Most of our welcome visitors
and guests are familiar with the many attractions
in the Geneva Lakes area: our beaches at Library
Park, and Big Foot State Park, specialty shops and
galleries, golfing, boating, hiking the Pottawatomie
Trail, lake cruises, great food, and lodging services.
However, many wonder about the origin of the rolling
hills and lake, the early Indians, the pioneering
white settlers, the quaint town and its yesteryear
homes and buildings.
18,000 years ago, the last of many glaciers retreated
to the North after having gorged-out and depressed
our lake basin, and leaving a moraine of rolling,
gravel hills.
The earliest record of white men seeing this beautiful
expanse of water was a party traveling with the
Kinzie family between their army post at Fort Dearborn
(Chicago) and Fort Winnebago (Portage City) near
the Fox and Wisconsin River portage in1831. This
area was not on the river and lake highways of the
earlier frontier period and thus lay undiscovered.
The ancient Oneota Tribes of the lost Hopewell Culture
Indians lived here. These agricultural peoples enjoyed
an advanced civilization on these shores as long
ago as 1,000 B. C. They built effigy mounds in what
is now Library Park. These effigies of a panther
and a Lizard were removed several years ago. Eventually,
the migrating forest tribes, who were hunters and
fierce warriors, drove out the earlier inhabitants.
Subsequently, these later Indians were removed by
the United States Army to Kansas following the Black
Hawk War of 1831-32. Questionable treaty arrangements
in 1833 laid the foundation for the eviction of
Chief Big Foot and our local Potawatomi Tribe in
1836.
John Brink, a government surveyor, laid claim to
the waterfall power and adjacent land at the White
River outlet to the lake in 1835. He named the lake
after the lake in his home in Geneva, New York.
The Indians had called it Kish-Way-Kee-Tow, meaning
clear water. You must visit the dams and canal that
fed many mills subsequently built here (adjacent
to the Chamber of Commerce building in Flat Iron
Park on Wrigley Drive).
In 1836, Christopher Payne, a pioneer settler from
Belvidere, Illinois, established a rival claim for
the water power. He built the first log cabin, the
site of which is marked by a boulder and a plaque
on Center Street just north of the river. Following
a "Wild West" battle to settle ownership,
grist and sawmills were built. Lake shore logs and
many walnut trees were floated to the mills and
cut into lumber from which the town was built. Eventually,
flouring and wool carding mills followed. The fourteen-foot
drop of water provided the most economical milling,
and farmers brought their grain to Lake Geneva from
as far away as Kenosha, Milwaukee, Belvidere, and
Beloit. Our town was surveyed and laid out in 1837.
Earlier land sales were confirmed at the Federal
Government Land Office in 1839. The price was $
1.25 per acre. Immigrant settlers from New England
and New York flooded into the town. Most came via
the Erie Canal and steamboat or sailing ships through
the Great Lakes, embarking at Southport (Kenosha)
or Milwaukee. Others trudged through the swamps
and forest of Southern Michigan, Northern Ohio and
Indiana. By 1840, there were two hotels, two general
stores, three churches, and a distillery added to
the mills, cabins and houses.
Prior to the civil war, Lake Geneva was on the reverse
route to the Great Lake ports for slaves escaping
from Southern Illinois and Eastern Kentucky. After
the war, the town became a resort for the wealthy
Chicago families. These families began construction
of the many mansions on the lake, and Lake Geneva
became known as the Newport (RI) of the West. Visitors
included Mary Todd Lincoln and Generals Sherman
and Sheridan. The Chicago Fire of 1871 caused many
Chicago families to move to their summer homes on
the lake while the city was rebuilt. The construction
and maintenance of these mansions, as well as household
employment, developed a separate industry in the
town adding to the milling, furniture, wagon and
typewriter manufacturing enterprises. After arrival
of the railroad, thousands of tons of Lake Geneva
ice were shipped each year to the Chicago market,
until the beginning of World War II.
Our towns filled with homes and buildings from these
earlier times. They represent the frontier and pioneering,
as well as the later Victorian period.
(This Information was provided
by the Lake Geneva Chamber of Commerce)
