Advertisements for everything from sport-utility vehicles to bottled water show Americans' penchant today for natural lands - or least for the notion they might someday explore the backwoods.

Nature's popularity was seen in Lake County last year when environmentalists gained control of the county board. Then in April two-thirds of voters countywide approved a $55 million referendum for the Lake County Forest Preserve District to buy more land and provide public access to more preserves.

But times have not always been so favorable for open space proponents.

Efforts to set aside undeveloped land in Lake County have faced challenges from the time local residents began seeing the encroachment of housing developments as a threat to the landscape.

Ethel Untermyer, a 33-year-old housewife at the time with no political experience, organized the effort to form the Lake County Forest Preserve District 41 years ago.

Her quest began after her 3-year-old son, Frank Irwin, wanted to go for a walk along the Des Plaines River near their home in what is now Riverwoods. New to the area, she was dumfounded to learn from a neighbor that land along the river was not publicly owned.

Patching together a network of environmental supporters around the county, Untermyer's home became headquarters for the movement to create the forest preserve district.

"Most people want the same things. They want a good life and clean air and their children to have a safe place to go outside," said Untermyer, now 75 years old.

On Nov. 4, 1958, 60 percent of Lake County voters approved the referendum, disregarding opponents who balked at creating another taxing body.

But while county board members - who still hold the dual role as forest preserve commissioners - voted to form the district, they were content to let it languish by not purchasing any land for it.

County board leaders, Untermyer says, blamed the forest preserve referendum of 1958 for the defeat of the county's referendum to build a new courthouse in Waukegan. Both taxing issues appeared on the same ballot.

As public pressure for buying land grew, the forest preserve board voted on Feb. 21, 1961, to buy 29 acres in Newport Township, the beginning of Van Patton Woods Forest Preserve.

The forest preserve district has since grown in fits and starts and now includes more than 20,000 acres. With proceeds from the latest borrowing referendum, the forest preserve holdings are poised to increase by at least 2,000 acres.

Some think there could be more forest preserves today if it hadn't been for a setback in the early 1990s, when an aggressive strategy for buying land backfired on open space proponents.

Libertyville Township Supervisor F.T. "Mike" Graham, known as the "father of the open space movement," received voter approval in 1985 to form the Libertyville Township Open Space District, the first in Illinois. He had first tried creating it in 1975, but was handed a walloping 4-1 defeat at the polls.

"The public couldn't see the growth coming," Graham said. "It took 10 years to get people thinking that paying preventative taxes was better than paying mandatory taxes."

Graham has been preaching the same open space message for years: It costs less in the long run to buy land and keep it from being developed than it does to provide services like schools and police for a housing development.

But when Graham became chairman of the forest preserve's land acquisition committee in 1989, he began leading an offensive to buy land through the government's imminent domain power.

In 1989 and 1990, the district bought more than 4,400 acres, but became entangled in numerous lawsuits.

While supporters saw property owners getting a fair price for their land, opponents jumped on the chance to portray it as intrusive government taking private property without justification.

"They thought we were trying to stop development," said Norman Geary, chairman of the Lake County Board from 1988 to 1990. "We couldn't have stopped it if we wanted to. We wanted to buy some of the large parcels before they were all gone."

Developers, whose efforts to buy land were being blocked in some cases by the forest preserve district, poured money into campaign funds for opponents and public opinion of the open space movement suffered. Graham and Geary were among the political casualties.

"It's taken us more than a decade to recover," said Carol Calabresa of Libertyville, current president of the Lake County Forest Preserve District.

Calabresa and her fellow members of the current county board majority are confident their revitalized "green" movement will continue.

"It's kind of refreshing to drive down a road for a half-mile or a mile and have nothing but open space," county board member Al Westerman of Warren Township said. "We can't have everything rooftop and asphalt."

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