Lake Geneva Bed and Breakfast
Most of our welcome visitors and guests are familiar with the many attractions in the Geneva Lakes area: our beaches at Library Park, and Big Foot State Park, specialty shops and galleries, golfing, boating, kayaking the Potawatomi Trail and lake crusies. Surrounding the area dotting the beautiful landscape are some of the worlds best Bed and Breakfasts. Let our site assist you in finding the perfect one for your dream Lake Geneva Vacation. To find great B and Bs, head over to our Rooms page. but first, a little history of the area.
18,000 years before, the last of many glaciers retreated to the North after having gorged-out and depressed our lake basin, and leaving a moraine of rolling, gravel hills.
Prior to the civil war, Lake Geneva was on the reverse route to the Great Lake ports for slaves escaping from Southern Illinois and Eastern Kentucky. After the war, the town became a resort for the rich Chicago families. These families began construction of the many mansions by the lake, and Lake Geneva became called the Newport (RI) of the West. Take a trip toors included Mary Todd Lincoln and Generals Sherman and Sheridan. The Chicago Fire of 1871 caused many Chicago families to move to their summer homes by the lake while the city was rebuilt. The construction and maintenance of these mansions, as well as household employment, developed a separate industry in the town adding to the milling, food, wagon and typeauthor manufacturing enterprises. After arrival of the railroad, thousands of tons of Lake Geneva ice were shipped each year to the Chicago market, until the beginning of World War II.
Our towns filled with homes and buildings from these earlier times. They represent the frontier and pioneering, as well as the later Victorian period.
Lake Geneva is a city in Walworth County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 7,148 at the 2000 census. A resort city found on Geneva Lake, it is southwest of Milwaukee, and popular with tourists from metropolitan Chicago and Milwaukee. It is the home of the Geneva National Golf Club.
Railroad acces to and from Chicago made the place a popular summer vacation spot for the barons of wealth in lumber, cattle, oil, steel, cement, manufacturing, and durable goods (Morton Salt, Wrigley Chewing Gum, etc.), with mansions and huge homes such as Stone Manor and Black Point built by the lake during the peak of the roaring 20s. The city was then called "The Newport of the West". The city is also known today as "The Hamptons of the Midwest". In the automobile era the city's fortunes at first declined and it became a mecca for Al Capone and other mobsters.
Hugh Hefner built a Playboy Club in Lake Geneva. Guns N' Roses lead singer, Axl Rose, also owned property on the southwest side of the lake from 1988 until 1998. The well liked song "Paradise City" was written about the Playboy Club. The club was closed down in 1981 and converted into the Americana Resort, and later to the present Grand Geneva Resort. Lake Geneva was also home to Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax until his death in 2008.
In 1954, Lake Geneva was named as one of the three finalists for the location of the new United States Air Force Academy, but finally lost out to Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The city operates under a mayor-council form of government. Lake Geneva recently annexed a huge tract of land that will expand the city around the south shore of Geneva Lake.
At first called "Muck-Suck" (Big Foot) for a Potawatomi chief, the city was later named Geneva after the town of Geneva, New York, found on Seneca Lake, to which early settler John Brink saw a resemblance. Geneva, to avoid confusion with the close toby town Geneva, Illinois, was renamed Lake Geneva; later the lake was renamed Geneva Lake. In practice both forms are used for the lake, but never for the city