7 days ago
Grass Lake boasts colorful history, abandoned island for sale
On board the Grass Lake Port of Blarney shuttle, through the mist of lake water, riders can see a small, abandoned island just barely keeping its head above the water. A few ramshackle buildings stand precariously, with the ruins of a few others scattered around the island.
The 1.2-acre island recently had its 15 minutes of fame, although less as a media darling and more as an ugly duckling, with its $200,000 listing drawing plenty of jokes about its rundown condition.
But just a hundred yards away sits Blarney Island, a popular stilt house bar, and its owner Rob Hardman admitted, with some humor, that he was disappointed news interest largely ended at the property lines of his island neighbor.
'It's kind of ironic that I got contacted by at least five or six reporters wanting to do stories about that, but not about the 124-year-old tourist attraction,' he said.
As Hardman and other local historians see it, the island is a small peek into the rich history of the area, such as Blarney Island itself, and the Chain-o-Lakes has more to offer than just a sinking island for sale.
According to Hardman, Grass Lake was originally known for its lotus flower beds, back when the water levels were lower. The blooms would bring people from around the country and even the world, including those interested in their purported medicinal qualities.
Old postcards show the waters teeming with flowers, but today, they're limited to no-wake zones. At that time, what would later become Blarney Island sat on land. After the construction of the McHenry Dam in 1908, water levels slowly began to rise.
As the story goes — and details can vary depending on the teller and their appetite for theatrics — there were two businesses near each other back when the water level was several feet down. One was Rohema, a resort owned by 'Shorty' Shobin, and the other was owned by one Jack O'Connor.
In Hardman's version, the Italian and Irish mobs ran booze through the Fox River into Chicago during Prohibition, but when it ended, times got tough, and the two owners decided to wager their businesses in a poker game.
'Shorty loses, gets up from the table and blows his head off,' Hardman said. Then, O'Connor takes it over and renames it Blarney Island because, 'in addition to being a castle in a county in Ireland, it's also a Gaelic slang for bull — and he was bluffing in the game, so he won by BS-ing. So he decided to call it Blarney Island.'
Clement Haley, the previous owner of Blarney Island and an area historian, knows that version, as well as some less colorful tellings, although he'd always heard Shorty shot himself at one of the cottages on the small island. Clem Haley said it was called Blarney Island because those on the island were a bunch of big talkers.
Regardless of how rigorously fact-checked the stories may be (a Dunn Museum write-up about Blarney Island indicates the name change happened sometime around 1923, nearly a decade before the end of Prohibition), the tale shows some of the area's storied past.
Previous Blarney Island owners Clem and his brother John Haley came into the picture decades later in the 1970s, well after the construction of the Stratton Lock and Dam in the late 1930s had made Blarney Island a true waterlocked island. Clem Haley, after serving in Vietnam, returned to the States and took over the island, rebuilding it along with his brother.
The two recalled their summers coming out after the ice had melted to do repairs and work. The nearby island was owned by several Polish steelworkers from the city, John Haley said, who used it as a hunting retreat. Each building was a different hunting club, such as the Horseshoe Club, which is one of the few buildings still standing.
The brothers had fond memories of the small island's previous owners.
'They were over here partying all the time, and they had parties over there,' John Haley said. 'We'd run over and party with them, and come back and forth when we weren't working.'
The island would continue to act as a hunting retreat for decades, well into the 2000s, but it went quiet more than a decade ago.
'The guys got old, they all died, and then people started buying (from) each other. They got down to one guy owning the entire piece of property, Tom Nedved,' John Haley said.
Today, it's reportedly owned by Kim Renner, who bought it in 2020 for just $50,000. The brothers say they have never met Renner.
Hardman said the island has had at least two fires, and he isn't too certain about its future.
'It's worth a negative number,' Hardman said, pointing to how degraded it had become, requiring extensive investment to simply contain it. Additionally, it's on the flood plain, he said, and would face electricity and septic system hurdles as well.
'Maybe that's a campsite, but that's a pretty expensive campsite,' he said.
