Lake Geneva

Lia and I found the Lake Geneva Shore Path almost by accident, a narrow strip of public land — some of it barely a plank’s width — that by nineteenth-century legal quirk runs the entire twenty-one-mile circumference of the lake, cutting directly through the manicured lawns of mansions built by Chicago’s wealthiest families. We set out from downtown expecting a short stroll and ended up walking for hours, past boathouses with Tudor gables and gardens clipped to obsessive precision, the lake itself flashing blue between hedges the whole way.

The Shore Path and the estates

The path is the town’s great democratic secret: anyone can walk it, free, past estates that would otherwise be entirely hidden from view. We passed Stone Manor’s turrets, glimpsed the sprawling grounds of Black Point Estate (open for tours by boat), and stopped often just to watch sailboats tacking across the water below stone seawalls built a century ago by Swift and Wrigley money. Lia kept a mental tally of the ugliest boathouse; we never did agree on a winner.

Downtown and the lake itself

Downtown Lake Geneva keeps a resort-town energy that dates back to its Gilded Age heyday as “the Newport of the West” — fudge shops, a public beach thick with families in summer, and the Riviera Docks where the historic Lady of the Lake tour boats still circle the water. We rented a pontoon for an afternoon and cut across to the far shore, the lake’s remarkable clarity (spring-fed and glacially carved) letting us see rocks a good ten feet down. In winter, we’re told, the whole lake sometimes freezes solid enough for ice fishing shanties and skating.

Kishwauketoe and the quieter side

Away from the lake, the Kishwauketoe Nature Conservancy offered a different pace entirely — boardwalks over marshland, prairie restored to its pre-settlement state, and enough quiet that we heard sandhill cranes calling before we saw them. It was a useful reminder that this corner of Wisconsin was farmland and wetland long before it was a playground for Chicago industrialists, and that both versions of the place are still visible if you know where to look.

Getting There

Lake Geneva sits about ninety minutes from downtown Chicago and forty-five minutes from Milwaukee, making it an easy weekend drive via I-94 and Highway 12 from either city. Chicago O’Hare and Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International are the closest major airports, and once in town, the Shore Path and downtown are entirely walkable, though a car helps for reaching the outlying nature preserves.