Young campers become detectives, solve crimes

Young campers became detectives for a day at the Lake County Forest Preserve District's History Detectives day camp Monday.

Their mission at the Lake County Discovery Museum near Wauconda was to solve the biggest train robbery in county history, the 1924 Rondout Robbery.

Nine children, ages 9 to 10, learned fingerprinting and decoding secret messages before heading out on a scavenger hunt to recover the missing money.

"I think the kids really like it. We do a lot of forensic activities like fingerprinting, blood typing and cryptography," explained museum educator Jen Hart. "It's fun for them because they don't get to normally do these things. They have seen some of these things on television shows and movies and now they get to try it out in camp."

After spending the morning learning new skills and the history of the train robbery, the young Sherlock Holmeses rushed around the museum looking for clues during a scavenger hunt to find the missing money.

"It's really good so far. We learned about crimes that have already happened," said Abby Ray, 9, of Mundelein.

On Tuesday, the campers will try to solve the case of the poisoned cow from the 1840s, and a forest preserve ranger will walk them through a fake crime scene on Friday.