University Place

A Social History of Lake Mendota

[Katie Schumacher, Wisconsin Historical Society]

Today, we are pleased to introduce Don Sanford as part of the Wisconsin Historical Museum’s History Sandwiched In lecture series. The opinions expressed today are those of the presenters and are not necessarily those of the Wisconsin Historical Society or the Museum’s employees.

A native – native of Syracuse, New York, Don Sanford grew up on the shore of Cazenovia Lake, where he first developed his interest in boats and social history. Don earned a degree in communication studies from the State University of New York at Oswego in 1972 and his master’s from Syracuse University in radio, television and film in 1974. He moved to Madison with his wife, Barb, in 1976, to accept a position with Wisconsin Public Television. During nearly three decades at WPT, he served as lighting director, production manager, volunteer manager and occasional on-air host.

A Lake Mendota sailor since 1976, Don spends whatever free time he has racing sailboats and iceboats. Here today to share a social history of Lake Mendota, please join me in welcoming Don Sanford.

[applause]

Well, thanks very much, Katie. It’s nice to be here and thank you all for coming. And it’s such a treat to be here and to be speaking on the Wisconsin Channel.

In October of last year my book, On Fourth Lake: A Social History of Lake Mendota came out, and since then we’ve sold almost 2,000 copies. It’s pretty amazing. I’ve lived here, as Katie said in the introduction, since 1976, and in addition to this great job I had at Wisconsin Public Television, Madison was the perfect place for me because I could sail in the summertime. And in the wintertime, –

[slide featuring a photo of Dons iceboat sailing on Lake Mendota]

– we put all the sailboats away and we get out iceboats and we run around and race iceboats all winter long.

And part of these two great sports is the time we spend socializing. And we do that, in iceboating anyway, we do that a lot because we’re always waiting for either the temperature to go up or to go down or the snow to melt or one thing or another. But part of all the socializing, was hearing stories from people I would call my sailing elders.

[Don Sanford, Author, On Fourth Lake: A History of Lake Mendota]

Guys and women who’ve grown up here in Madison, spent a lot of time in the lake, who would frequently say, Oh, yeah, that over there, that’s where I almost drown three times when I was 15 years old. Or, that you know, That house over there that they just tore down, there was a crazy old guy who lived there. And we and it… So, these were just kind of stories that I had heard over, you know, after – at an after-race party, until September of 2003.

[slide featuring a photo of Don sitting on his sailboat with three of his friends]

It was a fateful trip. This is a group of my friends. That’s me on the far left when I had more hair, and we used to go up to Bayfield and go sailing every fall. And we started on one trip up there telling Lake Mendota stories, you know, it’s five hours in the car to get there. And the other guys ran out of stories around Wausau, and I was –

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

– still blathering on about this or that, something I had heard at a party, and we got up there and my friend said, “Oh, you know, you really ought to write this down, this would make a great book.” And I said, Well, all right, fine, I’ll do this. So, a promise is a promise, and I started working on this book, and 10, 11, 12 years later, I finally got around to writing it. And so, while I was doing research, even though I – I probably knew this all along, you know, I interviewed dozens and dozens of people, trying to collect stories and then fact-check the stories because somebody usually would have little details, your memory gets a little foggy sometimes. And one of the things I learned, and I probably knew this all along, is that anyone who’s ever –

[slide featuring the statement – Anyone who has grown up on a lake or river seems to have a connection with that body of water that lasts a lifetime.]

– grown up on a lake or a river or some other big body of water, seems to have a connection with that body of water that lasts a life – lasts a lifetime. And, like Salmon –

[new slide with the statement – Like Salmon, any discussion of water-related events quickly sends us back to our aquatic roots.]

– any discussion, right, of water-related events quickly sends us back to these aquatic roots. And that’s really the story of what this book is all about and how it –

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

– got going and what I’ve tried to do collecting these stories.

As soon as I would be at a party and I’d say, Oh, I’m researching this book about Lake Mendota, somebody would say, Oh, that reminds me of the time, and that’s why research on this project took like 10 years. Every time I’d turn around, I was getting a new story.

So, what this book isn’t about. It isn’t about the large estates that were on Lake Mendota because there really weren’t many. There were about three or four that I can think of offhand. Magnus Swenson’s property –

[slide featuring a photo of the Swensons home and property, Thorstrand]

– Thorstrand, at the west end of the lake.

