Forest LakeIL
A town of 1,865, settled in 1935.
Is Forest Lake a good place to live?
Forest Lake’s best subject grades are an A+ for health and an A for schools and incomes; its weakest is a C− for cost of living. On health, just 45 of Illinois’ 1,284 towns do better. Only 89 of Illinois’ 1,285 towns score lower on history. Forest Lake has fewer than 2,500 residents, so it gets subject grades but no overall grade.
What makes Forest Lake stand out
Where Forest Lake beats most towns.
100% of working residents leave Forest Lake for work
Where Forest Lake’s working residents go each day. Line width shows the share.
Census LEHD 2023
How Forest Lake grades
Each subject compared with towns across the country (schools within Illinois), ordered by how far Forest Lake is from typical.
How TownRatings grades towns →
Wrigley Field and 151 more within 40 miles
Museums, parks, gardens and other places to visit around Forest Lake. Close and well known come first.
Big draw27 mi Stadium & arenaWrigley Field
Big draw33 mi Stadium & arenaSoldier Field
Big draw12 mi Theme parkSix Flags Great America3.0M visitors a year
Big draw38 mi MuseumBarack Obama Presidential Center
Big draw34 mi Stadium & arenaRate Field
17 mi Stadium & arenaAllstate ArenaPhoto credits
Wrigley Field: Ryan Dickey, CC BY 2.0 · Soldier Field: Photo by Joon Han Contact: [email protected], CC BY-SA 3.0 · Six Flags Great America: Feather Better, CC BY 4.0 · Barack Obama Presidential Center: AlphaBeta135, CC0 · Rate Field: User Enoch Lai on en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Allstate Arena: Nkon21, CC BY-SA 4.0
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Moving to Forest Lake: who provides what
Forest Lake is unincorporated, so Lake County and regional agencies provide most services.
EPA SDWIS (Oct 9, 2026) · HIFLD + EIA-861 2025 · Census 2020 ZCTAs · NCES 2024–25 · registration: vote.gov, updated Sep 12, 2025.
The data
Ordered by what stands out in Forest Lake.
A smaller share of adults get no exercise outside work in Forest Lake than in most of Illinois or the rest of the country
In Forest Lake, 27% of adults feel lonely. The share of adults in Forest Lake who smoke cigarettes is 8.5%, against 13% in Illinois’ towns and 14% across U.S. towns. Against the Illinois average, Forest Lake comes out ahead on 21 CDC measures out of 32, and behind on 1.
| Forest Lake | Illinois towns | U.S. towns | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sleep under 7 hours (CDC PLACES) | 28% | 35% | 36% |
| Feel lonely (CDC PLACES) | 27% | 33% | 33% |
| Frequent mental distress (CDC PLACES) | 13% | 17% | 17% |
| Get no exercise (CDC PLACES) | 14% | 23% | 25% |
| What stands out | Forest Lake | IL |
|---|---|---|
| Fewer adults facing food insecurity | 6.8% | 15.9% |
| Fewer adults facing housing insecurity | 6.4% | 13.2% |
| More adults who have had cancer | 9% | 7.6% |
CDC PLACES 2025 · modeled estimates for adults · CMS · HRSA
More of Forest Lake’s households own their home than in the typical Illinois or U.S. town
A typical home in Forest Lake is worth about $471,000, up 7.1% in a year, 59% above the Illinois typical home.
Typical home value
Census ACS, 2020–24 · Zillow Home Value Index · Redfin Data Center
Forest Lake has a very low natural-hazard risk, chiefly from inland flooding
FEMA puts 56% of the town’s expected hazard losses down to inland flooding, and 20% to tornadoes. Forest Lake’s risk rating from FEMA is 17 of 100. Expected storm and flood damage is lower than in 83% of U.S. communities.
FEMA National Risk Index · OpenFEMA
With 0.1 jobs for every working resident, most of Forest Lake’s workers commute out
The share of residents in Forest Lake who live below the poverty line: 4%. This Illinois town had 88 jobs in 2023, down 284 from 2013. Its average commute is 33 minutes. Among 769 Illinois towns, just 3 have a lower share of working residents who work in town than Forest Lake.
| Forest Lake | Illinois towns | U.S. towns | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average trip to work | 33 minutes | 26 minutes | 25 minutes |
| Working residents who work in town | 0.1% | 8.3% | 8% |
| Below the poverty line | 4% | 8.4% | 9.6% |
| Median household income | $96,000 | $83,000 | $80,000 |
Where working residents work
Census LEHD 2023 · ACS
The climate in Forest Lake brings snowy winters and pleasant summers
Summer afternoons peak near 83° in July, and January nights bottom out around 15°; snowfall runs to about 43 inches a winter.
Typical low → high °F
NOAA U.S. Climate Normals, 1991–2020
| Biggest places to walk | Trails | Acres |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Norman Field | — | 2 |
Trails & parks © OpenStreetMap contributors · Conserved land: USGS PAD-US
Everything we know about Forest Lake
Colleges nearby
8 within 15 miles of the center of Forest Lake
About 3 of every 100 Forest Lake residents are enrolled in college, against 6 across Illinois.
About Forest Lake
Census-designated place in Illinois, United States
Forest Lake is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Ela Township of Lake County, Illinois, United States. It is about 35 miles (56 km) northwest of downtown Chicago. Per the 2020 census, the population was 1,784. The community was founded in 1935 as a vacation community for Chicago residents.
From Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 · facts via Wikidata (CC0)
- Established
- 1935
- Area
- 0.4 sq mi
- Elevation
- 797 ft
- Area code
- 847
Forest Lake’s neighbors
2 towns share a border with Forest Lake.
| Town | IL rank | Overall | Cost | Safety | Schools | Health |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forest Lake | — | — | C− | — | A | A+ |
| Hawthorn Woods | #2 | A+ | C | A+ | A | A+ |
| Kildeer | #59 | A | C− | A− | A+ | A+ |
Forest Lake has fewer than 2,500 residents, so it gets subject grades but no overall grade. Forest Lake reports no FBI crime data of its own. Compare Forest Lake with a neighbor →
Questions about Forest Lake
Short answers, built from the data on this page.
Is Forest Lake, IL expensive?
Yes. Cost of living, which also weighs rents, property taxes and how many households pay 30% or more of their income for housing, grades C−.