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IT’S ABOUT DAMNED TIME

Geneva Lake is not owned.  It’s stewarded by the communities that abut the shoreline of the nine-mile, hundred-and-fifty-foot-deep tub of pure Mississippi water (not to mention water from rainfall and runoff from the surrounding geographic areas).  The water is administrated by the Department of Natural Resources (the DNR).  This strange multi-plex of mixed and marginalized ‘ownership’ has been the source of misunderstandings, disagreement, and great conflict through the years, ever since the Big Foot Indians were required to stand back and retreat from the area by settlers, farmers, ranchers, and land speculators many years ago.

The residents who live in the communities surrounding this pristine body of water called Geneva Lake, do not own the lake, the water, or the land under the lake.  The residents, taxpayers, owners, and more, own land surrounding this water body, of which the City of Lake Geneva has grown to be the pre-imminent center for business, shopping, eating, and residential living.  Lake Geneva Day is a special day that has been created to give some kind of concentration and attention to the fact that Lake Geneva residents deserve, and by enjoying this day, special recognition for simply being the humans who primarily provide cultural meaning to an otherwise beautiful but unadorned and otherwise lonely body of water sitting forty, or so, miles inland from a ‘real’ body of water (Lake Michigan).

The fight. Yes, it has to be a fight.  The fight to keep and control what happens on, under, and around Geneva Lake must be joined, and then protected, as the forces of outside (and even inside) development, population influx, money and even visiting tourist attention, must be controlled and moderated, or the special nature of what Geneva Lake has become will be irretrievably lost forever.  The critical period to launching into this fight is right now.

There shouldn’t be one day for residents (with the biggest benefit actually only being free parking for the day?), there should be many days and nights.  Not only residents of Lake. Geneva should be celebrated, but all those residents of the communities around the lake.  Free parking should extend well beyond a crummy little three-hour pass (which is also very restrictive in its application) and be available to citizens/residents of all the lake communities.  If tourists in the busiest summer months are not served as well, then so be it.  As Lake Geneva is discovering (and we’ve been predicting for quite some time now at the Geneva Shore Report), there is no end to the number of tourists coming.

That business and business property owners might suffer a bit from losing some valuable parking spaces (and the city is losing revenue) is a necessary cost of making one very important and vital group of human beings happy.  That group, defined as the citizens/residents surrounding the lake, has been divided and marginalized through the years in their needs wants, and desires.  Basically, they’ve been ignored. There is no organization that, using representational government, has control of what happens in, on, and around the waters of Geneva Lake, and this needs to be changed.  Not only do the residents around the lake need more control, but the residents also need more attention, care, and respect.

Geneva Lake is no longer all about the lake-edge property owners who put their pier numbers on their license plates for status.  No, it’s about the regular people who make up the fabric of the society replacing the long-gone Big Foot Indians.  Building on that old history and preserving the cultural assets of those early times while slowly evolving and then building upon them, is what the future of Lake Geneva, and the communities surrounding Geneva Lake, have to be all about.

Lake Geneva Day will be celebrated Thursday, July 14th, 2022, Iconic buildings, including Horticultural Hall and The Riviera, will be participating in the single special day with open house events. The Lake Geneva Farmers Market will be in full swing for Lake Geneva Day from 8 a.m. through 1 p.m. The day will end in Flat Iron Park for Concerts in the Park, with the Lake Geneva Symphony performing from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m.