Forest Park Project: Opening Vistas to the Lake

In 2008, the Lake Forest Garden Club gifted the City of Lake Forest a Conceptual Master plan to restore, enhance and preserve Forest Park. To implement the plan, the nonprofit Forest Park Project boar...

A Dream of Lagoons: Proposed Development of the Lake Shore, c. 1910

For over a century, Lake Foresters have concerned themselves with the shoreline’s sustainability and future. In the early 1900s, the City Beautiful movement inspired a dream of a recreational lagoon a...

Forest Park Beach: Where Lake Meets Forest

Forest Park Beach was incorporated into the city of Lake Forest in 1861. Now totaling 29.72 acres, it was set aside as green space in the 1857 Plan for Lake Forest by Almerin Hotchkiss.

Protecting Our Shore: 1987 Shoreline Restoration

In 1987, Lake Forest residents invested in a large-scale restoration project to protect Forest Park Beach from erosion. Record high lake levels had destroyed the beach and bluffs were wearing away.

The High Road: The Changing Lake's Edge

It is hard to imagine that 14,000 years ago our communities would have been buried under thousands of feet of ice. And the glacier, known as the Laurentide ice sheet, over the next 2000 years would me...