Bayfield County Wisconsin

Seven Wonders of Wisconsin: Bayfield and the Apostle Islands

It actually feels a lot more like Door County, but without so many Chicagoans and traffic – and a little coastal Maine thrown in for good measure. The people who call this magical place home feel a special connection with Lake Superior, the mighty Great Lake that is really more of a sea than a lake. You have to see it to believe it, but Lake Superior weaves its way into every facet of daily life up here.

Maybe it's because of the area's amazing natural beauty, or perhaps because it's so far away from everything – a seven-hour drive from Milwaukee if you don't dawdle – that Bayfield and the biggest and only populated of the Apostle archipelagos, Madeline Island, draws a special type of tourist and resident.

It's a well-kept secret that needs to be let out.

People who live up here embrace nature and ecology, and the county is known for artists and adventure types practicing quiet water sports like sailing and kayaking. And that's just during Bayfield County's short summer.

They equally embrace winter with dog sledding and celebrate the frozen lake with a temporary ice road between the mainland and Madeline.

They even get along with and respect the area's Native Americans, who still occupy much of the peninsula on a reservation – this is sacred land for the Indians, where magnetic and due north line up. The white settlers who came after the Anishinaabeg quickly understood this energy and revered it, too.

Of course, being so far from Milwaukee and Chicago means that you need to be fully committed to the trip that takes you many miles north of even Minoqua, and you're more likely to see tourists here from Minneapolis than you are from Mequon.

But this is still Wisconsin, even if it doesn't really feel like it.

It's just a different kind of Up North that what you might be used to. And, unlike some other quaint destinations in the Northwoods, these folks don't discourage visitors from seeing their little slice of heaven, they welcome them.

Bayfield and Beyond in Only Two Days

We arrived in Bayfield on Monday night, taking a circuitous route through western Wisconsin to visit another "Wisconsin Wonder" destination, Superior's Big Manitou Falls (that article is coming soon). Certainly a scenic drive, it took us close to 11 hours before we checked in at the beautiful Rittenhouse Inn, one of the city's most stately old hotels.

Unless you love driving, don't take this route. Instead, head to Appleton, west to Wausau, north on Highway 51 then west on Highway 2, and finally up the peninsula on Highway 13. In all, you're looking at a peaceful but slightly grueling 375-mile drive from Downtown Milwaukee.

Appeals court rules against Bayfield County over ... - The Daily Press

The former rail corridor, which extends from the southern Bayfield County line to Bayfield, has been the subject of years of court fights between residents of southern Bayfield County who maintain they have sole ownership of the former railroad corridor, and Bayfield County, which would like to operate part of the corridor as a recreational trail for snowmobiles. The county maintains that because of a complex series of federal legislation, dating back to 1852, the corridor's title actually reverted to the federal government and the county had a right to obtain the corridor for use as a public highway, including as a recreational corridor. According to Madison attorney Carl Sinderbrand, the county asserted that the lands were granted to the United States with a reversionary interest in favor of the government, if the line was ever abandoned. Sinderbrand said the county asserted this was true on both the odd-numbered one-square-mile sections of land given to the state by the federal government to encourage rail development in the 19th century and thence granted to the railroad, and the even-numbered sections, which the federal government sold separately to settlers. "In the odd-numbered sections, the court concluded that the statute indirectly granted the property to the railroads with no reversionary interest, and even if there had been, the railroad did not, as a factual matter, follow the process that was required under the statute that could have provided a reversionary interest," Sinderbrand said. "There is a fundamental issue here that affects ownership, people's security in the ownership of their property," he said. "The ability to transfer property with the assurance that if it's in the title record, that's all you have to look at. What the county was suggesting was that there are implied public interests in railroad rights of way, which means for title companies, for Realtors, for people buying and selling property, there is no certainty.

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Bayfield County, Wisconsin

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