A History of Celebrating History: How Lake Forest Has Marked Major Milestones

By Laurie Stein

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the United States, or “Semiquincentennial” if you’re a lover of large words. Such a milestone provides a wonderful opportunity to look back and celebrate our history – and with a full slate of events on the docket in 2026, residents will have ample opportunity to do just that.

With the anniversaries of our nation, our town, and our many longstanding institutions to commemorate, the annals of such a history-loving community as Lake Forest are punctuated by dozens of milestone celebrations.

 A look at Market Square during the 1976 Bicentennial.

Just 15 years after the founding of Lake Forest, 1876 marked the Centennial of the Declaration of Independence, America’s “first birthday party” where the nation for the first time took stock of itself as something other than a newcomer on the world stage. Lake Forest observed the Fourth of July with extra flare that year, with a picnic, music and fireworks in addition to tennis, croquet and archery competitions.

Several Lake Foresters, among them the John V. and Charles B. Farwell families as well as Mr. and Mrs. F. N. Pratt, traveled to Philadelphia to see the Centennial Exposition, America’s first official world’s fair. It was here that, among other debut inventions, Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone was demonstrated publicly for the first time. (If he’d only filed his patent a few hours earlier, it might have been Lake Forest University lecturer Elisha Gray exhibiting the telephone to the nation instead of Bell. But that’s another story!)

In 1907, Lake Forest University celebrated the semicentennial of its original 1857 charter with “the greatest alumni reunion in the history of the school,” including a ball game between graduates of odd and even years. Beyond the ceremony added to the traditional commencement dinners and addresses by the anniversary, the keys to the brand-new Harlan and Blackstone Halls were also presented.

The 1918 centennial of the state of Illinois was made much of by local schoolchildren. As a yearlong project, seventh and eighth grade students throughout Lake County compiled “school history” notebooks with photos and interviews with longtime residents. Many of those notebooks eventually made their way to county museums and now serve as excellent documentary evidence of the waning days of the “one-room schoolhouse” era.

The City of Lake Forest marked its own centennial in 1961. On February 18, more than 1,200 residents gathered at Lake Forest College’s field house to kick off a year of celebration. The dinner menu for the gala evening featured avocado, orange and grapefruit salad, bone chicken in a champagne sauce, wild rice, peas, rolls and lemon tarts.

Festivities extended through the summer to Lake Forest Day. The parade’s theme was “A Century in Review” and it included historical floats, period costumes and martial music that traced the Lake Forest story from covered wagon days to the jet age. 

Many of the historical societies and small local history museums in America began around our Bicentennial in 1976. With the 200th anniversary, we realized there was enough history that collecting and preserving it was worth undertaking. Lake Forest was a bit ahead of the curve, with residents founding the Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Historical Society in 1972 and launching a community campaign to save the former Gorton School and open it as Gorton Community Center in 1974.

The bicentennial year of 1976 continued to ignite a boom in local preservation efforts, leading to the founding of the Lake Forest Preservation Foundation and Ragdale Foundation, both of which celebrate their 50th birthdays this year, with multiple events, lectures, along with retrospective exhibitions at the History Center.

As we look forward to this upcoming America 250 celebration, we can see how our celebration of history has been intertwined with the larger celebrations of these important national milestones from our founding to today.