Change
201048
202038-10 (-21%)

Topographic sheets covering this place

5 surveys from 10 printed sheets

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

What happened here

An account from the chapter on Hahnaman township. The inset identifies its exact source book and publication year.

From Portrait and Biographical Album of Whiteside County, Illinois : Containing Full-page Portraits and Biographies of All the Governors of Illinois, and of the Presidents of the United States, published 1885 - Hahnaman Township

Brave Record In The War

For a small, thinly inhabited town, the men of Hahnaman rallied nobly around the flag in 1861. Ten enlisted with the Yates Sharpshooters: Mc- Mckle, Hinman, Harvey, Reeves, William and Mahlon Humphrey, Crosby and H. D. Ryder, Henry May. The latter was killed at Atlanta in 1864. Mahlon Humphrey died at Cairo in 1862.

Read the rest of this passage

In the county-history sources

4,058 words on this township

Portrait and Biographical Album of Whiteside County, Illinois : Containing Full-page Portraits and Biographies of All the Governors of Illinois, and of the Presidents of the United States, published 1885 names this settlement in its chapter on Hahnaman Township. These are the passages that mention it, exactly as the scans read.

The first settlement was made at Deer Grove, in 1841, by Wm. Renner and family, from Pennsylvania. Mr. Renner died in 1859, leaving a widow and eight children. Among the first settlers not mentioned in the biographical portion of the work are the following :

Passage source: Portrait and Biographical Album of Whiteside County, Illinois : Containing Full-page Portraits and Biographies of All the Governors of Illinois, and of the Presidents of the United States, published 1885.

In 1854, Mrs. Ryder, a widow lady, and her family arrived in the township. During the following three or four years a number of families came in. Among the arrivals were James Chambers, W. M. Halsted, Benj. Ackley, Martin Clark, Wm. Humphrey, Wm. Johnson, John J. Van Valkenburg, Wm. Brakey, Geo. Brakey, Wm. McNickel, Thomas Langan, Peter Ford, Amos Reeves and Dr. Reuben Davis.

Passage source: Portrait and Biographical Album of Whiteside County, Illinois : Containing Full-page Portraits and Biographies of All the Governors of Illinois, and of the Presidents of the United States, published 1885.

For the year ending June 30, 1884, the County Superintendent of Public Schools gave the following items pertaining to educational matters in the township. There were six school districts and frame school-houses, with 369 persons under 23 years of age, of which number 274 were of school age and 233 enrolled in the public schools. The highest wages paid teachers was $50 and the lowest $25 per month. The tax levy for school purposes was $2,232.

Passage source: Portrait and Biographical Album of Whiteside County, Illinois : Containing Full-page Portraits and Biographies of All the Governors of Illinois, and of the Presidents of the United States, published 1885.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Hahnaman Township - it names this place 8 more 8 times.

Mines and quarries near this place

1 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of Deer Grove: 1 producer. All of them still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where SiteCommodity StatusRecorded
Quality Sand & Gravel PitSand and Gravel, ConstructionProducer

Every working recorded in Whiteside County

Storms near this place

14 since 2009

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Deer Grove in 14 storm reports between 2009 and 2025: 8 thunderstorm wind, 3 hail, 3 tornado. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

WhenEvent Place namedHarm What the report says
May 2025HailDeer Grove-A trained spotter reported that several hailstones were quarter size, some were perhaps bigger.
May 2024Tornado (EFU)Deer Grove-Public picture of a tornado near Deer Valley golf course, north of Deer Grove, IL in Whiteside County. There was no damage to assign a rating and the tornado is classified as an EF-Unknown.
June 2024Thunderstorm WindDeer Grove-Time estimated from radar. Power lines down on Hahnaman Rd.
March 2023Tornado (EF1)Deer Grove-This tornado began just south of Illinois highway 92 in northwest Bureau County, then moved into far southeast Whiteside county, near the intersection of Osage Road and 1050 St E. The tornado tracked for 2 miles in Whiteside County, before moving into Lee County, about a half mile south of the Green River. This tornado would continue for 6 additional miles into southwest Lee County (see NWS Chicago StormData). The damage from this tornado included numerous heavily damaged outbuildings, several snapped power poles, and dozens of trees. The worst damage was to a large farmstead outbuilding on the Whiteside and Bureau County border area, with the roof and two of the four walls destroyed and debris slung well into a field. Peak winds with this tornado were estimated at 110 mph. The tornado was rated EF1 in Bureau and Whiteside Counties.
November 2022Thunderstorm WindDeer Grove-Law enforcement reported a tree blown near Hoover Road and Yates Road in Deer Grove. The time of the event was estimated using radar.
September 2018Thunderstorm WindDeer Grove-A NWS storm survey team found a large swath of corn blown down.
September 2018Thunderstorm WindDeer Grove-A NWS storm survey team found large tree branches down in the community of Deer Grove.
September 2018Thunderstorm WindDeer Grove-A NWS storm survey team found two large tree branches down.
March 2016Tornado (EF0)Deer Grove-A tornado uprooted a tree, damaged shingles and siding on two homes, and overturned a short portion of an irrigation rig. The damage was rated EF0 with winds estimated at 80 MPH. The path was about 50 yards wide and roughly 1.5 miles long.
May 2013Thunderstorm WindDeer Grove-A trained spotter reported a large tree blown partially over.
June 2013Thunderstorm WindDeer Grove-The time of this event was estimated using radar. A trained spotter reported a downed fruit tree along with several limbs that were 3 to 5 inches in diameter.
November 2013HailDeer Grove-Pea to penny sized hail fell.
September 2010Thunderstorm WindDeer Grove-Wind gusts estimated to be 60 mph were observed in Deer Grove, IL around 430 pm CDT September 21.
May 2009HailDeer Grove-no account filed

Every storm recorded in Whiteside County

Nearest settlements

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Map PlaceDistance Sheets
Hahnaman3.3 miles10
Tampico5.4 miles11
Yeoward Addition10.5 miles12
Como11.7 miles11
Rock Falls11.9 miles12
Leon Corners12.3 miles11
Sterling12.5 miles12
Douglas Park13.1 miles12

Elsewhere

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

Wikipedia article on Deer GroveAn encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied.
Wikidata item Q1182471The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0).

Provenance

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 407074. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.