It didn't take the start of a century to bring many Lake County communities to life.

There was plenty going on before 1900. After all, census figures show there were already 34,000 people living in the county at the start of the century.

Lake County Museum Collections Coordinator Diana Dretske said probably the best way to describe the time from 1800 to 1900 was a "period of settling." Those who moved into the area were preparing the land of lakes for how they thought it could best be used.

There was a lot of farming, and settlements located along Lake Michigan, the Des Plaines River, or near a rail line were among the first to come to life.

By 1900, a dozen of the 52 communities that exist today in the county had already been incorporated. They included Hainesville, Grayslake, Libertyville, Lake Forest, Lake Zurich, Wauconda, Waukegan and Barrington.

In the summers Lake County's population swelled in resort towns such as Fox Lake and Diamond Lake. The Mineola Hotel was built in 1884 on Fox Lake and today is still the largest wooden structure in the county.

By the late 1800s, those lake communities were capitalizing on the water in winter as well by harvesting ice.

Along Lake Michigan, a group of folks who showed up at a Methodist summer camp was so enamored by the beauty of the lakefront that they stayed, according to one written history. Today, that camp is Lake Bluff.

"People weren't isolated by any means," Dretske said.

In 1835 an old Indian trail was transformed into Milwaukee Avenue and by the following year, a stagecoach between Chicago and Milwaukee regularly used the marked route. In 1836, the county's first post office opened in Half Day, and William Fenwick built the first house in Fremont Township along Diamond Lake.

Lake County became its own entity, rather than being a part of McHenry County, in 1839 thanks to a vote by the state legislature.

That same year, the county seat was established in Libertyville, then known as Burlington. The community was home to the county's first physician, the first blacksmith and the second lawyer.

Burlington was growing faster than nearby Waukegan, then called Little Fort. However, the county seat was moved to Little Fort in 1841 after a county-wide referendum. Little Fort won the election by 188 votes, nearly 200 more votes than were cast in the 1840 presidential election. Burlington accused Little Fort supporters of stealing the election, charging votes had been brought in for hire from as far away as Chicago.

Dretske said it was business leaders who worked to get the county seat in Little Fort. They believed business would benefit by having the county seat as a port on Lake Michigan, she added.

Just five years later, communities started forming in the new county. Thanks to Elijah Haines, a state legislator, Hainesville incorporated in 1846. It started growing after the incorporation, but that growth slowed when rail tracks were put down in neighboring Grayslake.

By the time Hainesville was founded, activists had already been organizing in the county. In 1845 there was a meeting in what is now Libertyville by a group promoting abstinence of alcohol. They chose as their president, Seth Paine, who was key to the development of Lake Zurich. And in 1846, the Lake County Anti-Slavery Society formed in Antioch, and Half Day was host to a large religious meeting to protest slavery and intemperance.

Plans for the first toll road came to Lake County in 1848 when county commissioners approved construction of Turnpike Plank Causeway from Little Fort to the McHenry County line. John Gage, a large landowner along the route, financed much of the work, which took a court order to get started. The road was planked for six miles to the west of Little Fort and extended to Hainesville in the summer of 1849 - the same year that Little Fort was incorporated.

Three toll gates were set up, with each unit consisting of four horses and a coach, wagon or sleigh paying 3.5 cents a mile. The plank road was abandoned in a few years because the tolls did not pay for the cost of repairing the planks that warped from inclement weather.

Today, the plank road is Route 120.

By the mid-1800s, Lake County's population had grown to 18,660.

More and more immigrants were arriving each year. Lake Zurich, for instance, was a center for German immigrants in the 1850s and 1860s. It also had a reputation as a shipping center for cattle, hogs and dairy products thanks to the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railroad that ran through it.

On the east side of the county, immigrants came to work in industries in Waukegan and North Chicago. Finns, Turks, Croates, Slovaks and Lithuanians moved to Waukegan, which saw its population double from 1890 to 1900. North Chicago, meanwhile, had clusters of Polls and Greeks settle there.

Meanwhile, farming communities such as Wauconda were coming together toward the turn of the century. Justus Bangs arrived there in 1836, thanks to advice from a man he met in Mechanic's Grove, now Mundelein. Wauconda incorporated in 1877 and by the turn of the century, it had a school, a post office, a general store and two resorts.

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