This Superior Place


Book Description

Picturesque little Bayfield on Lake Superior is Wisconsin’s smallest city by population but one of its most popular visitor destinations. This book captures those unique qualities that keep tourists coming back year after year and offers a historically reliable look at the community as it is today and how it came to be. Abundantly illustrated with both historical and contemporary images, This Superior Place showcases, as author Dennis McCann writes, “a community where the past was layered with good times and down times, where natural beauty was the one resource that could not be exhausted by the hand of man, and where history is ever present.” Because Bayfield serves as “the gateway to the Apostle Islands,” the book also includes chapters on the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, Madeline Island, and the nearby Red Cliff Ojibwe community. It also covers the significant eras in the city’s history: lumbering, quarrying, commercial fishing, and the advent of the orchards visitors see today. It is not a guidebook as such but more of a visual and written tour of the city and the major elements that came together to make it what it is. Colorful stories from the past, written in Dennis McCann’s casual, humorous style, give a sense of the unique characters and events that have shaped this charming city on the lake.




Apostle Islands (Souvenir Edition)


Book Description

A collection of photographs of the Apostle Islands that lie off Wisconsin's Bayfield Peninsula, on the south shore of Lake Superior. All of the 22 islands, with the exception of Madeline Island, are part of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.




A Storied Wilderness


Book Description

The Apostle Islands are a solitary place of natural beauty, with red sandstone cliffs, secluded beaches, and a rich and unique forest surrounded by the cold, blue waters of Lake Superior. But this seemingly pristine wilderness has been shaped and reshaped by humans. The people who lived and worked in the Apostles built homes, cleared fields, and cut timber in the island forests. The consequences of human choices made more than a century ago can still be read in today’s wild landscapes. A Storied Wilderness traces the complex history of human interaction with the Apostle Islands. In the 1930s, resource extraction made it seem like the islands’ natural beauty had been lost forever. But as the island forests regenerated, the ways that people used and valued the islands changed - human and natural processes together led to the rewilding of the Apostles. In 1970, the Apostles were included in the national park system and ultimately designated as the Gaylord Nelson Wilderness. How should we understand and value wild places with human pasts? James Feldman argues convincingly that such places provide the opportunity to rethink the human place in nature. The Apostle Islands are an ideal setting for telling the national story of how we came to equate human activity with the loss of wilderness characteristics, when in reality all of our cherished wild places are the products of the complicated interactions between human and natural history. Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frECwkA6oHs




Minnesota's North Shore


Book Description

More than 30 years of experience photographing Lake Superior culminate in Minnesotaís North Shore, a melding of classic landscapes with images of incredible freshness and spontaneity. The book includes video footage of the North Shore on DVD.




Sailing Adventures in the Apostle Islands


Book Description

This book is the cruising guide for boaters in the Apostle Islands. In addition to a number of waypoints for significant features within the islands, it contains ten recommended sailing routes, nautical cautions, recommended anchorages and historical information. It also contains labeled color photos of the islands and marinas. One of the appendices contains maps of the islands showing the location of lighthouses, docks, trails and other significant information.. It is especially useful for boaters making their first trip to this freshwater sailing paradise.




Sacred Sites of Wisconsin


Book Description

Take time out from life's fast pace to reflect or pray at one of more than 400 sites around Wisconsin that are noted places of worship and pilgrimage. Included are churches, temples, synagogues, cemeteries, effigy mounds, and more. Learn about each site's history, what makes it sacred, and why it is worth a visit.




