847 Area Code – Elgin, Illinois: Location, Time Zone & History

Area code 847 covers Chicago's northern suburbs -- Elgin, Waukegan, Evanston, Schaumburg, and Arlington Heights among them -- and traces back to January 20, 1996, when the original area code 708 was broken into three pieces: 847 took the north, a new 630 took the west, and 708 itself remained in the central suburbs.

847 has an unusual claim in telecom history: in 1998 it hosted the first telephone number pooling trial in the United States, assigning numbers to wireline carriers in 1,000-block increments to try to slow exhaustion. The trial wasn't enough. Continued growth in cell phones, pagers, and suburban development pushed 847 to the brink within a few years, and area code 224 launched January 5, 2002 as an all-services overlay, with mandatory ten-digit dialing beginning the same day.

The 847/224 area is home to major corporate headquarters, most notably Allstate in Northbrook, along with a concentration of healthcare and pharmaceutical activity near Baxter International and Abbott Laboratories, and the Woodfield Mall retail hub in Schaumburg. Its neighboring codes -- 262, 630, 708, 773, and 815 -- trace the arc of the greater Chicago suburbs surrounding it.