Biohazard Cleanup Near Wald View Crown Point, IN

Crown Point is a city in and the county seat of Lake County in Indiana's northwest corner, within commuting distance of Chicago.

Crown Point's first settler, Solon Robinson, arrived on October 31, 1834, and opened a general store that did a great deal of business with the local Potawatomi; Robinson also donated land and money for the first county courthouse.

Crown Point became the seat of the newly created Lake County in 1840, and the city was incorporated in 1868.

Crown Point has grown steadily for decades, from 19,920 residents in 1990 to 33,899 in the 2020 census.

Census Bureau QuickFacts counts about 12,200 households in Crown Point, and about 86% of the city's homes are owner-occupied.

The former Lake County Courthouse, completed in 1878 and nicknamed the "Grand Old Lady," anchors the Crown Point Courthouse Square Historic District and today houses shops, a ballroom, and the Lake County Historical Society.

Between 1915 and 1940 the Crown Point courthouse was famous as the "Marriage Mill": because Indiana then had no waiting period for a marriage license, some 170,000 couples were married there even though the town itself had only about 3,000 people, and Rudolph Valentino married Natacha Rambova there in 1923.

On March 3, 1934, bank robber John Dillinger escaped from the supposedly escape-proof Lake County Jail in Crown Point, reportedly threatening guards with a wooden gun, and fled across the state line into Illinois in Sheriff Lillian Holley's car.

The Lake County Sheriff's House and Jail, built in 1882, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 and is now preserved as a museum.

Indiana law once required the sheriff to live in the house adjoining the jail, and Lake County sheriffs and their families lived in the Crown Point sheriff's house for 76 years, until 1958.