[slide featuring a photo of the home and property of Hobart Johnsons in Maple Bluff]

Real estate developer Hobart Johnson’s home up in Maple Bluff was a pretty big piece of property. Or the property that belonged to –

[new slide featuring an aerial photo of the Fox Bluff property of J.F. OConnell and Sigurd Odegard]

– telecommunications pioneers J.F. O’Connell and Sigurd Odegard up on the a – up in Fox Bluff. Those are about the three big properties on the lake.

[new slide featuring a limnological map of Lake Mendota showing its various depths]

And, you know, Lake Mendota was never really the home of the rich and famous, so-called. But if you wanna go see the homes of the rich and famous, go to Lake Geneva, take the mail boat ride, and you’ll get thoroughly inducted in all that.

[new slide showing a screenshot of a google search for the most studied lake in the world and the top result being Lake Mendota with a map and a photo]

And although Mendota is the most studied lake in the world, if you sit at your computer and pound that phrase into your browser search engine –

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

– you’ll end up at the Limnology Lab. And a – but even though it is the most studied lake in the world and dozens, hundreds of papers have been written about it, this book isn’t about science, that’s all covered elsewhere. This book is about ordinary people who’ve lived and played on Lake Mendota. And people like to have picnics, like here.

[slide featuring a photo of a gathering of iceboaters and other members of the Four Lakes Ice Yacht Club standing and sitting in chairs around tables of food and coolers of beverages on a frozen Lake Mendota]

Your beer always is cold. You don’t have to worry about ants –

[laughter]

– and it’s a sunny day. It’s just as – it just as nice in the – in the spring as it is almost today. And it’s –

[new slide featuring a photo of Charlie Brand with a bamboo fishing pole fishing from the Tenney Park Locks near Lake Mendota]

– also about, oh, fishermen, like this guy. This is the legendary Charlie Brand, the guy who once claimed that he could sink – he could catch enough white bass in one day to sink his rowboat. I think he may have.

[new slide featuring a photo of a seaworthy miniature battleship created by Bruce Mohs sitting on a trailer]

It’s about interesting characters too, like the guy, like Bruce Mohs, who was the designer, builder, and captain of the only battleship to cruise on Lake Mendota.

[laughter]

That was –

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

– he launched her in 1978. This was a picture I took a couple of years ago up at the Iola car show.

And it’s also about folks who lived in more down-to-earth housing, like these buildings, these – I shouldn’t call them buildings, structures –

[slide featuring a photo of a building at the University Tent Colony just off the shores of Lake Mendota]

– at the University Tent Colony kind of between Frautschi Point and Shorewood. And I like to say that it’s a book about history from –

[new slide featuring the same limnological map of Lake Mendota as a slide above now with the title – A Different View of Madison History emblazoned over it]

– Madison history, from a different point of view.

[new slide featuring a photo of a docent and several tourists standing in front of an historic Madison home on a walking tour offered by the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation]

If you’ve ever taking a walking tour, like this one run by the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation, you go to a street, a docent meets you, you walk along the street, and you talk about the houses there. In this book –

[slide of an historic Madison home as seen from a boat on Lake Mendota]

– you get into a boat, and you cruise along the shoreline, and we talk about the houses that are there or what used to be there or what happened here or sometimes what’s underneath you. And the neat part about going through, going around the lake, you’re really looking at people’s backyards. But if you, unlike doing that on shore, where you’d have to climb over a fence or squirrel away down through a garden or something like that and think that these people are going to call the cops, your safe out here on the lake. Lakeshore owners are pretty used to people walking, going by in a boat, and looking in their backyards. So, you can do this without fear of any reprisals.

[return to the limnological map of Lake Mendota described above]

So, it’s a – its a story about people and places –

[the slide animates on the phrase – People and Places – over the top of the image of Lake Mendota on the slide]

– and that together, when you put them all together, contribute to –

[the slide animates on the phrase – (A Social History) – below the phrase – People and Places – and over the image of Lake Mendota on the slide]

– the social history of Lake Mendota. And, you know –

[new slide featuring a photo of boaters on Lake Mendota enjoying a spring or summer day]

– today, most of us who are on the lake, spend our time cruising around in boats –

[new slide featuring a people sailing a sailboat on Lake Mendota on a spring or summer day]

– sailing –

[new slide featuring a father and son relaxing on Lake Mendota in yellow and blue inflatable chairs]

– just relaxing, having a drink on a hot day.

