When I was growing up near the shores of Cedar Lake in Lake Villa, my friends and I could often be found on the Indian trails that graced the bluff between Sherwood and Cedar Lake Parks. We loved playing all sorts of made-up games.

Sometimes, we would use the trails to spy on people who had rented row boats at one of the parks and were rowing along close to the shore. We also could take the lower trail to get to the beach at Sherwood Park, or we could play “Indian” and pretend we were early inhabitants of the area, hunting big game with our homemade bows and arrows.

The reason we called them Indian trails is because my dad, the late Clark “Cy” Wetterberg, said so. He was somewhat of a history buff, and he told us that they were part of a trail system that paralleled Grand Avenue. According to my father, that trail once began at Lake Michigan and went all the way to Fox Lake. The trails along the banks of Cedar Lake were offshoots of that trail. He said that it was possible to pick up the trail on the other side of the lake and continue it to Fox Lake (the lake, not the town).