Preserved here are the images and complete text from a late 1920s or early 1930s tourism brochure produced by the city of Baraboo promoting Devil’s Lake State Park and Baraboo, Wisconsin. This rare piece comes from the Skillet Creek Media collection of historic Devil’s Lake materials. While the language may seem flowery by today’s standards, it captures a unique moment in Wisconsin tourism history, when automobiles were new and the park was establishing itself as a premier destination.
[Full text follows…]It’s a Short and Beautiful Trip from Your Home to Baraboo
Baraboo is the hub of the main trunk highways of Wisconsin, as a glimpse at your Wisconsin map will show you. No matter where you may be or where you are going, Baraboo is on your route, or you need not disturb your plans to route this way. Stop at Baraboo and Devil’s Lake and enjoy nature’s masterpieces of scenery, and summer sports.
FEDERAL HIGHWAY 12—The great transcontinental highway extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the all-weather year around United States thoroughfare running through Baraboo, one of the principal trunk lines and trading station on the great motor highway. Due to its strategic location, its superior entertainment facilities, and its scenery, the Baraboo Region ranks high above that to be found at any other resort in the middle west.
WISCONSIN STATE HIGHWAY 13 (leading to Baraboo) is one of the finest through Wisconsin and in several territories, stretching from below the Illinois State line to Lake Superior. No other Wisconsin highway offers to the motorist so much natural beauty—Madison and the Four Lakes, Devil’s Lake at Baraboo, The Wisconsin Dells.
Golf
On the sporty public course in Devil’s Lake State Park. Moderate daily green fee or coupon books. Several other courses within a few minutes by auto.
Bathing
Far up in the Baraboo Bluffs lies pure, spring-fed Devil’s Lake, with its sandy bathing beaches. At the north shore has been provided every requisite of a modern beach—bath house and equipment for water sports. There is safe bathing here for the children.
Horse Back Riding
Circus trained saddle horses are available for the enjoyment of summer visitors. Horseback riding is a native sport in this circus city, and hundreds of visitors add to their skill or take their first lessons in this fascinating sport on the woodland bridle paths. Nothing is more intriguing than a moonlight horseback ride, with a competent guide, over the winding paths to the top of one of the bluffs overlooking the lake.
Beautiful Baraboo
The City of Baraboo lies up in the Baraboo Bluffs in the valley of the Baraboo River, which flows into the mighty Wisconsin nearby. It is 1010 feet above sea level, in a region of timber-covered bluffs, which in New England would compare with the White Mountains. With a past reaching far back to the day of the mound builders, and later descendants, to be partially visited by the exploring Jesuits, to be followed by their missionary priests, French trappers and traders, Baraboo is now known as the beautiful resort city of Wisconsin, located as it is at Devil’s Lake State Park and in the midst of the Garden of the Gods of Wisconsin. Summer visitors at Baraboo enjoy the wild beauty of the region, its cool, clean, healthful surroundings and invigorating atmosphere and summer sports.
Baraboo Provides for Your Comfort
- 400 SUMMER COTTAGES—Located in Baraboo, Devil’s Lake State Park, and other beautiful places near the city.
- 6 PUBLIC CAMPGROUNDS AND TENT COLONIES — Located in Baraboo and Devil’s Lake State Park. All are well equipped.
- 10 MODERN HOTELS AND RESORTS — Furnishing a wide range of lodgings and entertainment.
- 21 POPULAR EATING PLACES.
- 411 PRIVATE HOME ROOMS—These are located in homes in the city and nearby farmsteads.
Good News for Campers
Campers in the Baraboo Region and guests occupying summer cottages will find they can purchase fuel and other supplies and professional service just as readily here as they can at home, and without the usual additional expense of transportation. Baraboo churches particularly welcome summer visitors.
Baraboo — Beautiful Summer Playground and Home City
Baraboo is a prosperous city of about six thousand people located in a rich farming community, with several manufacturing institutions, including the largest woolen mills west of Philadelphia, towel and rug mills, refrigerator railway car plant, canning factory, barn and playground equipment plants, creameries, and others. All of Baraboo’s industries are operated by water power or hydro-electric energy generated right on the Baraboo River, within the city limits, or at the power dams on the Wisconsin River nearby.
Baraboo a Friendly Summer Resort
Baraboo is distinctly a city of charming homes, clean, healthy and modern. It is a distinct commendation that a great many traveling men and others maintain their homes here because of the city’s remarkable health record, the beauty of its surroundings, its low tax rate and living expenses, and the excellence of its schools. Baraboo has not, without cause, been dubbed The St. Petersburg of Northern Resorts, because of its welcome, its generous hospitality, and the breadth of its appeal to all classes of desirable vacation visitors, and the real economy of its attractions and services. No matter what you buy here you pay only the regular local rate for it. Every citizen of Baraboo is personally pledged to make your vacation here a happy one.
Devil’s Lake State Park at Baraboo, Wisconsin
Just beyond the limits of Baraboo lies Devil’s Lake State Park. A few years ago, in order to preserve the virgin beauty of the lake, bluffs, timber, and Indian Mounds, it was set aside as a State Park, Wild Life Refuge and Forest Reserve. Today it ranks as Wisconsin’s most popular, most accessible and most beautiful park fully equipped for all amusements of all kinds. Within the park are about two hundred cottages, and just outside the park are several privately owned and operated summer hotels and resorts, cottage colonies, and cottages or refuges in this region. During the season Devil’s Lake State Park is a colorful place, with its gay throngs of cottagers, campers and casual visitors.
To the casual visitor the giant bluffs at Devil’s Lake seem to have been wrought and set by giant hands as stage scenery for a mighty drama of the gods—awe inspiring to the viewer from below, but apparently with little support from behind! In fact, one has the uncomfortable sensation that these magnificent gilt-edged piles must surely topple over if certain precious supports are removed from behind! But to enjoy real beauty, impressiveness and grandeur you should hike these bluffs or make them on horseback and get a view from their height, read about their strange formation and live awhile with them.
Baraboo and Devil’s Lake State Park are surrounded by tracts of remarkable beauty, possessing such famous scenic places as The Wisconsin River, Mirror Lake, Lake Delton, Lake Winona, and many other sites which all unite to make this region one of the most popular summer and winter outdoor places in the state. The location and highway information for these will be found in the Baraboo Region Map elsewhere in this folder. In fact the touring area of which Baraboo is the hub and natural gateway, covers about 1500 square miles, all connected up with a perfect chain of paved highways. South of these lies the Rock River State Park (Tower Hill) National Bridge, near Leland, The Father’s Caves and Valley Gorge, and all of the famous Dells of the Wisconsin Indian Mounds, including Man Mound, north of Baraboo.
Devil’s Lake presents Wisconsin’s largest and most outstanding lake scene. The rock of Devil’s Lake Bluffs was formed when our old world’s crust was just taking shape. One may find here rock a mile beneath it at the bottom of the Canadian Shield. From the seething cauldron of ages ago, the Devil’s Lake region was thrown up from the bowels of the earth, in the cooling, folding and cracking of the earth’s crust. Because of these remarkable rock formations at Devil’s Lake and the entire Devil’s Lake region, several great universities of the middle west maintain summer geology camps here, where many students come each summer to study or carry on their explorations under the direction of their instructors.
Devil’s Lake State Park is under the direction of the Wisconsin Conservation Commission, and the highest sanitary standards are always maintained where is a resident superintendent and an efficient, competent Concessionaire. There is safe bathing for the children in Devil’s Lake.