From 1870 to 1915, this free-standing, perpetual-burning lime kiln produced lime mortar, a product widely used by the building industry. The area was known as Buffalo Grove after a thriving early settlement along the Galena Trail, and the region kept that name even after the community relocated in 1855 and was renamed Polo. Workers used ropes and pulleys to raise baskets of quarried limestone to the top of the kiln and dropped the rocks inside. To create the intense heat needed to turn the rock into fine, white-powdered lime, they fed wood into the draft shaft through two fireboxes on opposite sides of the kiln. The powdered lime fell into a chamber at the bottom, where it was shoveled out and stored in barrels in the attached lime house, while ashes fell into ash pits under each firebox. The kiln stands on the quarry floor close to the resources needed for lime production, with adjacent bluffs providing raw material and a nearby grove of trees supplying fuel. The site was purchased by the Polo Historical Society in 1985, restored to functional condition in 1993, and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.