But there was a time –

[new slide titled – Commercial Boating on Lake Mendota – with the same limnological map of Lake Mendota as its background]

– when Lake Mendota was a watery highway, and there was a lot of commercial boating going on.

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

And that’s what I’m going to talk about today, is the commercial boating that happened here, and we’ll get into that here right now. Let’s step back here to 18 – 19 – yeah, 1897, and –

[slide titled – Lake Mendota, 1897 – featuring the same limnological map of Lake Mendota as the background]

– if you, I’ll take the super away –

[the title animates off of the slide leaving the limnological map of Lake Mendota from 1897]

– and if you look at this map of the lake, this is 1897, and there’s still aren’t a lot of roads around – around Lake Mendota. Down here on the city side there’s quite a bit, but up on the north side of the lake, there are – there are dirt roads at best. But there were people who spent time in the lake, there were des – and there were, I’ll put it in quotes, “destinations”. Places –

[the slide animates on arrows to two destinations on Lake Mendota – Picnic Point on the south side of the lake and North Hamilton Street on the Isthmus in the southeast part of the lake]

– that people like to go, like Picnic Point, or the vil –

[the slide animates on a new arrow titled – Pheasant Branch – on the far west of the lake, while it animates off Picnic Point]

– the little village of Pheasant Branch, or up to the State hospital –

[the slide animates on a new arrow titled – Asylum – on the northeast side of the lake, while it animates off Pheasant Branch]

– or the Maple Bluff Golf Course –

[the slide animates on a new arrow titled – Maple Bluff Golf Course – on the east northeastern side of the lake, while it animates off Asylum]

– and a little resort called –

[the slide animates on a new arrow titled – Bernards Park – on the northeastern side of the lake slightly down from the Asylum, while it animates off the Maple Bluff Golf Course]

– Bernard’s Park, and cottages –

[the slide animates on a red star at the location of cottages on the southwest part of the lake]

– Mendota Beach –

[the slide animates on two more red stars for the locations of Mendota Beach (west northwest) and Morris Park (slightly north of Mendota Beach), while animating off the red star for the cottages]

– Morris Park, Borchard’s Beach –

[the slide animates on a new red star for Borchards Beach slightly southeast of the location of the Asylum, while animating off the two red stars for Mendota Beach and Morris Park]

– Woodward’s Grove.

[the slide animates on two more red stars at the locations of Shorewood (southwest) and the University Tent Colony (south and west of Shorewood), while animating off the star for Borchards Beach]

And let’s see here, Shorewood and the University Tent Colony, and the –

[the slide animates on two more red stars right next to one another as the location of Camp Sunrise in West Point (west)]

– far away destination of Camp Sunrise in West Point. And to get there –

[new slide showing detail of an old Madison map and the area of North Hamilton Street where it meets the lake which shows a pier (located in the area of todays James Madison Park) that is labelled on the map as – To Maple Bluff, To Mendota, and To Merrill Spring]

– most people took boats that left from what’s now James Madison Park, from a pier that was built right out at the foot of North Hamilton Street.

[new slide featuring an advertisement for The Steamer – Capitol City! And Capt. W.W. Plummer who will ferry people from the foot of Lake Street to Pic-Nic (sic) Point – from the Wisconsin State Journal June, 26, 1858]

The first – first person we’re going to talk about here is Captain W.W. Plummer, Plummer (Ploo-mur) perhaps. Although the development of Picnic Point in earnest wouldn’t happen really for another decade, when it got hot in Madison –

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

– and Madisonians wanted to get away from the heat and the smells and the flies, Picnic Point, about a mile and a half across the lake, was the shining destination. And – but getting there was always a problem. It was a long, dusty trip in a carriage over rutted roads in the summertime from downtown out there. A boat was the ideal solution. And one entrepreneur here, this guy Captain W.W. Plummer –

[return to the previous slide with Capt. Plummers ad described above]

– built the Capital City, a little steamboat. And actually, his primary business was ferrying workers back and forth to the quarries at Maple Bluff and Farwell’s Point. But in his off-hours, he went into the pasture business and took people on rides out to Picnic Point.

