Highland Park Beaches Guide

By: DKrivoshik 08/30/2017

Highland Park has a wide range of experiences on the Lake Shore through four distinct beaches. These four beaches: Millard, Moraine, Park Avenue, and Rosewood have everything to make a wonderful lake shore experience.

Millard Park

[caption id="attachment_7622" align="alignleft" width="300"] Millard Park[/caption]

This beach is a non-swimming beach encouraging other forms of more passive recreation.  This area is undergoing a ravine restoration project to protect and develop a habitat for the trout and other creatures with limited shoreline habitat.

Millard Park is being used as an education center for adults and children.  In addition to the abundant signage regarding native species and the restoration project, Millard park has a Rock Garden.  This garden can be found on the beach and serves as part of the education site.  

On the beach, you can find massive boulders with their engraved geological names: basalt, granite, quartz, sandstone, and limestone.  These are meant to teach people about the essential rocks that make up Lake Michigan.

Spending time at Millard Park walking around and learning about the area will leave you with a greater connection with nature and feelings of tranquility.

Moraine Park 

Moraine Park is a simple but enjoyable dog beach and park.  This lovely park includes a sculpture garden, space for picnicking, and ample amount of room for walking your dog.  With a beautiful ravine trail leading down to the beach and plenty of space for your dog to run around, this park provides a perfect spot to relax. No swimming is allowed at this beach and a maximum of two dogs per guest. 

Park Avenue

[caption id="attachment_7624" align="alignright" width="300"] Park Avenue[/caption]

Park Avenue is a superb place for a boat launch.  This launch has storage, the North Shore Yacht Club, and a launch ramp.  The yacht club provides, for a membership fee, kayak, sailing, and paddle board lessons.  This boat launch is a non-swimmable area but still supplies all the amenities that a recreational sailor needs. Information for launch fees can be found on Highland Park's website. http://www.pdhp.org/boating/

Rosewood Beach

Rosewood beach is the only swimmable beach in Highland Park.  With its beautiful park on the bluff and boardwalk along the shore, this beach is a must see.  At the park, on the top of the bluff, there is loads of space to picnic, have kids enjoy the play set, and a beautiful view of the lake.  Down at the beach, there is a boardwalk that stretches across the entirety of the beach and there is another play set to enjoy. This beach has lifeguards, concessions, paddle board and kayak rentals through Uncle Dan's, volleyball courts and an Interpretive Center. This beach is free to residents, but is $10 for non-residents. Rosewood Beach has it all!

Important things to note: Many of the parking lots are for residents only, but no worries, the beaches are still accessible to non-residents. Non-resident parking information can be found here.

Funding for this project was provided by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources