The city of Lake Forest has launched a new app for iPhones that provides users with audio information on about 500 places of interest around the city.
The app, LFGo, was created by brothers and Lake Forest natives Matt and Brent Engel.
“All this information is out there but it’s hard to get and takes a lot of time to go through the history books and talk to people and dig up information,” Brent Engel said.
The app, which is free and available on iTunes, uses a geolocation service to track where a person is in Lake Forest, Engel said.
When you pass a place of interest, a guide’s voice talks about that place over the course of 30 to 60 seconds. If the person is listening to music, the volume on the music will decrease while the guide speaks and then return to its previous volume afterward.
If someone passes by City Hall, for example, that person might hear about how it was built in 1899 and that its bell tower doesn’t have a bell because it was cracked while being rung on Armistice Day of World War I, Engel said.
The app also tracks what you previously listened to when passing a particular place of interest and offers something new.
“The first time you pass by City Hall, you might learn it was built in the 1890s to be City Hall and a fire station and the library,” Engel said. “The next time you pass it might tell you than when it was a fire station, the firemen would hang their hoses from the bell tower to let them dry.”
The brothers created a similar app for Chicago, named 312Go, which has thousands of points of interest. Unlike 312Go, most of the content for LFGo was supplied by the city staff, Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Historical Society, Lake Forest Open Lands, Lake Forest Preservation Foundation and local historian Arthur Miller.
The city decided to commission the app about a year ago, said Susan Banks, communications manager.
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“Unless you talk to someone who has lived here a long time or a local historian, a lot of these stories get lost,” Banks said.
The city spent $15,000 on the app, Banks said.
The city hopes to add or supplement points of interest in the future, such as the Lake Forest Cemetery.
“That is filled with art,” Banks said. “Some of the headstones and memorials are wonderful.”
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