History of One of Our Townships

The new book, Images of Grayslake and Avon Township, arrived at the Grayslake Museum on Monday. It will be available for purchase at the Historical Society's booth near the NW corner of Center and Whitney Streets during Farmers Market on Wednesday, October 3. There will be a book signing at the Grayslake Public Library on Sunday, October 7 at 1:30.

The price is $19.99. To order by mail. send an additional $4.25 to cover postage and handling to the Grayslake Historical Society, P. 0. Box 185, Grayslake, Illinois 60030.

They book will also be available at the Grayslake Village Hall and the State Bank of the Lakes with the Grayslake Historical Society getting the proceeds. The book published by Arcadia contains 127 pages with 215 images. There are chapters on Hainesville, the Round Lake Area, the Lakes, and the Land with the major focus on Grayslake. Vintage pictures help to tell the story of the area.

A Brief History of Round Lake

NOTE: I had way to much going on today, so I am publishing a great post from the past, October 2005 in fact!

One of my regular readers Brian Schwartz sent me the following today with no commentary but its an excellent seque into a topic that we need to start preparing for, mainly our 100th Anniversary celebrations. Over the next few months we are going to kickoff a planning committee to lead the planning charge. We have lots to do and I already am hearing from residents asking me what we are going to do?

By the way the symbol is the Japanese Kanji Character for the year 2008. It was the best I could do for something that had a 2008 in it and was marginally clever.

Lake County, 40 miles NW of the Loop. While the retreating Wisconsin glacier left an attractive environment for farmers who entered western Lake County after the Black Hawk War of 1832, the numerous lakes and wet prairies there prevented easy movement to agricultural markets. Farmers traded at stage coach trail communities such as Hainesville, often exchanging dairy products and eggs for what they could not craft on the farm.

In the 1890s, when officials of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad extended a branch line from their Milwaukee-Chicago main line at Junction (later Roundout) to Janesville, Wisconsin, western Lake County farmers gained easy access to Chicago.
Landowners near Hainesville such as Amarias M. White knew that a railroad station would increase property values. In a classic ploy, White offered the railroad free land in exchange for a station. He also drew up a town plat to show railroad officials that profitable traffic would come through his station site. White succeeded, and Round Lake, named after the nearby lake, not Hainesville, whose inhabitants failed to offer the railroad anything, became the area station on the "Milwaukee Road."
White's promise came true in 1901 when the Armour Company decided to harvest ice from Round Lake for their refrigerator car operations. They erected a massive ice storage building holding over 100,000 tons for shipment in spring and summer months.
In 1908 White and his partners acted to incorporate the station area. The proposed village population was too small to meet incorporation requirements, so area farmers were included in the village with the understanding that, once incorporation was successful, their farms would be disconnected. On January 7, 1909, Round Lake incorporated with White as village president. Soon after, those farmers who wished to disconnect were allowed to do so —an act which prevented present-day residents of the village from having any public access to their namesake lake.
A fire in 1917 destroyed the Armour operation in the village, although a dormitory housing winter ice cutters survived. Noticing vacation resorts which had sprung up around the lake, the Armour Company remodeled its dormitory into a rural summer retreat for company employees. The praise showered on the Round Lake environment by them helped bring a slow trickle of nonagricultural residential growth to the village.
With post World War II expansion into the suburbs, Round Lake's Armour-era reputation as a rural refuge acted as a magnet for development. People began moving into the unincorporated area around the lake and demanding municipal services. The village of Round Lake failed to make those annexations. As a result new communities, using the words "Round Lake" in their corporate titles, arose. This resulted in a duplication of political hierarchies and village services which still exists.
Since the 1970s, Round Lake has embarked on an expansive annexation program. With ongoing development of those areas, Round Lake is expected to continue to grow.

The Train Engine at the Bottom of Round Lake

When I go speak in schools (about 10-15 times a year) I always get asked to tell the legend of the "Train Engine at the Bottom of Round Lake". The kids love the story, I love it as well, plus its an excellent "accurate" history lesson with a potentially mythical ending.

On the site of today's Alpine Country Club used to exist the Armour Ice House. There are two pictures of the actual ice house from 1912 in this post as well.

Ice houses were buildings used to store ice throughout the year, prior to the invention of the refrigerator. The most common designs involved underground chambers, usually man-made, which were built close to natural sources of winter ice such as freshwater lakes (i.e. Round Lake)
During the winter, ice and snow would be taken into the ice house and packed with insulation, often straw or sawdust. It remained frozen for many months, often until the following winter, and could be used as a source of ice during summer months. This could be used simply to cool drinks, or allow ice-cream and sorbet desserts to be prepared.

So how did they create ice? In winter months, ice was chopped from a lake surface and often dragged by sledge to the ice house, and in summer months, was delivered from local ice houses to residences in ice wagons or ice trucks, where it would be stored in an ice box, which was used much like a modern refrigerator. In Round Lake it was not dragged by sledge but was moved via temporary rail lines laid down on the iced over lake. There was an engine that would move the ice back and forth. In addition the engine would take loads up the rail spur to the main line about half a mile away. As home and business refrigeration became more common, ice houses disappeared. The home ice delivery business declined, and was virtually gone by the late 1960s. Our ice house was gone by 1928 as near as I can tell.

You can still see evidence of the rail spur, which is still existent. When our downtown development district gets cooking (it will) one of the goals for this area is to make a nice walking path from the older area of Round Lake into our downtown.

So here's how the train engine got to the bottom of the lake, with the advent of refrigeration the ice house business collapsed quickly in the late 20's and with the depression, business contracted even quicker. So when the decision not to continue with the ice house was made, the question was what do to with the equipment. So legend has it that when the last ice cutting season was finished the engine was parked on the ice, and allowed to fall in when the ice melted.

Round Lake from the Sky in 1939

The Round Lake Lake Mangement Commission sent me the annual report recently and I got this marvelous picture of the lake taken from a plane in 1939. Round Lake was 31 years old and Round Lake Beach was 4 years old. Among the highlights of the last year and next year are:

• The Annual Round Lake Cleanup
• Review of "Fishing Should be Fun" Derby
• Govenor's Home Town Award
• Fish Stocking plans for the 2006 and 2007 timeframe
• On going cleaning efforts
• Boat Safety Patrols
• Commission Newsletter

Special thanks for how organized this commission is to Doug Vehlow, Niel Flamm and John Gutknecht who are my appoinments to this 9 person board.

Round Lake's History Come Alive

Richard Herrmann a long time ACE Hardware employee and a Round Lake Park resident, is one of the keenest history buffs around on the Round Lake Area. I run into him at ACE (he knows more about screws, bolts and Ace in general then anyone) and at the Round Lake Area Health Club. He knows I am a history buff, so he is always teaching me about Round Lake's history. Well today he taken the cake so to speak when he told me about a collection of online photographs via the Lake County Discovery Museum on Round Lake. With our centential coming up in 2008 I found this quite fascinating. Many many thanks to Rich for pointing this out to me, I have been playing with this site all morning!