1899–1901: The depot that almost went to Hainesville
The Lake, Cook, and McHenry Counties Railway Company formed in 1899 to build a branch of the Chicago Milwaukee & St. Paul from Libertyville toward Janesville, Wisconsin. The station was planned for Hainesville (then the oldest and busiest village in Lake County), but landowner George B. Battershall set his price high and would not budge, even as the railroad ran its headquarters out of a boxcar beside the tracks.
Amarias M. White saw the opening. He offered the railroad a free site on one condition: railroad head A.C. Goodnow required that White lay out streets leading to the station. White agreed. The line was finished and deeded on July 1, 1901, White named the village's west boundary Goodnow Boulevard in the railroad man's honor, and presented him a choice lot at the corner of Nippersink and Cedar Lake.
1901–1917: The largest ice house in the world
That same year, Armour and Company completed a five-acre ice house on Round Lake, said to be the largest in the world. The plant made 100,000 tons of ice each winter, hauling 180 tons out of the lake every day, and employed some 300 people, many housed in a large adjoining guest house.
On the night of August 19, 1917, fire destroyed the ice house. It was never rebuilt: electric refrigeration had arrived. The guest house lived on as a retreat for women employees of Armour's Chicago plant, then as the private Oval Lodge resort, and in 1928 was sold to the owners of the Alpine Country Club, which still operates today, focused on bocce, boating, and relaxing weekends.
1908: A vote at Paddock's Hardware Store
A few years after the railroad arrived, Amarias White, the Amann brothers, Will Rosing, A.J. (Del) Smith, John Hart, and others went around the countryside convincing their neighbors to incorporate. They presented the documents to Judge D.L. Jones in Waukegan on November 19, 1908; the judge found everything in order and called an election, held that December at Paddock's Hardware Store. The Village of Round Lake was born.
Note for reviewers This narrative is condensed from the Village's own published history page: same facts, same dates, tightened for the web and broken into linkable chapters. The “Est. 1908” mark in this prototype's header comes from here (and from the Village seal, which carries the date).