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LAKE COUNTY

THIS COUNTY was organized in 1837 and named for Lake Michigan, which is the county’s northern border. The first county seat, a settlement founded by George Earle, was established at Liverpool in 1839. A year later the county seat was transferred to Crown Point, which was originally called Robinson’s Prairie, for Solon and Milo Robinson. A legend surrounds the name change. When Solon Robinson saved his neighbors’ lands from speculators, he was nicknamed “King of the Squatters”; hence, the settlement became known as Crown Point: “Crown” for the “king,” and “Point” for the elevation on which the courthouse and Robinson’s cabin stood.

The old Lake County Courthouse, known as “The Grand Old Lady,” was erected in 1878. After the county government agencies moved to new facilities in the 1970s, a nonprofit organization formed to restore the Georgian and Romanesque-style building. Today it houses a restaurant, shops, and the Lake County Historical Society.

In 1909 the Cobe Cup Race, the first major auto race in the United States, was held just south of the Court House on a twenty-five-mile track. The winner was Louis Chevrolet, a Swiss-born mechanic who would later go on to found the Chevrolet Motor Company.

From 1915–1940 Crown Point was known as the “marriage mill.” Marriages without waiting were performed around the clock, seven days a week. It is believed that more than 175,000 couples were married during this period. Some of the more famous ceremonies involved Rudolph Valentino, Ronald Reagan (and Jane Wyman), Tom Mix, Red Grange, Muhammed Ali, and Joe DiMaggio.

Crown Point was also famous for notorious bank robber John Dillinger’s renowned 1934 jail break.

In the 1890s, the community of Cedar Lake was established as a resort town on the Lake of the Red Cedars, named for the red cedars that grew in abundance along its shore. During the 1920s, Chicago gangsters, tourists, and prominent persons flocked to the resort town. Its heyday ended with the 1929 depression.

For many years Murrell Belanger operated a farm-implement store in the town of Lowell. On the second floor of his building, located on Mill Street, he built racecars from 1945–1966. His famous No. 99 won the Indianapolis 500 race in 1951, at an average speed of 126.244 miles per hour. In 1976 the building was destroyed in a fire.

Hammond was settled in 1851 and platted in 1875 by M.M. Towle. Along with his five brothers, Towle operated a hotel, meat market, packing house, and publishing company. Originally the settlement was called Hohman, for Ernest Hohman, an early settler. Later it was called State Line for its location on the Indiana-Illinois line. Finally, it was renamed for George H. Hammond, a Detroit butcher who founded the local slaughterhouse and adapted the refrigerated boxcar for shipping dressed beef.

Hoosier author Jean Shepherd spent his formative years in Hammond where he attended Harding Elementary School and graduated from Hammond High School in 1939. The house he lived in during the 1920s and 1930s is located at 2907 Cleveland Street. Shepherd uses the city’s former name, Hohman, as the setting of his humorous novel In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash.

The Ghosts of Cline Avenue

Many Mexican immigrants moved to the Lake County region in the 1940s because of the area’s thriving steel industry. They brought with them the Mexican folk tale of La Llorona.

When a ghost in a blood-stained white dress began haunting the intersection of Cline Avenue and Fifth Avenue in the predominately Mexican neighborhood, the spirit was referred to as La Llorona.

La Llorona is an ancient Mexican legend. The story goes that a wealthy man’s son fell in love with a young woman from a poor family. They had two children by this illicit union. She dreamed and longed for the day when he would marry her. This would ensure that her children would not have to live in poverty.