Arlington Heights woman fought to have golf course named after early settler

Nickol Knoll, the nine-hole, par 3 golf course in Arlington Heights, averages more than 18,000 rounds per year, and draws more than 10,000 people who walk its scenic path.

Probably few of its patrons, however, know of the original farm family that settled the land, and of their Arlington Heights descendants who live locally.

Mary Jane Nickol, whose husband was a great grandson of the early settler, died Friday. She was 85.

She and her husband, Cyril, lived in Arlington Heights for more than 50 years and they lobbied passionately for the golf course to bear the family name when Arlington Heights Park District commissioners opened it in 1995.

“To this day, I'm still proud that it's named after one of my ancestors,” says Cyril Nickol.

Mike Gilfillan, former Arlington Heights parks commissioner, remembers that the couple came to meetings for nearly three years before the board decided.

“There were three or four names brought forward,” Gilfillan said, “but it was unanimous in favor of honoring the Nickol family. We liked the heritage aspect of it.”

Mary Jane Nickol was an avid photographer, and she loved to take shots of the course's panoramic views, particularly from its overlook, which provides a view of the city of Chicago.

Her husband's great-grandfather, John Nickol, a German immigrant, settled on the land and developed its original 120 acres as a dairy farmer. Cyril Nickol grew up on a farm just to the north, off Nichols Road, also named for the family, though with a different spelling.

His great grandfather lost the farm during the Great Depression, Nickol said, leading it to change hands numerous times before the village of Arlington Heights acquired it in 1967.

Since he lived nearby, Nickol recalls that dirt from the farm was used in the construction of runways at O'Hare International Airport.

“They hauled it away morning and night, for weeks,” Nickol says. “They hauled so much, that it left a giant hole.”

The village of Arlington Heights used 56 acres as a residential landfill. During the 1990s, the landfill was covered with dirt from Lake Arlington, when the man-made lake was created one mile east of the property to ease flooding problems.

However, long before its role in the lake's development, the land also drew former Chicago Bear Walter Payton, who lived nearby in Arlington Heights during the 1970s and 1980s.

Golf course officials say he used to run up and down a 92-foot hill on the landfill, roughly from what is now the third-hole tee box to the eighth green.

When park district officials discussed renaming the course after its legendary Bear connection in 1999, Nickol and his wife again lobbied for the course to retain its link to its original settler, his great-grandfather.

Park commissioners agreed and compromised by installing bronze plaques in the general area where Payton ran. They continue to be part of the draw to the course, says Butch Peuvion, the park district's superintendent of golf.