“Curious History” Continued from Page 4
Some attended “an interesting exhibition of mind reading.” One enchanted evening was spent enacting the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. Two side-wheel wood-burning steamers, the Capitola and the Minniwauken, took people on excursions around the lake. Even in those days, conflicting complaints arose about suitable uses of the park: the Capitola’s steam whistle could be heard in Baraboo – three miles away. You could visit a zoo with a bear, a deer, and a raccoon named Rastus. In the summer, there were sculling regattas on the water, and in the winter horses raced on the frozen lake. You could play golf in the park from 1922 to 1961.
The boom of dynamite
explosions echoed throughout the Devil’s Lake valley in the late 1800’s. Quarries operated within a stone’s throw of the lake, and another location about a half mile past the group camp area. Work camps sprang up, and trains hauled the shattered quartzite away. The last quarry in what is now the park operated
into the 1960’s. In the 1930’s the Civilian Conservation Corps used locally quarried quartzite stone to build the Rock Elm Shelter and the Park Headquarters.
From 1934 to 1941, about
200 young men worked on many projects that continue to benefit the park even to this day. They built trails in some of the most rugged places, removed invasive species, guided visitors onto the bluffs, built tables, signs, and benches, built a reservoir, relocated roads, patrolled the bluffs as fireguards, and built at least two stone buildings.
During these same years,
the boisterous big bands of the era performed regularly in the Chateau at the north end of the lake. Sound easily carries the length of the lake on a still night. Certainly the provocative sounds of the bands performing in the Chateau at the north end of the lake reached the ears of many a C.C.C. boy, conjuring up visions of dancing, drinking, and women. One speculates about imaginative schemes
“Curious History” Continued on Page 7
Dual train tracks served the park
5 Quarry near northeast corner of the lake
Assortment of boats
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