While doing some recent reading on the Fermilab facility in Batavia, I ran into a passage in Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience that describes why South Barrington was not selected for the facility:

Illinois was forced on April 5 to withdraw its South Barrington site, despite having the strongest congressional support at the time, according to an AEC tally. Science magazine reported that residents from the affluent Chicago uburb feared that the influx of physicists would “disturb the moral fiber of the community.” (76)

That physicists would alter the character of a wealthy suburb for the worse is humorous to consider. How exactly would the “moral fiber” be disturbed? New housing? Non-white residents? I’m guessing the South Barrington area might wish that local leaders and residents had been more enthusiastic in 1966…