Half Day, Illinois

Half Day is a former unincorporated town in Lake County in the state's northeastern region. It is about 30 miles (48 km) north of downtown Chicago via Milwaukee Avenue.

The town was forcibly annexed by the village of Vernon Hills in 1993. The following month, the village of Lincolnshire also attempted to annex a portion of Half Day. The two villages entered a legal battle, filing lawsuits against each other.^[1] Eventually, this resulted in the Vernon Hills annexation being approved and Lincolnshire's being denied.^[2]

Parts of area infrastructure are still named for the original unincorporated community. The portion of Illinois Route 22 that passes through is named Half Day Road. Half Day School, originally established in 1839 and temporarily closed in the early 1980s after declining enrollment, was modernized and reopened in 1992; it currently serves 3rd and 4th grade students and is part of Lincolnshire-Prairie View School District 103.

Half Day appeared in a news article in 1952 when then Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson flew there to vote in the presidential election (Stevenson was a candidate the same year).^[3]

Nomenclature

Many people mistakenly believe that it was named Half Day because it was regarded that Half Day was a half day's distance from Chicago by horse and carriage. In reality, a horse and carriage could make it to Chicago in a half day but some believe the area was actually named after Potawatomi Chief Aptakisic, the chief at the time the area was settled. The name was anglicized as "Half Day" or "Hefda" and a cartographer spelled it "Half Day", and the misnomer stuck, giving rise to the reputed, but erroneous, derivation of the name.^[4][5][6][7]

References

1. Callahan, Patricia (August 24, 1995). "Half Day Turns Into Boardwalk: Two towns in court over annexation". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 28 July 2010.
2. Abbinanti, A. (December 12, 1996). "Vernon Hills retains its title to Half Day". Vernon Hills Review.
3. "Stevenson Casts His Vote at Tiny Half Day, Illinois". The Spokesman-Review. November 5, 1952. Retrieved 28 July 2010.
4. Richard A. Thompson (1985). "DuPage Roots". History of DuPage County. County of DuPage, Illinois. Retrieved 2008-09-11.
5. "Early Chicago", based on A Compendium of the Early History of Chicago to the Year 1835, When the Indians Left (2000).
6. Village of Lincolnshire (2006). "Village History". Retrieved 2006-10-20.
7. Diana Dretske (2011). "Half Day- Aptakisic". Retrieved 2014-07-31.