 Chicago attorney and patron of the arts Wallace Heckman purchased the land that would eventually become the Eagle's Nest Colony and Lowden State Park in 1898.American sculptor Lorado Taft and his peers were searching for a location for their summer retreat, first locating in Bass Lake, Indiana and then looking toward Wisconsin, but Heckman invited the group to his home in Ogle County for the Fourth of July.Heckman offered to let the group set up camp there and they signed a lease for the site the same week.