High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Lake in the Hills is a village in McHenry County, Illinois, United States. The population was 23,152 at the 2000 census. A 2006 special census put the village's population at 29,175. The village is most known for its rampant residential growth which occurred most heavily in the 1990s. Once a sleepy lakeside village of cottages and small ranches, its population skyrocketed as developers flocked to the area in the 1990s. Its population increased by 17,000 people over this period, making it one of the most rapidly growing suburbs of Chicago and in the United States at that time. At the height of its building boom, the village issued over 1,000 residential building permits in 1995