Lake Forest-Lake Bluff History Museum

A one-room schoolhouse stood on the east side of Waukegan Road, north of Deerpath. This was located on land donated by the Henry Vickerman family and known as Vickerman School. Students ages 5 to 20, mostly children of farmers and farm workers who lived west of the Lake Forest city limits, attended school here from 1897 into the 1920s.

Though the Vickerman School expanded to two rooms in 1903, attendance at the Vickerman School remained so small that just one was required.

This map shows the location of the Vickerman School on Waukegan Road (then known as Telegraph). At this point, the school is surrounded by properties owned both by descendants of early settlers, like the Vickerman, Steele, Mines, Farrell and Connell families, and by estate farms like A. B. Dick’s Westmoreland, Helen Culver’s Rookwoods, and J. Ogden Armour’s Mellody Farm.

Prior to the Vickerman school opening in 1897, school for students on the north end of west Lake Forest was held in a structure on the Matthew Steele farm on Waukegan Road. This school was moved to Deerpath and Ahwahnee and later turned into a dwelling.