Historic Hoffman Estates Road with Documented 19th-Century and 20th-Century History
Shoe Factory Road, Hoffman Estates, IL 60169
Age
All Ages (drive-by only)
Cost
Free
Free drive-along public roads
Access
Limited Access
Public suburban/rural road
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1891 · 1891 Ludlow & Company shoe factory namesake · Charles A. Lindbergh School (1929-2007) · Earl and Elizabeth Teets Farm unsolved murder site · Cook County Forest Preserve adjacent land
Shoe Factory Road in Hoffman Estates, Illinois takes its name from the George Ludlow & Company shoe factory, a large building constructed in 1891 at the northeast corner of Shoe Factory and Dundee Roads. The factory employed 370 workers at its peak in 1920, producing 2,000 pairs of women's shoes per day. After the shoe operation ceased, the building was reused as Tiny Tim indoor miniature golf and later as the State of Illinois Sign Shop before closing in 1990. A second landmark on the road was the Charles A. Lindbergh School, a stone-built one-room schoolhouse erected in 1929 to replace the Helberg School after it burned; it was demolished in September 2007. A third site was the Earl and Elizabeth Teets Farm, located on the north side of Shoe Factory Road just west of where the road dead-ends into Higgins Road, where Earl, Elizabeth, their son Gary, and four guard dogs were shot to death — one of the most notable unsolved Cook County murder cases. By 2008 the road's most distinctive structure, an old Spanish Colonial Revival house, had also been torn down. Today Shoe Factory Road remains a public road threading through partially developed suburban and forest preserve land.
Sources
Local tradition associated with Shoe Factory Road combines documented historical events with embellished folklore. Long-circulating stories described a ghost child playing on the steps of an abandoned Spanish Colonial Revival house (demolished in 2008), occasional flickering lights in a roadside barn, and reports of figures seen in the surrounding woods near the lake area. The historically documented Teets family murder (the family and their four guard dogs were shot to death in their farmhouse) is the road's most significant real-world tragedy and underlies many of the more dramatic embellishments that circulated in regional ghost folklore. Specific Shadowlands-era claims about a man escaping a psychiatric ward and killing an entire family, or a child murdering his parents, are not corroborated by historical records and should be treated as folklore embellishment.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Drive the historic Shoe Factory Road from Beverly Road to Higgins Road, past the former Ludlow shoe factory site, former Lindbergh School site, and the former Teets Farm. All buildings of folklore have been demolished.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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