Chicago Lakefront Trail Live, IL Cam

This camera looks along the Chicago lakefront where the trail, the drive and Lake Michigan run side by side, in Illinois. The skyline stands to one side.

The shoreline is public for almost its whole length because one man sued the city four times over twenty years to keep it that way. The judgments of the 1890s and 1900s left the lakefront, in the phrase used ever since, forever open, clear and free.

The water off this stretch is a favourite summer anchorage, where boats raft up in a sheltered corner by the breakwater. In winter the same corner freezes and the trail is used by a much smaller number of people.