[new slide with a new advertisement from August 14th, 1865, for the Yacht St. Louis which would ferry passengers to Picnic Point]

In 1865, about 10 years later, a fellow named John Boehringer, built a quote comfortable refreshment and dancing hall on Picnic Point, where I’m quoting from the – his – another article about him where quote, the invalid can procure the genuine red wine of Missouri and other –

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

– wholesome stimulants necessary to invigorate and impart tone to the jaded frame. But before people could be invigorated –

[return to a close-up of the advertisement from the previous slide described above)

– they had to get there. And back in those days, like I said, it’s a mile – its a mile and a half straight across the lake, but several miles around by land, so Boehringer had the answer. He needed a boat, so he built one. And his answer was the Yacht St. Louis.

[new slide featuring a close-up view of the limnological map of Lake Mendota and the areas of Picnic Point and North Hamilton Street showing their distance relation]

She was schooner rigged, about 30 feet long, and sailed from a pier at the foot of North Hamilton Street. Public trip – trips were just a quarter, and you could also charge – charter the St. Louis for longer trips –

[new slide featuring an ad for The City of Madison steamboat from the Lake Mendota Steamboat Line from June 6th, 1867]

– a little newspaper ad here. So, business must have been pretty good because a year later, Boehringer launched the quote staunched side-wheeler steamer the City of Madison. Well, it turns out that the City of Madison was not –

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

– actually a new boat, over that winter, he had the St. Louis cut in half, and they stuck about 10 or 15 feet in the middle of it, put it all back together again, dropped two steam engines into it, and he had a side-wheel steamer. And now he could go, he wouldn’t have to wait for the wind. If there’s too much, yeah, he could just go at any time, in any weather, back and forth to Picnic Point, business boomed, and he did really well.

The St. Louis went through, the City of Madison went through two or three owners until it was finally sold to somebody in the Dells.

[slide featuring a photo of the Dell Queen steamboat parked at a dock with several passengers standing on the bow for the photograph]

The newspaper articles I’ve found said that she was renamed in the Dells, The Dells Queen. And I did find this image of her. I – so, this might be The City of Madison under another name. I don’t know, but that’s history for you.

The next big change came –

[new slide featuring a photo of the half-finished steamer Yacht Mendota in E.H. Freemans boatyard]

– in 1877, another 10 years, when E.H. Freeman launched the steam Yacht Mendota. Here she is. Here’s the Mendota in Freeman’s boatyard, also at the foot of North Hamilton Street about 1876. They launched her the following year. Apparently, the newspaper story –

[new photo of the completed Yacht Mendota preparing to be launched from E.H. Freemans shipyard]

– said that several thousand people stood in the rain to watch this boat get slid into the water. Freeman engaged D.J. Lawler, a celebrated east coast naval architect, to design a boat that could take almost any kind of the weather that Lake Mendota could dish up. And if any of you have been on Lake Mendota, you know that it can get really rough and really ugly in a hurry, and he designed the Mendota to survive those conditions. And he put one giant steam engine in the thing so that she could make up to 18 knots, 18 miles an hour, in good conditions. A reporter who had taken a ride on her early on described her as beautiful, fast, strong, and safe. Here she is just before she got launched, sitting on the hard in – in – in the boatyard at the foot of North Hamilton Street.

[new slide featuring an ad for the steamship Mendota from the Wisconsin State Journal from August 17th, 1880]

Freeman was involved in a land deal over on what’s now Maple Bluff. And so, he had a second reason, he was just – you know, he needed to get people over there to the picnic grounds and the camping grounds. He built two all-weather boat landings over there, and people went back and forth on – on the Mendota, with –

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

– the occasional stop at the state hospital, to visit other people who were there, not to drop passengers off, I don’t think, but that could have been.

