General History

Potawatomi Hunting Grounds

Prior to settlement of the Countryside Lake area by immigrants of European descent in the mid-1800s, Native American Potawatomi were the predominant residents. From an encampment near Indian Creek, southwest of Diamond Lake, the Potawatomi used the area as a rich resource for hunting and fishing, and they exchanged goods with the increasing numbers of explorers, traders, and trappers moving through the area.

At that time, the land now covered by the waters of Countryside Lake was a swampy, low-lying slough bordered by higher ground of woodland and prairie. “A little stream of water threaded from the Northwest through the slough and between the hills. The land was good mostly for pigs, except when heavy rains brought snapping turtles to the surface …” The immediate surroundings consisted primarily of oak and hickory savannahs and wide prairies dotted with dense woodlands.

Evidence of Native American life remains today. ‘Indian marker’ trees were young trees tied down and made to grow in such a way as to point in the direction of a major trail or hunting ground. A few 250-year-old oak trees behind the home at 26825 N. Chevy Chase Road are said to be such Indian marker trees. They point the way down a slope to what was then the slough rich with wild pigs, turtles, and fish.

Illinois became a state in 1818. However, the open spaces northwest of the fledgling town of Chicago remained unsettled. Intrusions of people of European descent into Indian lands continued to cause conflicts. By 1829 increasing pressure of westward-moving pioneers from the heavily settled eastern United States resulted in treaty negotiations between the U.S. government and the Potawatomi and other Native American tribes of the Northwest Territory.

The 1833 Treaty of Chicago stipulated that, “In return for some 500 million acres of land, the Potawatomi received $100,000 cash and $100,000 in goods, various annuities...and lands in Kansas and Missouri, where they promised to relocate no later than September 1836.”

As early as 1834 settlers began to stake their unofficial claims. Homesteads were marked by fences, rocks, or plow lines. “By 1837 … a plot of 80 acres could be bought for $1.25 an acre…”3 People were “attracted to prairie land that would not require hours of back-breaking work to remove timber. New Englanders were impressed with the soil’s fertility…”.

The Settlers

James C. Price, a tailor, arrived in Lake County in 1844 after a 40-day wagon ride from New York5. Price arrived with his eight children and his wife and was described as “comparatively poor when he settled in the county and has accumulated a competency by his intelligence, economy and industry.”6 He established a 100-acre homestead with a house at what is today 26825 N. Chevy Chase Road. The Price farm encompassed much of what are now the western portions of the CLA area.

Mr. Price located his home next to purported ‘Indian Marker’ oak trees on the bluff overlooking the slough. The present home is built on the 160-year-old fieldstone foundation of Price’s original structure. The mortise-and-tenon construction of the home’s basement testifies to its age. This type of construction relied on the connection of beams by notches and corresponding protrusions, and the use of wooden pegs rather than nails. The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency states that this was the primary method of construction in Illinois from statehood through the 1840s. The oak trees, now over 250 years old, stand just east of the existing home.

In 1842, John Aynsley, a currier by trade, left the eastern U.S. with his wife Hannah P. Hall and three children to seek opportunities on the western frontier. Aynsley operated a tannery in Ohio for three years before moving on to Lake County, Illinois. He arrived in 1845 and purchased 300 acres of farmland on what is today the east side of Countryside Lake, land accessed by the present Countryside Lake Drive and included in Countryside Homeowners Association (CHA).

The Aynsley home stood on the north side of what is now known as Midlothian Road, just east of the present entrance to Countryside Lake Drive. Aynsley eventually purchased a total of 520 acres. The home stood until the early 1980s when it was demolished by the developer who created Countryside Homeowners Association.

Moses Earle arrived in the area in 1854 and purchased about 250 acres of the Brand family farm on

what is today the north shore of Countryside Lake. The Earle homestead is still standing (albeit much altered) at 27448 N. Chevy Chase Road. The site was originally a stagecoach stop. Earle served as the township’s Highway Commissioner in 1867.

Born in 1859, R.D. Cook, the son of Edwin, eventually took over the family farm and owned the original homestead well into the 20th century. The house standing today at 26603 N. Gilmer Road is on the Cook property and dates to the late 1800s.

Henry Ames purchased 145 acres at the northwest corner of today’s CLA boundaries. Henry and his wife settled on land east of Gilmer Road and south of Hawley Street, land which is now partly encompassed by the Steeple Chase subdivision. Ames served as the Fremont Township Clerk in 1853 and as Fremont Township Assessor in 1857.