Around the Shores of Lake Superior


Book Description

With its rugged shoreline and deep, cold waters, Lake Superior offers exciting opportunities for travel, exploration, and enjoyment. From the Grand Sable Dunes and Apostle Islands of the south shore to mountain-studded St. Ignace Island and majestic Thunder Cape on the north, the lake is deeply ingrained in North America’s cultural and environmental heritage. Around the Shores of Lake Superioris an ideal trip planner and a unique guide to the region. As author Margaret Beattie Bogue follows the Lake Superior shoreline clockwise through Minnesota, Ontario, Michigan, and Wisconsin, she evokes the richness of local history and highlights hundreds of landmarks and points of interest that surround the lake. Grand Portage, Fort William Historical Park, the Agawa Canyon Pictographs, Isle Royale, the Pictured Rocks, and the Apostle Islands National Lakeshores are just a few of the many sites featured, each with a short descriptive history, directions, and contact information. In keeping with the guide’s easy-to-follow organization, all sites are keyed to a foldout map pocketed in the book’s back cover. This book also includes illuminating essays that give context to the natural and human history of the region—the Ojibwe presence, French exploration, industry on and around the lake, and the impact of this history on the natural environment. With more than 200 color and black-and-white images, this updated and greatly expanded Second Edition will enrich the appreciation of the region for both visitors and residents of the upper Great Lakes. Winner, Best Midwest Regional Interest Book, Midwest Book Awards Winner, Award of Merit for Leadership in History, American Association for State and Local History Best Books for Regional Special Interests, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for Regional Audiences, selected by the Public Library Association




The Unholy Apostles


Book Description

"The 'Unholy' Apostles" deals with a decidedly grim subject in Lake Superior lore - the shipwreck. The setting is the beautiful Chequamegon Bay area on the south shore. The time frame runs roughly from 1870 to 1930. Within this sixty year period Apostle Island waters witnessed many a troubled vessel, and produced a plethora of interesting tales. Shipwrecks have long fascinated mankind. After all, what's more dramatic than a vessel being lost at sea? Shipwreck tales seem to spark the imagination, or perhaps they massage the morbid side of human curiosity. Man's seemingly timeless struggle with the sea has long been considered high adventure. Battling the elements - whether it be storm-swelled seas, raging fire, or thick fog - is often brought to its most basic form aboard a ship: sink or swim, survive or die. Sometimes man is victorious: he conquers his unexpected adversary or is at least granted reprieve. The following tales concern those times when he wasn't. The Apostle Islands area was a major center for commerce. For decades ships plied these waters: the long forgotten sidewheelers, the graceful schooners, the powerful little tugs, the wooden bulk freighters, and eventually the bigger steel steamers. The volume of vessel traffic operating in the area during its heyday was immense. And, like other maritime regions, these waters witnessed their fair share of accidents. The "dead" ships that sit scattered about the Apostle Island area are part of the legacy of that great shipping period...




The Cadottes


Book Description

The Great Lakes fur trade spanned two centuries and thousands of miles, but the story of one particular family, the Cadottes, illuminates the history of trade and trapping while exploring under-researched stories of French-Ojibwe political, social, and economic relations. Multiple generations of Cadottes were involved in the trade, usually working as interpreters and peacemakers, as the region passed from French to British to American control. Focusing on the years 1760 to 1840—the heyday of the Great Lakes fur trade—Robert Silbernagel delves into the lives of the Cadottes, with particular emphasis on the Ojibwe–French Canadian Michel Cadotte and his Ojibwe wife, Equaysayway, who were traders and regional leaders on Madeline Island for nearly forty years. In The Cadottes: A Fur Trade Family on Lake Superior, Silbernagel deepens our understanding of this era with stories of resilient, remarkable people.




Madeline Island Summer Houses


Book Description

Madeline Island. Just the words conjure up images of a magical place. For thousands of years the largest of the Apostle Islands has drawn people to its Lake Superior shores. For more than a hundred years summer residents have been shaping places for a relaxed pace of life shared with friends and family and immersed in nature. Over the course of two summers, architecture writer Linda Mack and her daughter, photographer Kendra Mack, plied the island's roads to capture the stories of twenty-seven wildly different retreats. They include century-old cottages, contemporary houses designed by Minnesota architects, a rustic fishing cabin, a reassembled 1812 Vermont barn, and the author's own beach house. "Readers of this delightful book will be so enchanted with Linda Mack's stories of the island cottages that they will want to catch the next ferry from Bayfield, Wisconsin." Bette Hammel, author of "Legendary Homes of the Minneapolis Lakes" and "Legendary Homes of Lake Minnetonka"