Lake County Discovery Museum
 Location within Illinois
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| Established | 1976 |
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| Location | 27277 Forest Preserve Road, Wauconda, Illinois, 60084 |
| Coordinates | 42°15′45″N 88°06′24″W / 42.2626°N 88.1068°W |
| Type | History Museum |
| Visitors | 45,000 per year |
| Nearest car park | On site (no charge) |
| Website | lakecountydiscoverymuseum |
Lake County Discovery Museum is an interactive museum of history, art, and popular culture located in Wauconda, Illinois. The museum, established in 1976 and sited in Lakewood Forest Preserve as part of the larger Lake County Forest Preserve District, is dedicated to collecting, preserving, and presenting the history and culture of Lake County, Illinois. The museum houses among its collections the Curt Teich Postcard Archives, the largest public collection of postcards in the United States.
Originally a group of pre-American Civil War farm properties, the land and buildings which surround the museum were part of the Lakewood Farms, an estate created after 1937 by Chicago contractor Malcolm Boyle. Boyle acquired area plots over time, gradually erecting seventeen structures which briefly served as a working dairy farm, but now serve as offices, libraries, storage, exhibit and gallery spaces for the museum and its collections.
Friends of the Lake County Discovery Museum began gathering support in 1971 and after the Farms complex was acquired, the museum was launched in 1976. Six years later the donation of the Curt Teich Postcard Archives brought five semi-truck trailers of postcards and related files to the museum. As the museum's collections and archives continue to grow, the museum plans a move to newer, larger facilities which it will share with Preserve District offices in Libertyville.
The museum hosts Lake County History Archives (including archives of other conservation areas like Ryerson Woods), a collection on nearby Fort Sheridan (a former U.S. Army base nearby) and records of a Lake County-based American Civil War regiment of Illinois troops, the 96th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment. The archives also holds the Amet/Essany Studios Collection, covering the career and works of Waukegan native Edward Amet, a pioneer in 35mm motion picture projection. In addition to a compilation of Lake County one-room school narratives, the museum also preserves a selection of materials relating to Zion, Illinois social and civic organization for minorities, the Booker T. Washington Club.
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