In 1855, twenty-seven-year-old Edwin Cook and his wife emigrated to Fremont Township from New York. They purchased about 100 acres adjacent to the Price farm, on what is today Countryside Lake’s southwest shore. Their land extended west to Gilmer Road. Cook served as the township’s Highway Commissioner in 1878 and 1880.

Late 19th Century

Throughout the 19th century farming remained the primary activity of Fremont Township. The nearby settlement of Rockefeller (today’s Mundelein) was a hub for agriculture-related enterprises. When the railroad came to Rockefeller in 1885, area farmers were able to conveniently ship their produce to other markets. By 1886 grain elevators were built where the railroad came through Rockefeller and the town’s grain elevators, grain store, and feed mill flourished. The area’s agricultural business also promoted development of related transportation and mercantile enterprises.

Into the 20th Century

By the turn of the twentieth century city-dwellers from Chicago seeking diversions and relaxation spurred the growth of recreational pursuits in the area. Diamond Lake, Lake Zurich, and Bangs Lake became popular resort getaways.

Increasing numbers of travelers to the area in the century’s early years, however, would not yet change the character of the land that would become Countryside Lake Association:

“.In the early 1900’s this area was essentially the same as it had been before the white man came. The area was surrounded by a hilly, wooded area at a much higher elevation. The swales were

boggy, full of rank growing swamp vegetation plus pretty wild flowers including buttercups, common blue violets, dog-toothed violets and wild geraniums. It was a wild area, undoubtedly beautiful, though there probably were few who thought so at the time. In the early 1900’s swamps and sloughs were considered useless, good-for-nothing wastelands…”7

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, increasing numbers of people ventured north from Chicago to the bucolic settings of Lake County. Many wealthy executives sought relief from the fast-paced city life, either by residing in near-by

suburban areas and commuting to the city, or by building country homes, farther from the city, for weekend and holiday vacations.

Fremont Township remained beyond the limits of this movement until the 1920s. In 1923 Gilmer resident August Schwerman dammed a slough just north of the settlement of Gilmer, creating the 33-acre Sylvan Lake.

Eighteen hundred acres lying just north of Sylvan Lake and west of today’s Mundelein were waiting for development from seeds first sown by Samuel Insull in 1906.

Damming the Slough - The Creation of Countryside Lake

Samuel Insull, One of the 20th century’s most famous and controversial financiers traveled from London, England to Mundelein, Illinois and created Countryside Lake Association.

Born in London in 1859, Samuel Insull obtained his first job at the age of 14. Beginning as office boy with a London firm of auctioneers8, Insull went on to become one of the world’s wealthiest financiers before losing everything in the Great Depression of the 1930s. He died in a Paris subway in 1938, virtually penniless by some reports. But during his extraordinary life, he found his way to a spot in Fremont Township where he created Countryside Lake.

In 1881, at the age of 22 and after working for Thomas Edison’s representative in Europe, Insull came to the U. S. to serve as Edison’s personal secretary. As Insull handled the details of Edison’s personal life and finances, the inventor and the businessman became close personally, and were said to be constant companions.

By 1892, in New York, Insull was Vice President and primary organizational manager of Edison’s electrical equipment manufacturing venture, General Electric. That year Insull was asked to move to Chicago as President of the then-struggling Chicago Edison Company.

It was in Chicago that Insull’s own financial empire took root and flourished. He had become convinced that the greatest future for the new electrical industry lay in control of electric power stations rather than in the manufacturing of electrical equipment. By 1907 he had consolidated Chicago’s electric businesses and founded Commonwealth Edison Company.9 In addition, Insull acquired control of related transportation businesses, including Chicago-area electric railroads, the North Shore Line, the South Shore Line, and the Chicago Elevated Railways. He also invested in natural gas and coal utilities, and founded Peoples Gas Company. By the time of his empire’s collapse in 1930, utilities built and managed by Insull produced electricity in 32 states and provided a tenth of the electricity in the United States.10

Insull sought his own respite from city life in 1906, when he purchased a 160-acre farm in Lake County. He created his country estate there, known then as Red Top Farms, and

constructed a mansion on Milwaukee Avenue, just outside of Libertyville. The mansion was purchased by the John Cuneo family after Insull’s financial ruin and is known today as the Cuneo Museum and Gardens.

