A Town Reshaped Twice: By Rail, Then By a Reservoir
Cicero's economy shifted from an 1834 founding and an 1838 river-crossing milestone into an industrial rail town after 1853, when flour mills, a sawmill, and two natural-gas-fired glass factories moved in. The town changed again in 1956, when Morse Reservoir opened after the landmark Red Bridge was removed to make way for it, drawing lakefront development that continues today.
Two Different Jobs, One Town
We treat Cicero's older industrial-era core and its newer Morse Reservoir lakefront homes as genuinely different jobs — different duct history, different insulation standards, different equipment age.