Tri-Lakes, IN

Tri-Lakes is an unincorporated lakeside community in Whitley County built around Big Cedar, Little Cedar, Round, and Shriner lakes. The 2020 census counted 1,329 residents, and the settlement reaches across Thorncreek and Smith townships. Its name sounds like a simple count, but the geography is more tangled: the older lake group centered on Cedar, Round, and Shriner, while Big Cedar is part of the modern community’s four-lake map. Shoreline roads, cottages, and year-round homes give Tri-Lakes a different rhythm from the surrounding farm country.

There is a long recreational history behind the name. A 1913 state fisheries report described a summer hotel and cottages forming a village around the lakes and noted channels linking Cedar, Round, and Shriner. The state hatchery once used the wet ground between Shriner and Round for bass ponds, a reminder that the area was already being managed for water and visitors more than a century ago. These days Tri-Lakes is less a resort strip than a residential lake community, with the water bodies themselves doing the organizing: four separate shores, one shared local name, and plenty of reasons to know which lake you mean.