History
Looking Back
Forest Lake was created during the Wisconsin Glaciation Period, over 13,000 years ago. Our lake is in the Northern Kettle Moraine region, which was born out of the collision of two tongues of a glacier, separated by the Door County peninsula. Eventually the two bergs merged. As the glacier continued its slow travels southward, eastward, and westward it melted during warming weather. These are the same glaciers that ended up forming the Canadian and American Rocky Mountains, as well as parts of the northeast region of the United States and Canada.
There is much speculation on when humans began inhabiting the Forest Lake region. Remains of hunted mammals with clear butchering marks, found in the Kenosha region in 1999, have been carbon dated to 12,500 years ago. Current research still conflicts on how, and when, humans arrived locally. Copper jewelry and pottery artifacts from the earliest residents (Winnebago, Menominee, and Santee Sioux tribes) have been carbon dated to 600 B.C. It is not hard to imagine that these peoples lived in this region much earlier.
Jean Nicolet arrived in Green Bay in 1634 and began the introduction of fur trading, and eventually, timber trading. This was a time of massive European immigration, primarily of German and British heritage. Sadly, they introduced diseases to the local Indian tribes, who suffered devastating loss, as they had no resistance to these new threats. Eventually many of the remaining tribal people were moved west by federal decree. The European immigrants then settled in and began farming here, founding the local villages of New Prospect, Campbellsport, Kewaskum and New Fane (all railroad stops).
In the late 1800s, Peter Van Blarcom, a local entrepreneur born in New Prospect, was contacted by the “The Teachers’ Country Club” of Chicago. This group of public school teachers was formed to demand higher wages and other benefits - similar to today’s unions. They were seeking a serene vacation spot to build a refuge from the big city. Blarcom immediately thought of Sand Lake (now Forest Lake) as a good location for their country club. At that time, 4 farms abutted the lake and there were no buildings on the lake. Blarcom purchased and subdivided Sand Lake, and he officially renamed it Forest Lake. He established sixteen cottages and a clubhouse on a 30-acre plot on the lake’s western shore and built the teachers their “Country Club.” The teachers flocked to the resort for many years. Blarcom divided the remainder of the lake into 25-foot frontage lots; by 1909 all that he had listed for sale had sold (oftentimes more than one lot to a single buyer).
During the beginning years of Forest Lake’s settlement, most of the cottage owners were from Illinois. They could easily catch a train into Campbellsport, then horse and buggy, to their cottages in 3-1/2 hours. With the introduction of motor cars, more settlers came from Wisconsin. Ultimately there would be 57 homes on the lake. Electricity was finally introduced in 1936. Shortly thereafter, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources became an owner of portions of the lake, resultantly becoming a strategic partner for the lake’s welfare. The Forest Lake Improvement Association (FLIA) was created in the 1930s as a social club. In the intervening years FLIA has turned itself into a meaningful legislative and democratic operant for its resident members, handling topical issues such as invasive plants, fish and shoreline management, private road maintenance, cooperative efforts with the DNR, and much more.
We owe much of this information to our Forest Lake Historian, Walter J Johannsen. If you would like to read more detail, please reference his incredible Emerald Waters: A History of Forest Lake.