Lakemoor Taxi to O’Hare Airport

The Village That Spans Two Counties and Carries a Wartime Name

Lakemoor sits in an unusual spot: it’s one of the few Chicago-area suburbs that straddles two counties, with part of the village in Lake County and part in McHenry County. Its roots trace to 1926, when Chicago developer Sampson-Sex & Company platted a lakefront subdivision along Route 120 next to Lily Lake, an 89-acre glacial lake, marketing cottage lots to Chicagoans drawn north for fishing and summer weekends. Developer Frank Sampson built a three-story lakefront building that later spent 38 years as Le Vichyssois, a well-regarded French restaurant, before closing in 2014.

The little resort community first incorporated in the late 1930s as the Village of Lily Lake, with only about 50 full-time residents — then dissolved a few years later over a dispute about taxation. It re-incorporated under its current name, Lakemoor, in the early 1950s, and has grown dramatically since: just 723 residents in 1980, and 6,182 by the 2020 Census.

The name itself carries a quieter story. Village lore, repeated by Lakemoor’s own village administrator, ties the name to the SS Lakemoor, a steel-hulled American steamship built in 1917 and renamed in January 1918 when it was taken over by the U.S. Shipping Board. A few months later, in April 1918, the ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat in the North Channel between Scotland and Northern Ireland while carrying war supplies, and lost with much of her crew. Historical shipping records suggest the naming connection may run the other direction, or simply be coincidence — but either way, it’s a real wartime vessel, a real sinking, and a name this small Illinois village has carried ever since.