Half Day is a former unincorporated town in Lake County,

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

, in the state's northeastern region. It is about north of downtown Chicago via Milwaukee Avenue. The town was forcibly annexed by the village of

Vernon Hills Vernon Hills is a suburb north of Chicago, Illinois in Lake County, Illinois, United States. The population was 26,850 at the 2020 census. Vernon Hills serves as a retail hub for its surrounding area ( Libertyville, Lake Forest, Long Grove, Lin ...

in 1993. The following month, the village of

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershire ...

also attempted to annex a portion of Half Day. The two villages entered a legal battle, filing lawsuits against each other. Eventually, this resulted in the Vernon Hills annexation being approved and Lincolnshire's being denied. Parts of area infrastructure are still named for the original unincorporated community. The portion of

Illinois Route 22 Illinois Route 22, also known as Half Day Road for part of its length, is an east–west state highway in northeastern Illinois. It runs from U.S. Route 14 (Northwest Highway) in Fox River Grove to U.S. Route 41 (Skokie Highway) in Highland Park ...

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 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students and is part of

Lincolnshire-Prairie View School District 103 Lincolnshire-Prairie View School District 103 is an elementary district located in Lincolnshire Lake County, Illinois, in suburban Chicago. The school district serves approximately 1,800 students from the communities of Lincolnshire and Prairie ...

. 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).

Nomenclature

Many people believe that it was named Half Day because it was regarded that Half Day was a half day's distance from

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

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 The Potawatomi , also spelled Pottawatomi and Pottawatomie (among many variations), are a Native American people of the western Great Lakes region, upper Mississippi River and Great Plains. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, a m ...

Chief Aptakisic, the chief at the time the area was settled. The name was anglicized as "Half Day" or "Hefda" and a

cartographer Cartography (; from grc, χάρτης , "papyrus, sheet of paper, map"; and , "write") is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an im ...

spelled it "Half Day", and the misnomer stuck, giving rise to the reputed, but erroneous, derivation of the name.

References

Vernon Hills, Illinois Populated places in Lake County, Illinois Neighborhoods in Illinois Populated places established in 1839 {{LakeCountyIL-geo-stub