near the edge of the lake is being used for housing. A significant portion of the property around the lake is now parkland or nature preserve, including the Eggers Woods parcel of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. Other neighboring lakes include Lake George, Lake Calumet, Powderhorn Lake and Lake Michigan. There was also another lake that lay to the west between Wolf Lake and the river. It was called Hyde Lake and was filled in by Republic Steel. A swampy area near 130th Street and the railroad tracks is the only remnant of that lake. History Wolf Lake in Illinois has a storied history that somehow has lost track of the origins of the name that goes back over 150 years. Part of this history includes visits by Abraham Lincoln in which Mary Todd Lincoln nearly drowned. In 1924, the body of Bobby Franks was found in a culvert just northwest of the lake. Franks was the victim of the so-called "thrill killers," Leopold and Loeb – the subjects of what was termed the "Trial of the Century." It's well known that Chicagoland gangsters used to dispose of bodies in this lake system as well. From 1933 to 1936, Wolf Lake Speedway was located within the lake, in Hammond, Indiana. The track was completely surrounded by the water of Wolf Lake, and a portion of the lake was drained to allow for its construction. Nike Missile Site (C-44) During the Cold War, two areas around the lake were used to create Nike missile site C-44, part of an air defense system for Chicago and its heavy industries. It was one of many such sites that formed a ring of defense running from Indiana to Wisconsin. Both areas were decommissioned in the 1970s and have since been converted into preservation and recreation areas. On the northwest side of the lake, several hundred acres of wetlands were filled with ferrous slag in order to create the actual site for the missiles. This is currently Eggers Woods, part of the Cook County Forest Preserve system. The southwest side of the lake housed the site's radar station and has been converted into the William W. Powers State Recreation Area in Illinois. Ecology Wolf Lake, along with the other neighboring lakes, was once among the most biologically diverse places in the Midwest. Eighty years ago, the renowned naturalist Donald Culross Peattie described Wolf