From Tracy to Home of Proud Americans
The first settlers reached Hickory Creek in 1829 — fur traders Aaron Friend and Joseph Brown built cabins north of the creek, and the cluster that grew at what is now US-30 and Gougar Road was known as Van Horne Point. In 1832 William "Uncle Billy" Gougar secured the area's first post office. The township organized in 1852, the same year the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific laid its track through it, and the new station was named Tracy, after the railroad's superintendent.
The name didn't last. John Van Duser proposed New Lenox, after Lenox, New York. The village was platted in 1858, the new name was adopted in 1863, and in 1898 the township launched the first rural Bell telephone company in Illinois — a farm community that wired itself up early. Incorporation came late, on October 4, 1946. Growth came later still.
The Rock Island stop kept New Lenox a farm-and-commuter town through most of the 20th century. Then I-80 opened along the village's northern edge, and in 2007 I-355 was extended south to meet it at New Lenox's doorstep. Population climbed from 24,394 in 2010 to 27,214 in 2020 — up 11.6% in a decade when Illinois as a whole lost residents — and the Census Bureau's latest estimate puts it at 28,006. The village opened the Commons and its Performing Arts Pavilion in 2005, built a roughly 65,000-square-foot Village Hall at 1 Veterans Parkway in 2007, and in June 2025 opened a 100-acre sports complex on the former Cedar Crossings land.
The biggest change was medical. On February 26, 2012, Silver Cross Hospital — founded in Joliet in 1895 — moved into a new $400 million campus at 1900 Silver Cross Boulevard, where I-355 meets Route 6. It is now a 348-bed hospital with about 2,900 employees and 900 physicians, 21,067 admissions and 78,763 emergency visits in fiscal 2023, and a 10-time honoree on the Merative 100 Top Hospitals list. For a car service, that means traveling physicians and administrators, out-of-town family flying in to visit, and hotel-to-hospital runs — a steady stream of rides that did not exist in New Lenox 15 years ago.
And in May 2025 the village made international news for a reason no one could have planned: Robert Prevost, elected Pope Leo XIV, is registered to vote in New Lenox, where his brother John lives. Proud Americans, indeed.
Modern New Lenox is young, owner-occupied, and affluent. Median household income is $140,865. Homeownership is 92.4%. Median age is 36.8, and the poverty rate is 1.5%. Residents work in education, health care, and retail more than any other sectors, and the average commute is 32.7 minutes — well above the national figure, which tells you how much of the village leaves town every morning. Three high schools — Lincoln-Way Central (the Knights, 2,017 students), Lincoln-Way West (the Warriors), and Providence Catholic (founded 1880, Augustinian, 33 team state titles) — put prom season, college visits, and tournament travel on the calendar every year.
Lincoln Limo Inc serves New Lenox because New Lenox travels. A village with two commuter lines, a regional hospital, three high schools, a 33-minute average commute, and a 92% homeownership rate is a village of standing reservations: the 4 a.m. Midway run, the visiting surgeon's O'Hare pickup, the family of 6 to Union Station for the Amtrak. Reservation-based black car service for residents who want a vehicle that arrives when promised, charges what was quoted, and treats every booking as if the next twenty depend on it. Same driver, same Escalade ESV, every booking, year after year.