According to Insull himself:

“During the years of my most active business life, I was mainly interested, outside of business, in farming. A love of the land was inborn in me. It was natural, with my family antecedents, that I should have that same desire for acquisition of landed property that most men of English birth or antecedents have.” 11

Finding himself in the country with limited electric service (dusk to midnight) might have generated Insull’s new endeavor, the “Lake County Experiment … the electrification of virtually every farm in the Midwest…”12 At a time when his railroads were expanding and transporting more and more commuters from the farthest reaches of Chicago’s suburbs to the city, Insull’s vision of developing those farthest reaches took hold – a vision encompassing residences, industry, jobs, and an exponentially-increasing demand for electric service.

By the early 1920s he had purchased thousands of acres of land in and around Mundelein, and in 1926 his North Shore Line commuter railroad was extended from Evanston to Mundelein. Insull installed water lines, sewers, fire hydrants, and paved roads in Mundelein.

In November of 1923, Insull created a land development trust known as the Lake County Land Association. Insull and friends acquired vast expanses of acreage west of Mundelein – land that would encompass a new and exclusive country community, which would become Countryside Lake Association.

The Association Created

On June 19, 1926, the document establishing the land area, shore area, and lake area of a new association was signed by parties owning the underlying land. Each signer granted to the others the right to use a new lake that would be created. They agreed to create a corporate association to be “...vested with full and complete power and authority to regulate the use and enjoyment of said lake area and shore area...”13 All properties within CLA boundaries have been deed-restricted since that time.

The 1926 founding document provides for the construction and maintenance of a dam at a point near the southeastern downstream flow of the boggy stream through the area. Cost of construction was “not to exceed $7,200.00.”14

From the “Lake County Register” newspaper, June 23, 1926:

From the “Lake County Register” newspaper, June 23, 1926:

“Plans for one of the biggest land development projects ever to be launched in Lake County became known Monday when it was announced that over 1,800 acres of land in Fremont Township has been secured by a newly formed organization known as the Country Side (sic) Lake Association. The 1,800 acres located one mile west of Mundelein are to be developed into exclusive country home sites.

The land contracted by the syndicate includes the major portions of sections 26, 27, 24 (sic)15 , and 35, all in Fremont Township. The development program includes the making of a 140 acre lake which will be approximately one and one-half miles long bordered on the northeast side by a nine hole golf course. Actual work of building a 167 foot dam at the east end of a natural depression has already been started. The lake will be 12 feet in depth and fed by natural springs.

· · ·

The nine hole golf course when completed will be one of the best and most difficult in this part of the state. The topography of the site selected for the course is hilly and considered ideal by golf experts. Four of the fairways will overlook the lake.

· · ·

The huge development program has already become a reality, a large number of wealthy South Chicago business men having already purchased several lots. All property will be sold only for high class residences and is highly restricted.

It is understood that several of the North Shores (sic) prominent society “gold coast” residents have been interested in the property. From present indications the actual building of fine homes will be underway in the near future.

Beautiful winding roadways about the lake ornamented on either side by huge shade trees are also included in the layout. The subdivision is located two and one-fourth miles from the new Mundelein North Shore Line Station affording fast and frequent train service to the loop.

Although details have not yet been announced in full the project when completed will be the showplace of northern Illinois according to promoters interested in the development program.”

Insull and Friends

Some of the Chicago area’s most prominent citizens chose to follow Insull’s idyllic vision of large country-estate living surrounded by nature and offering an abundance of recreational activities such as hunting, fishing, boating, hiking, and horse riding. Insull also created the Countryside Golf Course, the first public course in Lake County.

For Insull himself, the idyll lasted less than four years.

The End of Insull’s Dream

The stock market crash of October 1929 and the subsequent onset of the Great Depression quickly reduced the value of Insull’s great fortune. It is said that his companies were highly leveraged, and a great number of stockholders in Insull’s utilities were small investors who saw their life savings rapidly disappear. Insull was one of the industrialists who took the brunt of the fury over who to blame for the nation’s financial debacle.

He had not amassed a personal fortune separate from his business holdings and found himself struggling. Hounded by creditors, portrayed by the news media of the time as a crook, confronted by a bitter populace, and hearing of an imminent federal indictment, Insull sold what he could and left the U.S. After fleeing to Greece in an attempt to avoid extradition, he was seized and returned to the U.S. for trial.

Often forgotten in the telling of the sensationalized tale of Insull’s demise is the fact that he was completely acquitted of all charges in three separate trials. Many believe he had been set up as a scapegoat to deflect the blame from others for the country’s plight.

In poor health after the last of his trials and broken financially, the elderly Insull moved to France, where he died of a heart attack in a Paris subway on July 16, 1938. Some sources say that he died literally penniless. Others say that he would not have had to walk the streets of Paris carrying only the dime found in his pocket but that he was likely robbed as he lay dying.