She carried 150 passengers, quite a few people, and was skippered by many fine –

[slide featuring a photo of Captain George W. Patterson holding a model boat in front of a shipyard building]

– captains, including this guy, Captain George W. Patterson. Mendota also had –

[new slide featuring a photo of the barge Uncle Sam at dock with a multitude of passengers on board the upper deck]

– another benefit. She – in 1878, the year after she was first launched, her owners built the 75-foot barge Uncle Sam. Her lower deck was used as a dance hall and a dining room, while her upper deck, as you can see here, was just – just a big wide-open promenade. And the Mendota towed the Uncle – towed the Uncle Sam to various parts around the lake, where passengers were transferred over for a good time. The Uncle Sam had one other feature, that – it was a unique opportunity of having a large vessel like this, she had a bartender. I’ve never seen anything written that said she actually had a bar, but the assumption is that if you had a bartender, you probably would have a bar. Alcohol consumption in Madison in those days was very closely –

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

– regulated, but out on the lake –

[laughter]

– I’m just saying, you know? Law – presumably, law enforcement was a little lax, and yeah, not only hazy but just lax. So, unfortunately, all this good time came to an end in 1882 when the Uncle Sam burned to the water line (makes a whooshing sound) and that was the end of her. The Mendota survives for another decade perhaps.

In 1893, Bert Ainsworth, a Madisonian who saw opportunity on every wave that rolled across the lake, built the –

[slide featuring an advertisement from the Wisconsin State Journal on September 13th, 1891, for the New Steamer Satirio On Lake Mendota that has a photo of the steamer as part of the ad]

– Satirio, Spanish for water raft. Ainsworth was a fisherman. He made, a very famous lure maker, and he was also a captain. He drove the mail boat for a while. But he had just purchased some property up on the north shore of the lake fishing camp, and he need to get his people, his guests, across the lake in good shape, so he had the Satirio built. She was 43 – 43 feet long.

[new slide featuring a painting of the Satirio docked at the North Franklin Street pier surrounded by sailboats and an oar boat]

Here she is sitting at the pier about 1892 at the foot of North Franklin Street. And if you look at the picture where you see the sunset, that’s Picnic Point.

Probably, if those rocks were still there, I could triangulate this and figure out where the photo painting was done, but it’s Picnic Point, it’s Lake Mendota, it’s the Satirio.

[new slide featuring a portrait photo of Charles Bernard]

The next big change in commercial boating came in 1848. That’s when this guy, Charles Bernard, arrived in Madison. Bernard immigrated to the United States from Germany.

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

He worked for quite a while as a kid in the naval shipyard in Brooklyn, learned the trade of cabinetmaking, and somehow, he moved out to Madison and opened a tailor shop. And he ran the tailor shop for a couple years, and then somehow got this idea that with his skills, as a carpenter and all this water, maybe he could make some money building boats.

So, in 1850, he built his first little boat in the building behind his home at –

[slide featuring (presumably) Mr. Bernard and his son, walking down the pier behind his home on Gorham street with several boats tied to the pier]

– 624 East Gorham Street. And he started building little, you know, rowboats, fishing boats. And then, in 1891, he launched his first commercial vessel, the Anna, cleverly named after his daughter, although I would have named it after my wife.

[laughter]

But the Anna was not just the beginning of a – a boat business, but it really was a beginning of a – a company that would dominate the boating scene on Lake Mendota for almost five decades, in winter and in summer.

[new slide featuring an ad from August 27th, 1901, in the Wisconsin State Journal titled Mendota Lake from the company C. Bernard and Son]

In 1893, the same year that Ainsworth launched his Satirio, Bernard launched the Columbia. She was 52 feet long, steam powered, and she made fishing trips across the lake to the best fishing spots, and of course over to the State hospital.

[new slide featuring a photo of the steamboat Wisconsin parked at the University Boat Landing]

In 1905, he built another big steamer. This one called the Wisconsin. First, she was powered by steam, and later she was switched to gasoline. So, here she is approaching the pier at the old University Boathouse, its right behind the Red Gym on Langdon Street. The Wisconsin was 51 feet long.

Now things get interesting. In 1906 –

[new slide featuring the limnological map of Lake Mendota from the 1800s with an arrow indicating the location of Bernards Park on the northeast of the lake and another arrow indicating the piers at North Hamilton Street on the isthmus]

– Charles’ son William took over the Bernard Boat Company and decided that the way to expand this business was to build a picnic ground out on some piece of property somewhere across the lake, and he found the exact perfect spot over on what’s now Woodwards Drive, and built a place called Bernard’s Park. It was a roller-skating rink, had a big pavilion in it. People went there and played baseball games; it wasn’t an –

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

– amusement park, but, in those days, thats what people were looking for was just a place far from town, lots of trees. And, conveniently for the Bernard family, they had the Wisconsin to get there –

[return to the previous slide with the limnological map of Lake Mendota now with a dotted arrow from the pier on North Hamilton Street to Bernards Park]

-because in those days the only way to get there was really by boat. Again, the trip from downtown Madison was like a whole day’s ride in a – in a – in a – horse-powered vehicle. So, conveniently for the customers, they could step on the Wisconsin downtown at the foot of North – at the Bernard – at the Bernard boathouse [makes whooshing sound] and off they went.

