Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Gurnee, IL

Gurnee is a village in Warren Township, Lake County, Illinois, bordering Waukegan in Chicago's northern suburbs, with a population of 30,706 at the 2020 census.

The village was founded in 1928 and is named after Walter S. Gurnee, a former mayor of Chicago.

Gurnee is one of the Midwest's biggest tourism draws: Six Flags Great America and Gurnee Mills alone pull in more than 26 million visitors a year, dwarfing its roughly 11,800 households.

Six Flags Great America opened in Gurnee on May 29, 1976 — as Marriott's Great America, timed to the U.S. Bicentennial — and drew about 3 million visitors in 2023, ranking it among the 20 most visited amusement parks in North America; its Hurricane Harbor water park was added in 2005.

Gurnee Mills, the giant outlet and value mall that opened in 1991, has attracted between 15 million and 20 million visitors per year since its opening.

The 30-acre Great Wolf Lodge resort in Gurnee, with its large indoor water park, began life in 2007 as the Key Lime Cove resort before becoming a Great Wolf Lodge in 2017.

Long before the theme parks, Gurnee was a stagecoach stop on the road between Chicago and Milwaukee, where west-side farmers stopped at inns like the Mother Rudd House on their way to trade at Little Fort — now Waukegan; the village acquired the Mother Rudd House in 1984 and it now houses the Warren Township Historical Society.

Warren Township, organized in 1850 and covering Gurnee, was named for Major General Joseph Warren, the Revolutionary War hero killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Gurnee's population exploded with suburbanization, more than doubling from 14,379 in 1990 to 28,810 in 2000 before leveling off around 31,000 in 2010.

By Census figures, about 76 percent of Gurnee homes are owner-occupied and the village's median household income is about $119,600, well above the Illinois median.