Lake Park is great place for a picnic, a short cavort through the woods or for a game of golf, tennis, soccer, rugby or even lawn bowling, or to rollerblade, bike or cross-country ski through.

Lake Park is bordered on the east by Lincoln Memorial Drive and on the west by Lake Drive, with the “Grand Entrance” on Newberry Boulevard.

The 124-acre park was designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed New York's Central Park. Lake Park is on the National Register of Historic Places and boasts a number of bridges that range from elegant steel to stone guarded by sculpted lions to rustic wooden bridges in the wooded ravines.

The land that is now Lake Park was originally used by American Indians for mound-building, and a plaque marks the last American Indian mound remaining in Milwaukee.

The park houses North Point Lighthouse and Keeper's Quarters. The lighthouse was built in 1855 and operated until 1994. The lighthouse will open for tours this fall.

Some of the best parts of Lake Park are found on the trails that cut through the verdant ravines, over stone and wood stairs set charmingly in the woods under the larger bridges and around and over small streams across smaller bridges.

After a few moments on some of the paths, one can be surprised at the realization or reminder that some semblance of a forest exists on the East Side.

Lake Park is also home to Bartolotta's Lake Park Bistro, a French restaurant which received four out of five stars in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel review and was classified by the Journal Sentinel as “very expensive.”

Behind the Bistro, presiding over the view of the lake from the side of the bluff, is the “Grand Staircase,” the double staircase the splits around a recessed landscaped center area and then joins at the bottom, that everyone has probably seen from his or her car.

Milwaukeeans are lucky to have such a beautiful park in the city — everyone should spend some time exploring it.

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