[new slide featuring a photo of two steamboats parked at the Bernard Boathouse, the Forward and the Wisconsin]

Business was so good, that to keep pace with the demand, in 1907, they launched another boat called the Forward. And here you can see the Forward and the Wisconsin sitting on the – on the hard, on their railroad, right next to the Bernard Boathouse. That’s the building you see here on the right, that’s the old Bernard Boathouse. Wisconsin is in the middle, the Forward is on the far left side. Here they are –

[new slide featuring a photo of the Wisconsin and the Forward parked at a pier one behind the other and the West End parked on opposite side of the pier]

– in the water. Forward, again, is on the right. By now, she’s still steam, we can still see the stack there. And the Wisconsin is tucked a little further back behind the Forward, and over on the other side of the pier is the West End. So, this picture was taken around 1921. By now, these guys had three 51, 52-foot vessels, principally running back and forth, servicing the east end of the lake – and the east end of the lake, Bernard’s Park, Asylum.

[new slide featuring an ad from August 6th, 1910, from the Wisconsin State Journal for the Wm. P. Bernard company showing departure and return times for various properties on the east side of Lake Mendota]

Lets see. In 1910, this ad from 1910, says that Bernard’s offered regular service to Maple Bluff, the State hospital, and of course Bernard’s Park where paying boat customers were granted free admission privileges.

In the ’20s, they ran boats, they had dances at the –

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

– Bernard’s Park in the evening. They ran boats nonstop from the Park – the pier at Park Street to get all those university students out to Bernard’s Park and back.

In the spring of 1940, the Bernard family sold their business to Benny Berg, who ran the Berg Sporting Goods Company. He changed the name of the West End to the Badger, ran the business for another two or three years before he sold it to the Hoover Boat Company, and I’ll talk a little more about Harry Hoover as we get deeper into this.

But the Bernard’s weren’t the only people who ran boat yards, boat lines, on the lake. In 1904, the Maple Bluff Golf Club –

[slide featuring the limnological map of Lake Mendota with the pier at North Carrol Street on the isthmus and the Maple Bluff Golf Course on the east side of the lake indicated by arrows]

– launched a little steamer called the Putter.

[laughter]

She was followed by the Putter II and then the Putter III. And the Putter ran back and forth between the foot of North Carroll Street at the city boathouse and over to Maple Bluff Golf Course.

[new slide featuring a time table for the Putter steamboat from June 6th, 1904, in the Wisconsin State Journal]

After a while, she also did cruises, did stops, to the Asylum. Remember, in those days the Asylum, there were a lot of people in the Asylum that today, at the State hospital, that today would probably be out wandering amongst us. But in those days, if you just couldn’t quite figure what – out what to do with Aunt Susie, she would be at the Asylum, so a lot of people went over there to visit relatives.

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

In 1917, another boat operator enters the picture. This is the Anderson Boat Company, operated by Rolf Anderson –

[slide featuring an ad for Around The Lake Trips by the Anderson Boat Company in the July 21st, 1918, edition of the Wisconsin State Journal]

– the son of U.W. Scandinavian professor, Rasmus Anderson. Anderson began service from the city to the foot of – foot of North Park Street, and he went out –

[new slide featuring the limnological map of Lake Mendota with all the places on the west end of the lake that the Anderson Boat Company served indicated by red stars as well as the pier at North Park Street indicated by an arrow]

– and covered places at the west end of the lake. The University Tent Colony, Mendota Beach, Morris Park and Borchard’s Beach. Business was pretty good for him, and at one point Anderson proposed building a hundred-footer, but that project came and went, and he was gone.

