Where the Clay Came Out of the Riverbank
East Dundee was platted in the early 1840s by first settler Joseph Russell and incorporated in 1871, four years after its twin village West Dundee. That same year, German immigrant David Haeger became part owner of a brickyard that had opened along the Fox River in 1852, digging clay straight out of the riverbank to fire into brick — brick that helped rebuild Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871 — before the operation grew into Haeger Potteries, which produced art pottery from 1914 until it closed in 2016 after 145 years.
A Century and a Half of Building on Fox River Clay
A village whose signature industry was literally digging clay out of the Fox River bank is about as direct a confirmation as this area offers that East Dundee's ground holds water: the same clay that fired into brick and pottery for a century and a half also expands when saturated and shrinks when dry, the same behavior driving foundation movement across Kane County's glacial till. Homes built near that old brickyard corridor sit close to both the river's water table and unusually clay-rich soil, a combination worth flagging before any wall-crack or drainage estimate.