Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Delavan Lake, WI

Delavan Lake is a census-designated place in Walworth County, Wisconsin, made up of the shoreline neighborhoods wrapped around Delavan Lake in the towns of Delavan and Walworth.

Delavan Lake's population was 2,803 at the 2020 census, up from 2,649 in 2010 and 2,352 in 2000.

The Delavan Lake CDP covers 6.0 square miles, and about 40 percent of that area is the water of the lake itself.

Delavan Lake reaches a maximum depth of 52 feet, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

The CDP is heavily seasonal: the 2000 census counted just 944 households but 1,920 housing units, meaning more than half of its homes were second homes or vacation properties.

The lake's north shore became famous in 1847 when the Mabie brothers brought their U.S. Olympic Circus - then the largest circus in America - to winter at Delavan, the first circus to quarter in Wisconsin Territory.

Delavan grew into a circus colony: performers from more than 26 circus companies wintered in the Delavan area between 1847 and 1894, and the P.T. Barnum Circus, 'The Greatest Show On Earth,' was founded in Delavan in 1871.

Lake Lawn Resort, on the north shore within the CDP, began in 1878 as a guesthouse on the Mabie circus farm built for circus members to stay in, expanded with a 50-room hotel in 1883, and today offers nearly 300 guest rooms along two miles of shoreline.

Local legend holds that when Juliet, a circus elephant, died at the winter camp on the lake's north shore in February 1864, her body was dragged out onto the frozen lake and sank to the bottom when the ice thawed in spring.

More than 200 Native American effigy mounds were documented around Delavan Lake in a late-1800s Beloit College survey, and over 40 of them are still preserved on the grounds of Lake Lawn Resort.