[new slide featuring the Time Schedule for Lake Mendota offered by the City Boat Company in the Wisconsin State Journal on July 5th, 1918]

While – while Bernard’s were busy with trips to the east end of the lake, owners of City Boat Company also saw – saw an opportunity, to take care of the cottagers at the far west end of the lake. Around 1910, and probably for about nine years after that, they operated a boat providing service to cottagers –

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

– at that end of the lake. And they provided regular scheduled daily service to Blackhawk, which is –

[slide featuring the limnological map of Lake Mendota with red stars indicating Blackhawk, Merrill Springs, Mendota Beach, Middleton, Baskerville Park, Waconia, Camp Sunrise, Morris Park and Camp Indianola all animating in on the map as Mr. Sanford mentions them]

– you know, Shorewood like today, Merrill Springs, Mendota Beach, Middleton, Baskerville Park, Waconia, Camp Sunrise, Morris Park and Camp Indianola.

[new slide featuring an ad for free trips to Morris Park along with the schedule for boat service by the H. A. Smythe, Jr. company in the Wisconsin State Journal of August 21st, 1911]

During, now, this is where it gets interesting again, during the summer of 1911, they were engaged by Madison realtor H.A. Smith. Is it Smith or Smythe [with long I sound] Junior? He was trying to develop some lots up in Morris Park, and what better way to get there than by boat. So, if you clipped the little coupon from the corner of this ad and went down to the pier, you could get yourself, you and your – whoever else was going there with you, you could get a ride across the lake and back to Morris Park where you could, let’s see, the ad says, where perspective buyers can picnic in this quote, beautiful wooded park of majestic old oaks and elms, with ravines and wooded thickets, Indian mounds, cornfields, and the finest of sandy beaches. And if you didn’t buy a piece of property when you were over there, he’d still let you come back, and maybe you’d think about it another time.

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

From 1920 until 1924, the Tofte Boat Company, I think they took – they picked up where the – where the City Boat Company left off. There’s a lot of indications there that they may have had similar owners, similar boats, but it’s a little gray. But they oper-operated a small launch called the –

[slide featuring a photo of the boat Sagagaweeah sitting on stilts next to a boatyard building]

– Sagagaweeah. She was probably in the order of about 20 or 25 feet long. And they made reg – pretty regular service.

[new slide featuring an ad from the Tofte Boat Livery for the SAG-A-GA-WEE-AH boat from the Wisconsin State Journal of July 4th, 1921]

Here’s an ad for them, to Baskerville Park –

[new slide featuring the limnological map of Lake Mendota with red stars indicating Baskerville Park, West Point, Morris Park, the Y.W.C.A. Camp (Camp Lokanda) all of which animate on the map as Mr. Sanford mentions them]

– and West Point, Morris Park, the Y.W.C.A. Camp – Camp Lokanda. That was pretty much their run.

[new slide featuring the limnological map of Lake Mendota with the pier at North Francis Street on the isthmus indicated by an arrow]

Not too much new happened until –

[new slide featuring an ad from the Consolidated Boat Company that has a photo of their Motor Boat, Miss Helen Number 3 from the Wisconsin State Journal on June 24th, 1933]

– whoops, hang on, I got to rewind a slide here – until 1933 when the Consolidated Boat Company launched the boat with the most romantic name, the Miss Helen No. 3.

[laughter]

I – I don’t know if there was, I don’t know where the number one or the number two was, but, anyway, this was the Miss Helen No. 3. And her features were she had a glass enclosed cabin with seating for 40 passengers. She was equipped with comfortable streetcar seats. And –

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

– her owner, George Larson, who operated a radio repair shop in East – on East Mifflin Street, fitted her out with the latest technology in A.M. radio so you could listen to the radio while you were out on the lake. Her time on the lake was short. Maybe two seasons. He kept her at a pier at the foot of North Frances Street, which is really just down the street from where his mother lived. And but – I don’t know what ever happened to Miss Helen, but Larson went on to become a chief engineer at a local Madison radio station.

But, you know, not every boat that did commercial service on the lake was big and slow.

[return to the limnological map of Lake Mendota with the pier on North Park Street on the isthmus indicated by an arrow]

In the 1930s, in 1930 despite the depression that was going on, many folks still felt a need for speed. And this guy –

[new slide featuring an ad from the Wisconsin State Journal of July 3rd, 1930 for Chris-Craft tours from the W.E. Olds Company]

– William Olds, was apparently some sort of a dealer in Chris-Craft motorboats. And he ran, here’s his ad, it says, A new thrill ride, come and take a ride in America’s fastest stock boat. This was a 25-foot Chris-Craft with a 250-horsepower engine. This thing would go.

