When James T. Gifford and his brother Hezekiah established the city in April 1835, he named it after his favorite song, a Scottish tune written about a village in the Scottish province of Moray. "I had been a great admirer of that tune from boyhood," he later stated, "and the name Elgin had ever fallen upon my ear with musical effects."

Home to the famous Elgin Butter Company, which was founded in 1871, the town of Elgin was once known as the Butter Capital of the World. It was with their Elgin Butter Cutter that the East Coast butter size was determined, according to a 1948 paper on the packaging of butter, and that's how the name Elgin stick was derived. (You did know East Coast butter is different than West Coast butter--right?)

Elgin is located 35 mi (56 km) northwest of Chicago, nestled along the banks of the Fox River.

The Elgin Watch Company employed three generations of Elginites from the late 19th century to the mid 20th century, when it was the largest producer of fine watches in the United States. Although the factory ceased production in 1965, the clocks at Chicago's Union Station still bear the Elgin name.

Elgin resident John Murphy invented the motorized streetsweeper in 1914 and later formed the Elgin Sweeper Corporation. The city of Boise, Idaho, purchased the first Elgin Sweeper in 1913, replacing its previous horse-drawn sweeper for a savings of $2,716.77 per year.

The Elgin Public Museum at Lords Park is the oldest building in Illinois built expressly as a museum that is still serving that purpose. The museum's stated purpose is as follows: "To promote a comprehension and appreciation of both our natural world and other cultures, both past and present; and to increase our awareness of the consequences of the decisions human cultures have made through time."

The exterior of the home in the television series Grace Under Fire was on Elgin's east side at 445 DuPage Street.

Elgin has a total area of 37.704 square miles (97.65 km²), of which 37.16 square miles (96.24 km²) or 98.56% is land and 0.544 square miles (1.41 km²) or 1.44% is water.

Channing Memorial Elementary School was built in 1968 on land that had previously been used as the first public cemetery of Elgin. In the early days of the school, students would frequently find pieces of gravestones, and while most of the graves were relocated, a few bodies remained on the school property until 1999 when they were excavated and removed for the addition of a new building. It's no wonder that students would often report a ghostly figure of a woman in white roaming the halls, or that she would disappear before they could get a good look at her.

E. C. Alft taught at Elgin High School for four decades while serving as city councilman, mayor, secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Gail Borden Public Library District, and various other capacities in local government, but he is perhaps best known as a historian of Elgin, publishing almost two dozen books, including Elgin Area Landmarks: A Community Heritage Tour Guide, South Elgin: A history of the village from its origin as Clintonville, and Elgin: Days Gone By. He also wrote a biweekly column on Elgin's history for the Elgin Daily Courier-News.