Places to Reflect: Tents, Cottages and Hotels

Tents were used to house campers for the first two to three summers of the Lake Bluff Camp Meetings. As the camp meeting became more popular, wooden summer cottages were built. An advertisement boaste...

Come Forth into the Light: The Lake Bluff Camp Meeting Association

The Lake Bluff Camp Meeting Association was formed in 1875 by a group of Methodist Ministers. For the next two decades Lake Bluff was the site of a summer camp, modeled on the Chautauqua movement, tha...

Unity Among Reformers: Frances Willard and the WCTU

One of the most prominent people to be part of the Lake Bluff Camp Meeting was Frances Willard, legendary leader of the influential Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Soon after becoming the n...

The Competition: Des Plaines Camp Meeting

The Des Plaines (IL) Camp Meeting, founded 10 years before Lake Bluff, is still in operation today. Although several Protestant denominations participated in the early meetings of the Des Plaines Camp...

No Spot Like Lake Bluff!

Lake Bluff was an original stop on the Chicago & Northwestern railroad when it came through Lake County in 1855 and most visitors to the camp meeting arrived by train. A special spur took visitors eas...

A Leader for Lake Bluff: Solomon Thatcher

Solomon Thatcher Jr., a real estate developer and financier, was key to the establishment of the Lake Bluff Camp Meeting in 1875. A devout Methodist, he was looking for a site to create a religious an...

Rev. Matthew M. Parkhurst: Camp Meeting Preacher

A popular religious leader of the Lake Bluff Camp Meeting Association, Reverend Matthew M. Parkhurst was the pastor of Grace Methodist Church in Chicago on Michigan Avenue. When that Chicago church bu...

Educational Experiments: The Chautauqua Movement

The 19th-century Lyceum movement, an early form of adult education, was an important precursor to the Chautauqua Movement. Lyceums numbered 3,000 by 1834 with lectures, discussions, and debates includ...

"A Lake in the Meadow": Artesian Lake

Location: Sheridan Road and Sheridan Place, Lake Bluff

In the 1880s, with the construction of the grounds for the Lake Bluff Camp Meeting and the building of the large Hotel Irving, a need arose for water to supply all those buildings. An artesian well wa...

"Old" Hotel: The Hotel that Launched a Community

Walnut and Washington, Lake Forest

Location: Westminster and Walnut, Lake ForestEveryone knew the place to be was the Lake Forest Hotel in 1858. When the three-story, white frame structure opened in the summer, it was the prospective t...

Lake Bluff Camp Meeting Association Office

Location: 500 East North Avenue, Lake Bluff

Built circa 1876, this house served as the office of the Lake Bluff Camp Meeting Association (LBCMA) and was originally located on Prospect Avenue, where the Union Church now stands. After the Village...

Map: Lake Forest, 1881

Many streets in Lake Forest changed their names in the 1910s.Depot Avenue --> McKinley AvenueHazel Avenue --> Church StreetLinden Avenue --> College RoadPoplar Avenue --> Rosemary RoadMapl...