Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Lake View, IA

Lake View is a city in Sac County in northwest Iowa, built on the shore of Black Hawk Lake, and its city motto is 'It's a lifestyle.'

Black Hawk Lake is a 957-acre, spring-fed natural lake and the southernmost glacial lake in the United States, left behind when the last glacier melted back from Sac County.

Settlers first built homes around the lake in 1867, beginning with Robert Throssel and his son, and in 1880 Platt Armstrong and James Fletcher built a North Western Railway station and laid out a town they named Fletcher.

The town was incorporated as a city in 1887 and changed its name from Fletcher to Lake View, a name chosen for the scenic view over the water then known as Wall Lake.

Before it settled on Black Hawk, the lake itself cycled through the names Boyer Lake, Walled Lake and Wall Lake on early French and American maps.

Lake View's Stone Piers, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1934-35 as the focal point of a three-acre municipal shoreline park, were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

The Sauk Rail Trail runs 33 miles from Black Hawk Lake in Lake View to Swan Lake in Carroll, passing through Carnarvon, Breda and Maple River Junction.

The 2020 census counted 1,113 people in Lake View, living in 549 households, and the median resident was 58.9 years old - 36.7% of residents were 65 or older.

Lake View's population peaked at 1,303 in 1990, even as Black Hawk Lake draws more than 250,000 visitors a year to the little town.

The city's Camp Crescent campground on the lake offers more than 200 campsites along with rental cabins for summer visitors.