Dead Pike Lake, a sparsely-populated lake in Vilas County, has been the source of contention for years. Now, it has gotten political.

WXPR Local Features

The fight continues: slimy water, dam disagreements, and politics on Dead Pike Lake

Railroad accidents were common in the late nineteenth century. Because safety was an issue, some train robbers in the Northwoods thought they could use it to their advantage.

1894 train robbery turned tragic accident in the Northwoods

The Wisconsin River is a tamed river, but in the past, before the dams, the river ran wild, and loggers found Grandfather Falls near Merrill to be a difficult obstacle to overcome.

Log Jam at Grandfather Falls

Matthew Stapleton was head of one of Rhinelander’s oldest and most distinguished families. Stapleton settled in Rhinelander in 1883 and worked as an overseer of the Brown Brothers’ boom operation. In 1904 he was elected mayor of Rhinelander and later went on to serve as postmaster. Despite all that, it was his daughter Beatrice who made history during World War II.

P.O.W. from Rhinelander in Japanese Occupied Hong Kong

Atmospheric PFAS is falling as rain even far away from industrial sites. Plus, a nonprofit has identified 42,000 places in the U.S. as possible PFAS sites.

It’s ‘raining PFAS,’ even in remote areas of the Upper Peninsula

Ambling down a path through the forest to a serene lake, Greg Krueger explains why he likes this area. “This is a really nice place. You have a really nice, clearwater lake with a great sand bottom for swimming, boating. You have a really good network of roads here for road biking where you can go out in all directions and really have a long way to go without needing to ride on a highway. You’ve got a really beautiful forest here,” he says. The lake, Sevenmile Lake, is in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. It straddles the border between Forest and Oneida counties near Three Lakes. On top of the reasons Krueger gave, there used to be another highlight here. The National Forest maintained a campground with more than 20 sites. But now, a walk through the campground reveals overgrown grass sprouting through picnic tables. Paint peels off of a sign with a local map. It’s a beautiful Northwoods weekend, but there’s no one in sight. “To come up here now and see this closed when, really

National Forest Withdraws Maintenance, Closes Some Campgrounds, Frustrating Longtime Visitors

Organized labor’s campaign for a ten-hour workday gained momentum in the 1870s and 1880s. The often-violent response to union demands in places like Chicago and Milwaukee served to make the public more open to union ideas. The Northwoods was slow to accept the inevitable, but by 1892 the push for a ten-hour workday hit Rhinelander. In Wisconsin, organized labor’s campaign for the ten-hour workday culminated in Milwaukee when on May 1, 1886, workers went on strike and shut down industry across the city for five days. Employees in only one business, the North Chicago Railroad Rolling Mills Steel Foundry in Bay View, resisted the call. On May 5 demonstrators gathered outside the foundry to demand that the workers inside join the strike. Governor Jeremiah Rusk called out troops and had them open fire on the demonstrators. At what is now known as the Bay View Massacre, seven unarmed people were killed and many more seriously wounded. At the time, the press hailed Rusk as a national hero,

The Mill Strike of 1892 and the Origins of Organized Labor in Rhinelander

A point of land, sitting on the north side of the Vista Flowage, was Zeke Jonas’ favorite spot. Sometimes, his mother Rene Rayala said, he’d come to watch birds. When the season was right, he loved nothing more than duck hunting here with his friends and family. “They’d get their war paint on, haul down their makeshift blind, drive their big revved-up trucks and they would love to duck hunt here,” Rene remembered. In fact, there’s an old picture from the very spot where Rene and her husband Brian were standing and talking. “So this is Zeke and his dog Emma. She’s still with us, but barely. This is sitting right here with that branch and him hunting, sitting on a bucket,” Rene said. But so long after that picture was created, Zeke wasn’t around anymore. “A lot of the kids worked at a local restaurant around here. They were just driving home one night,” Rene said. “We don’t know exactly what happened, but he lost his life just down the road here.” Of course, the death was difficult for

Powell Marsh Viewing Blind Memorializes Late Outdoors Enthusiast

Ole Catfish and his family led quiet, unassuming lives in their home at Lac du Flambeau. They were not remarkable in any way and not the type of people whose names one would expect to find splashed across national newspapers. Yet that is exactly what happened in 1934 when Catfish’s life intersected with that of one of America’s most notorious gangsters. Historian Gary Entz has more: There are several possible birthdates for Ole Catfish, but he likely was born around 1867, which would have made him about 65 years old in 1934. He was a member of the Lac du Flambeau band of Lake Superior Chippewa and lived on a secluded allotment on the Reservation. Catfish made a living as a guide and by hunting, fishing, and trapping. He gained a small bit of local fame in 1898 when he successfully bagged a 254-pound albino stag, which he sold to the local Indian Agent. Catfish also found himself in a bit of difficulty in 1917-1918 when he got caught bringing liquor onto the Reservation. Catfish was not

Ole Catfish and Baby Face Nelson

On a pleasant morning last week, Sara Sommer and Chris Ester paddled to the deepest point of Luna Lake, a 64-acre lake in northern Forest County surrounded by National Forest. Sommer and Ester, both Forest Service employees who work in the watershed program, unpacked what they brought on board. Sommer joked it looked like a “mad chemistry lab.” Since 2013, the Forest Service has been collecting water samples here on Luna Lake. Some samples are just straight surface water. Others are sent through a filter rigged with a cordless drill. Chlorophyll tests require using air to push water through a special container. All samples will be sent to labs for precise testing on their chemistry. It might seem strange, people who work for the forest so concerned about the water. But Sommer said there’s no gap between forestry and water issues. “It’s all interconnected. Water and forest management and water quality, it’s all connected. I really think everything is connected,” she said. In fact, more

Lake Surveys Often Reveal Changes in Air Quality. Could Wildfire Smoke Have an Impact?

Local features from the Northwoods of Wisconsin. As reported by WXPR 91.7. Catch the entire archive in addition to daily news stories at https://www.wxpr.org/topic/local-features

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