First CLA Homes

The first homes to be constructed within the new association were five that remain today.

26884 N. Maple Road – Morningside Island

Insull himself built a hunting lodge in the mid-1920s for members of his family. It is the only home which sits directly on the waters of Countryside Lake, being located on the island next to what is today the association’s beach. The island was originally designated Scilly Island, named after the Isles of Scilly off the southwest coast of England, land of Insull’s birth.

The 3600-square-foot main cottage held two small bedrooms, two baths, kitchen, and living room. A smaller adjacent cottage accommodated servants. Four fireplaces in the main cottage helped to warm it, although evidence remains of a coal-burning furnace. The 38-inch-thick boulder foundation directly abuts the water and originally enclosed a boat

house below the living area. Much of the home was constructed using old ship parts which are in evidence

today, such as the basement portholes of the boathouse. Other nautical elements creating the ambiance of a sailing ship are the overhead beams of the lower level, hewn to resemble the curvature of a sailing ship’s deck above.

Traces of Insull’s privileged lifestyle remain to be seen in a walk-in concrete-encased vault closed by two pairs of steel doors still holding the original combination lock. It is thought that early users of the cottage retreat might leave their valuables behind after weekend visits instead of transporting them to and fro. (The home’s present owners think of the vault as a rather comfortable tornado shelter.)

Insull erected the stone miniature lighthouse on the island’s south edge. An 1800-square-foot guest-quarters outbuilding originally stood nearby next to an inground swimming pool. Over the years the main cottage has been remodeled and enlarged. The servant’s quarters were connected to the main building with the addition of a room in between. The guest quarters were dismantled, probably during the 1960s, and the swimming pool was filled in.

Since Samuel Insull, the island has had just five owners. When Insull’s properties were sold off during the 1930s, this island retreat was purchased by Robert M. Hutchins, Chancellor of the University of Chicago and a notable educator of the time.

Insull’s Scilly Island became Ship Shape Island to a later resident. Today, the island’s fifth owners have dubbed the property Morningside Island, and are committed to preserving this historic site.

The other four homes originally designed for the new association are at 21375 W. Lakeview Parkway, 20844 W. Lakeview Parkway, 20934 W. Lakeview Parkway, and 20880 W. Hawley Road.

The Gangster Era

During the prohibition years (1920-1933) Lake County attracted more than farmers and legitimate businessmen like Samuel Insull. It was a time of turmoil. Land was swallowed up by men from the city whom some called “checkbook” farmers, seeking an area with few regulations and cheap land.

Booze ran freely in the county and gambling enterprises were common. Lake resorts with dance floors were established along picnic groves and replaced farms around most of the public lakes. Edge-of-the-law entities created more private lakes by damming up creeks and digging out lowlands. Lake County was dotted with safe houses and private

meeting places. Local legend has certain Countryside Lake homes as private speakeasies, but no documentation has ever been found to verify

the stories.

Al Capone was rumored to own several farms throughout the county, all under assumed names. Terri Druggen, from Capone’s west side gang, had a home on Long Grove Road in Long Grove. According to local residents, bullet holes laced the gutters of Druggen’s home and several security systems were in place to warn of police closing in. A gangland murder at Manning’s in Fox Lake in 1930 assured an FBI presence in the area.

These were men that the times attracted, even as local farmers maintained their normal lives.

1930 to 1970

For nearly 20 years after the onset of the Great Depression Countryside Lake Association languished. During the Depression the resort boom ended and many local businesses closed while the area’s economy suffered as much as others. Large tracts of CLA land changed ownership during these years, and eventually some smaller parcels were created and sold piecemeal to individuals seeking a rural lifestyle.

Post-War Stirrings

During the 1950s spreading suburbia flirted with the attractions of Countryside Lake. Life within the association during the 1950s mirrored much of that decade’s relatively carefree American society. Many CLA members kept horses on their properties. The sparsely populated area remained a prime hunting ground. Residents were fairly prosperous, and socializing was a primary pastime. Life seems to have revolved around horseback riding, cocktails, hunting expeditions, cocktails, golf tournaments, fishing derbies, cocktails, and parties.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, portions of the CLA land area continued to be divided by individual landowners into smaller parcels (although “smaller” often did not mean much less than five acres), and sold to the increasing numbers of people venturing out from Chicago. The area remained mostly rural. Countryside Lake was known for its teeming wildlife, and hunters from the wider Lake County area proudly reported their successes in the open lands surrounding Countryside Lake.

