Lake Geneva Today: Layers on a Glacial Lake
Near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
Lake Geneva today is a small Wisconsin city of about eight thousand people with a lakefront that draws summer crowds from Chicago and the suburbs, a Main Street full of restaurants and shops, and a seasonal rhythm that has not fundamentally changed in a hundred years. Trains once carried weekenders here from Chicago, but Metra no longer serves the city, and on summer Fridays visitors arrive by car in a fresh wave and head down to the water. Cruise boats depart from the downtown pier on tours that circle the lake and narrate the estates along the shore.
The Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay draws visitors interested in the history of science. A statue of Gary Gygax in downtown draws fantasy gaming enthusiasts who leave dice on his stone as tribute, a practice not officially sanctioned and impossible to stop. The Playboy property is now a conference resort.
The Wrigley and Schwinn estates have passed through many hands. The Shore Path remains open to anyone who wants to walk it. The fish in the lake are still there, the depth still exceptional, the water still cold.
Geneva Lake is, stripped of all its cultural history, what it has been for ten thousand years: a deep glacial kettle, unusually clear, surrounded by hills that glaciers shaped, which people have been finding beautiful enough to build their lives around for as long as anyone has lived near it.
