More than 40 years ago, one developer saw the Fox Valley's potential to lure people out of Chicago and aggressively pursued it.

Leonard W. Besinger, a builder of who plied his trade in Chicago and its nearby suburbs, owned a 200-acre farm north of Carpentersville called Meadowdale, where he raised hackney show ponies.

A fire destroyed the stables in 1949. Besinger rebuilt, but another fire destroyed the stables again two years later. Besinger then gave up on the idea of the horse farm, but a new one soon germinated in his head.

"The man is a builder, and he's got land," said Leonard W. Besinger Jr., who joined his father in developing the Meadowdale subdivision in 1963. "When a builder has land, he builds houses on it."

Besinger would draw people out of Chicago by building a self-sufficient town, complete with schools, churches and the Meadowdale Shopping Center, which still stands today.

The one farm was not enough for the town he wanted to build, so Besinger began buying more land, eventually winding up with about 2,700 acres, Leonard Besinger Jr. said.

"The people that came out from the city thought they were moving out to the country," said Marge Edwards, president of the Dundee Township Historical Society. "And it was the country, but it has just grown continuously from then."

Besinger built affordable, prefabricated houses and marketed them to veterans through low interest loans provided through the G.I. Bill, which often allowed a purchase with no money down.

But, much like today, there was resistance to expansion. Opponents went so far as to found a town called Middlebury to hem in Meadowdale. Besinger never realized his dream of founding a new town, but he forged ahead in 1953, eventually annexing his subdivision into the village of Carpentersville.

Despite the protests, the people came to Meadowdale. And they came in droves, overwhelming the opposition.

In 1950, Carpentersville's population was 1,523. Ten years later, it was 17,424. In 1970, 24,059 people were calling Carpentersville home.

The dam had broken.

The Fox Valley continued to grow, but the residential flood triggered by Meadowdale eventually slowed to a trickle - until recent years.

While development is nothing new the Fox Valley, it has picked up dramatically in the past 10 to 15 years, said Marc Thomas, senior planner with the Northeastern Illinois Planing Commission.

The highest jumps in population have been in the southeastern corner of McHenry County in Algonquin, Crystal Lake and Lake in the Hills, which has earned the moniker of the 5th fastest-growing community with more than 10,000 people. Lake in the Hills' population shot up by nearly 250 percent, from 5,882 to 20,417, between 1990 and 1998.

The Thornwood subdivision under construction in South Elgin is expected to change the face of the village by adding about 2,500 people to the nearly 14,000 already living there.

Thornwood, like so many other developments, met with resistance from residents, but it has calmed down since building has begun, said Hugh Smeed, vice president of Marketing for Crown Community Development, Thornwood's developer.

"People love living out here," Smeed said. "The Fox Valley's time has come. It's a very popular place to be.

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