A Denver, Colorado-originating promoter named H. B. Chamberlain bought 2,000 acres (810 ha) of land from a Chicago financier named Tom Hurley and Robert McCart. He attempted to develop Arlington Heights, but a hotel he built, Ye Arlington Inn, burned in 1894, and he died in a bicycle accident in London. Arlington Heights was developed after the United States moved military personnel to the surrounding area in World War I.[1]
Joyce E. Williams, a sociologist who wrote Black Community Control: A Study of Transition in a Texas Ghetto, wrote that almost all Lake Como women worked in Arlington Heights. Those women referred to it as "Little California", a reference to a fantasy idea of the state of California.[2]