By 1969 CLA membership stood at approximately 65.

Countryside Lake is "Discovered"

Through the 1970s the pace of land acquisition and division accelerated in Lake County, particularly in the lake communities, and Countryside Lake was no exception. The qualities of the lake itself and the close-knit homeowners association made the community attractive to an increasing number of families, and developers, large and small, took notice. By 1979 CLA membership had grown to approximately 87, and among those members were the purchasers of large tracts who saw the potential of large-scale planned developments.

By this time Lake County had adopted regulations for the Planned Unit Development concept that is used today for platting, zoning, and managing large tract development. One of the requirements for approval of a Planned Unit Development is the creation of a homeowners’ association which will take over, from the developer, responsibility for maintenance of drainage swales, retention ponds, and other modifications of the land made to accommodate construction of a planned community.

Countryside Homeowners Association (CHA) is created

In the mid-1970s a development entity known as Countryside Joint Venture (CJV) purchased several large vacant parcels of land, primarily on the eastern side of Countryside Lake. They proposed a planned community that included re-zoned and drastically reduced lot sizes, townhouses, condos, and annexation of the land to the Village of Mundelein. CLA members saw the proposal as being in direct violation of the Agreement Creating CLA (requiring no more than one residence per acre) and reacted aggressively. An expensive, drawn-out, but favorable 1980 judgment resulted in a plan scaled back to the scope now seen on Countryside Lake Drive and its branching streets.

Countryside Homeowners Association (CHA) was the name given to the association created to administer that development and the maintenance of its community-owned entrance, retention ponds, and drainage paths. Since CHA lies completely within the boundaries of CLA, CHA became an association within an association, and buyers of CHA lots became members of both associations.

Other results of the CLA/CJV legal action were the provision to CLA of clear title to the beach and picnic area, the lagoon peninsula, the vacant Maple Road lot, the tennis court, dam, and boat ramp. The legal action also led to an agreement modifying CLA boundaries, including removing a tract of land at the northeast corner of CLA’s original area – land which was purchased by the Forest Preserve District of Lake County. This area includes Countryside Golf Course. The agreement stipulated, however, that the three residences located within the “removed” area shall remain within the boundaries of CLA. A map of CLA boundaries today shows three homes geographically disconnected from the association’s main area but which hold CLA memberships. Those properties are 20880 W. Hawley Road, 20645 W. Highway 60, and 20919 W. Lake-view Parkway.

Continuing Growth

The development of residential lots included in CHA would ultimately add 121 members to Countryside Lake Association. In addition, the 1970s and 1980s saw increased property sales and home-building in the southwest CLA area. Land along the then-gravel Lakeview Parkway, to the southwest shore of the lake, was sold piece-meal by individuals to families building residences.

By 1985 CLA membership had grown to 103 and just four years later, by 1989, membership had grown by an additional 96 members, to 199.

In the late 1980s two remaining large tracts of CLA land area were purchased by developers: one tract of about 166 acres that is now Steeple Chase, and another tract of about 175 acres that became the two separate subdivisions of Camden Trace and Countryside Oaks. All three developments were once again required by the county to create associations to administer and maintain their

own community property. And once again, all three became associations within the governing Countryside Lake Association, with one unusual exception: Steeple Chase.

Boundaries of the property purchased to create the Steeple Chase subdivision lie only partially within CLA. Consequently, of the 58 lots in the entire Steeple Chase association only 28 come under the jurisdiction of CLA. CLA boundaries pass through three additional lots, but the portions of those lots that are within CLA boundaries do not meet the size requirement for membership in CLA.

Camden Trace

The 47 residential lots created for the Camden Trace subdivision, located west of Gilmer Road, are accessed by an entrance off Schwerman Road and lie completely within original CLA boundaries. This is the only large tract of CLA land area that is separated from the main CLA area by a major road. Camden Trace is also the only incorporated area in CLA, having been annexed by the Village of Hawthorn Woods at the time the subdivision was created in the late 1980s.

Countryside Oaks

The last (to date) CLA land area to be converted from agricultural to residential is the 66-lot subdivision of Countryside Oaks, which covers a portion of land southwest of the lake, including 10 lakefront lots.

Oaks lakefront property owners are subject not only to by-laws of both CLA and the Oaks association in terms of building and property use, but also to the particular 100-foot Shore Area easement restrictions

of CLA.

One Oaks lakefront lot has been designated as a recreational area for use by Oaks members, providing non-lakefront Oaks residents with nearby access to the lake. A clubhouse for Oaks residents has been built on that site.