Lake (IN) county

Lake County är ett administrativt område i delstaten Indiana, USA, med 496 005 invånare. Den administrativa huvudorten (county seat) är Crown Point.

Översikt

Lake county i Indiana i USA

Arkiv: United_States_Genealogy
Länk: Lake County, Indiana
Alias:

Historik

Originally inhabited by the Potawatomi, Lake County was established by European Americans on February 16, 1837. From 1832 to 1836 the area that was to become Lake County was part of La Porte County. From 1836 to 1837 it was part of Porter County. It was named for its location on Lake Michigan. The original county seat was Liverpool, but in 1840 Lake Court House, later renamed as Crown Point, was chosen.

Lake County's population grew slowly before the 1850s. Construction of railroads to link Chicago to the rest of the country stimulated rapid development, and tens of thousands of settlers and immigrants bought land in the region. Small-scale industrialization began, but was primarily relegated to the northern coast of the county, where it could take advantage of the railroads along the coast and shipping on the Great Lakes. The 1900 Census gives a population of 37,892 residents.

Lake County's population peaked at 546,000 in 1970. Severe industrial decline took place during the 1973-1991 period, brought on by foreign competition, new management philosophies that called for major workforce reductions, and productivity gains from technology. The decline was particularly intense in the steel industry: steel employment exceeded 60,000 in the 1960s, and declined progressively to just 18,000 by 2015. Lake County's population declined 13% to bottom out at 475,000 in 1990.

The industrial decline of the 1980s cast a long shadow over Lake County: the county did not regain the level of employment it had in 1980 until 1996, after which the employment level roughly flatlined. The county's economic output peaked in 1978, and has not since recovered, remaining 15-20% below the peak after adjusting for inflation. As prosperity declined, so did the immigration that powered the county's explosive population growth before 1950: per the 2000 census, only 5.3% of Lake County's residents were foreign-born, compared to over 11% for the United States as a whole.