Village Profile Home Page | About our Company | Sales Opportunities | Community eStore | vpmobile.us

Lake Zurich: Then and Now

As you look around Lake Zurich today you might have trouble envisioning how much it has changed over time. It’s managed to grow from farming center to resort community to the economically thriving community it is today with a huge assortment of local businesses.

Lake Zurich first attracted settlers in the 1830s and began (as most places do here in Midwest America) as a place for farming. A scattering of farms hardly led to big business, but in 1836 a Chicagoan named Seth Paine came to the area and began
building the first commercial establishments in what is now recognized as the downtown area of Lake Zurich. Thus began the long history of business in Lake Zurich.

These businesses drew a great influx of more settlers, and in 1896 the village of Lake Zurich was officially born. It grew slowly over the years, and when Rand Road was paved in the 1920s, Lake Zurich took advantage of its natural wonders and the ease with which it could be reached – it became a pleasant resort community, which of course yielded more business. The still fairly rural setting and the spacious lake helped make the resorts successful, but eventually focus shifted from catering to vacationers to catering to the community itself.

One of the first and most long standing businesses from this era of development is Casper’s True Value. The store opened in 1964 at Main and Old Rand Road, which was a prime drag back when it was first paved. After working for a number of years for Morton Manufacturing in Libertyville, Casper heard that the owner of a small Lake Zurich hardware store was trying to sell it. Making what he thought at the time was an unbelievably low offer, Casper was surprised in the end when they accepted it, and he became the owner of his very own hardware store.

Today the store is run by John Casper – member of the Lake Zurich Rotary Club and the longest standing member of the Lake Zurich Area Chamber of Commerce – the second generation of Casper to run the store. Growing up in the hardware business, working summers and weekends in the shop, John Casper’s succession as storeowner is only natural, especially when there’s no desire to close up shop and leave town. He says, “It’s the people that make it enjoyable here, both the people you work with and the people who frequent our store here.”

He does note that things have changed significantly over the years. With Old Rand Road no longer offering quite as much traffic, the store has moved once. Now it relies on nearby Route 22 for a convenient thoroughfare. Casper’s True Value also expanded by taking over an old gas station, almost doubling the retail space in the process. The retail itself has changed with the times. Although they once carried everything from tools and toys to ammo and guns, the store has gotten a bit more specialized
over the years, now focusing just on the tools and home improvement items one would expect from a True Value, but the one thing that hasn’t changed here is the importance of the customer.

“It’s just a really good feeling to help people and assist them,” says John Casper. Although a number of things have grown and changed in Lake Zurich over the years, it’s reassuring to see businesses passed down from one generation to the next and taking pride in serving the community. When John speaks about his daughter being the third generation of Casper to graduate from Lake Zurich High School, you can hear the pride in his voice – the kind of pride you can only get from a place you really care about. No matter how things change, whether new roads are laid down or even replaced with canals, the future of business in Lake Zurich is safe so long as places like Casper’s True Value can keep up doing what they do best – serving the community they care about.