3Lakes 1 BEAUTIFUL
POWERFUL
REGION
GENEVA • COMO • DELAVAN
COMBINING FORCES TOWN OF LYONS • CITY OF LAKE GENEVA • VILLAGE OF FONTANA • TOWN OF DELAVAN • TOWN OF GENEVA • VILLAGE OF WILLIAMS BAY TOWN OF LINN • CITY OF DELAVAN
LETTER FROM VISIT LAKE GENEVA PRESIDENT, ED SVITAK It is with great pleasure that VISIT Lake Geneva has partnered with Travel Wisconsin to create a publication to HONOR Tourism Week which was first established by Congress in 1983. With Walworth County generating the sixth largest tourism economic impact in the State out of 72 counties…we are fortunate to live in an area that people crave to come visit–and experience every day! In 2017, the State witnessed over 20 billion dollars in economic impact from tourism and Walworth County garnered over $729 million of this! This impact supports hotels, restaurants, attractions and retail stores that employ close to 7,000 people. Lake Geneva has been blessed to be a “lure” to visitors since founded by the first known white settler Christopher Payne in 1836. He was instrumental in the development of Lake Geneva and Lake Como.
Mars Resort located on Lake Como
Let’s take a walk down memory lane on the hotels and towns that were instrumental in the development of tourism in the Lake Geneva Region.
In 1871, the Chicago Fire caused an abundance of Chicago families to relocate to their summer homes during the rebuilding of Chicago. The construction and maintenance of these mansions, as well as household employment, began to develop a separate industry in the town which would become known as Tourism!
as a place for members of the Mabie Circus to stay. When the circus was bought by Barnum and Bailey, it became the winter circus headquarters. Famously, when one of Barnum and Bailey’s stage elephants died, the circus owners ordered that the elephant be pushed out onto the middle of the lake (conveniently the lake was frozen for the winter). Come springtime and thaw, the semipreserved elephant’s corpse sank under the water once the ice was sufficiently thin. Now called the Lake Lawn Resort it is the longest
Stone Manor - Located between the Town of Linn and the City of Lake Geneva
In April 1873, at the foot of Broad Street, Lake Geneva’s first resort hotel, the four-story Whiting House was built by David T. Whiting. Unfortunately, it burned to the ground on July 9, 1894. It would take 17 years for the next hotel to be built on this property and in 1911 The Hotel Geneva was designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright and built on the old Whiting House location. The long, low “prairie style” building opened in August,1912 and served as Lake Geneva’s largest resort hotel for almost six decades. It was demolished in January 1970. In 1879 the original Lake Lawn Lodge on Lake Delavan opened
Part of a Celebration of 140 begins with honoring the Barnum & Bailey Circus that is a part of the rich history of Lake Lawn Resort.
active hotel in our region, celebrating 140 years in 2019! Lake Geneva has remained a “getaway” for people coming from Chicago and the entire Midwest since the late 1800’s, however, the Chicago and Northwestern Railway trains that carried many folks from Chicago since the 1870’s ceased operations in the early 1970’s. CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1. CONTINUED ON PAGE 4.