Twenty-seven years ago, we needed to relocate to accommodate my mother-in-law who was moving in with us. By then we had lived in the far north suburbs of Chicago for about five years. We had narrowed down our potential home to one of three options. I am sitting in the one we chose. It was the only home we looked at in which we struck up a conversation with the neighbors while house hunting. That incident characterizes what it has meant to live here all this time.
We moved from a town called Beach Park which at the time had neither a beach nor a park. We moved to a town (officially called a village here in Illinois) called Winthrop Harbor. The name sounds like it a stately, quaint waterfront community. People around here call it “The Harbor” which sounds even more uppity. It is none of those things, being neither stately or uppity, it sets back just a bit from the big lake which is surrounded by a forest preserve and state park.
Rather, it is a far north bedroom town to Chicago, mid-way between the big cities of Chi-town and Milwaukee, about forty-five minutes to either one. Located in northeast corner of the state. If you go north, you are in Wisconsin. If you go south, you are in Chicago suburbs. If you go east, you will get wet because Lake Michigan is right there. If you go west, there are more suburbs. We live a block and half south of the Wisconsin state line and about a mile from Lake Michigan.
Lake County is the wealthiest county in the state of Illinois. Though is has a couple of poor communities, it takes in a lot of elite towns adjacent to Chicago on the north with median home prices from one to two million dollars.
Winthrop Harbor is nothing like that. Being a bedroom town, there are things we do not have. A few years ago, we lost our grocery store and our drug store. Our high school is in a neighboring community, combined with other communities. We certainly don’t have a big box store of any kind. However, all these things are within ten to fifteen minutes. Gurnee, Illinois and Kenosha, Wisconsin are overflowing with shopping opportunities and most everything else one would expect in a city.
All of that is offset by what we do have in our village of 6,594 people:
- A large variety of nice single-family homes
- An ideal location between two major cities
- A nice village park and recreational center
- A good mayor who really cares about people and has brought in significant amounts of state and federal funding for village projects
The crown jewel of “The Harbor” is North Point Marina, the largest freshwater marina in the United States, encompassing 140 acres with over 1,500 boat slips, public beaches, a fishing pier, a yacht club, a restaurant, and 40 fishing charters. The marina attracts nearly one million visitors annually.
Adjacent to the marina is Illinois Beach State Park, a 4,160-acre area preserving the state’s only remaining beach ridge and swale habitat. With beaches and camping, it is one of the busiest parks in the state. The park is also home to over 650 native plant species and 300 animal species, including more than 60 state-protected species and several federally protected ones.
We have a nice, comfortable home, but it is the neighbors that set this place apart. We have been in each other’s homes and gone out for breakfast and dinner many times. Most of our immediate neighbors were retirement age and have moved to points south, Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Tennessee, or retirement housing, escaping Illinois’ erratic climate and high taxes. Even so, the people who moved in have also been great neighbors.
The neighbors and the people we have gotten to know have made “The Harbor” feel very much like home.
Sounds like a really nice place to live.