[new slide featuring a photo of an old Chris-Craft motor boat tooling along on Lake Mendota]

And he offered rides that summer in this boat. It was only 50 cents; well, 50 cents was a lot of money in 1930, if you had it, it was a lot of money. So, it was 50 cents, weekdays after 1:00, and then on the weekends – Sundays and holidays, he’d tick the price up to 75 cents, and this boat ran out back and forth from the dock at the foot of – of Park Street.

[new slide featuring the limnological map of Lake Mendota with the pier at North Park Street on the isthmus indicated by an arrow]

Well, by the end of World War II, commercial – commercial boat operators on the lake were mostly in it for the tourist trade. In 1949, Henry Reynolds, the Reynolds of the Reynolds Transit Company, quietly launched the Skori. Ownership of the boat was attributed to a professor, a teacher, at West High School whose name was Butler.

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

Reynolds was sort of the shadowy hand in the background running things. He had this boat, the Skori built up at the Peterson Brothers shipyard in Sturgeon Bay. And she loaded passengers also from the pier at the foot of North Park Street. And she was –

[slide featuring a photo of the boat – Skori – on Lake Mendota]

– 60 feet long, had a single engine, and probably was the largest commercial passenger vessel to ever serve on Lake Mendota.

[new slide featuring another photo of the Skori fully-loaded with passengers on Lake Mendota]

She weighed in at 18 tons and had room for 90 passengers, but was powered only by a single engine, which, if any of you have driven big boats, driving a big boat like this with one engine a real treat, a real – requires a lot of skill. She was here for maybe five or 10 years, and then Reynolds sold her to –

[new slide featuring the double decker passenger ship, Red Cloud, at dock in the Wisconsin Dells which was really just a remodeled Skori]

– someone up in Green Bay, or in – in the Wisconsin Dells, where she was remodeled into the Red Cloud, and an upper – a second deck was added, her rooftop was strengthened so there’d be more seating up there for passengers. But we think, I’m not sure if it’s the Red Cloud, but that’s what I was told, and I’ll go with that.

[return to the limnological map of Lake Mendota]

In 1963, our next guy, boat operator, comes on the scene. His name is Captain Fred Fuller. And Fuller –

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

– started out his career as a radio broadcaster. He worked for Wisconsin Public Radio, or in those days it was called WHA Radio before World War II, and he pioneered the – the development of a new kind of broadcasting where the host would play a record, and they would introduce it and tell you who was playing, where they played, the musicians, a little more information about the music. Nobody else had done this before. This was Fuller’s big contribution to broadcasting. But the sea was always in Fuller’s veins, he loved being on the water, he served in the Coast Guard during World War II. And, in addition to a number of other jobs, he worked for Harry – Harry Hoover, driving Hoover’s tour boats, the ones that he had bought from Benny Berg.

In 1963, Hoover apparently got tired of dealing with the tourist trade, and Fuller bought all of his boats. One of them was this – this fine vessel –

[slide featuring a color photo of the Diana cruise boat from Capitol Lakes Cruises filled with passengers at a pier in the 1960s]

– the Queen Anne, and probably anybody who was around in the ’60s here, may have been on this boat. She was 50 feet long, very old when Hoover bought her, she was built apparently in 1915. But she had the distinct advantage that she had room for a lot of people.

[new slide featuring an aerial photo of the Diane showing a large number of people packed in the boat]

You could get almost 80 people on her. And, in those days, nobody worried about being out in the sun, nobody worried too much about, Do we have enough life jackets? We’re just on the water, this is fine. And so, this is, you know, a typical load that they would carry, that Diana would carry. I haven’t counted all the people, but I’m guessing there’s about 60 or 70 people there. And all the seats, if you look carefully at them, look like they were taken from various dinette sets.

[laughter]

But, again, she was a single engine vessel.

The other boat –

[new slide featuring a photo of an empty Queen Anne tooling around Lake Mendota]

– that he owned was the Queen Anne. She was only 35 feet long, and she had a little bit of a cabin, so if it was raining or, you know, sunny, you could at least be out of the weather with that. But the neat part about Hoover was, or Fuller, was that he really was a student of the lake. And it seemed like for years and years –

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

– he must have taken a camera with him, because when I started researching the book, I was trying to find a scrapbook or something about Fuller, and I eventually tracked down his grandson, who said – I said, Well I’m looking for some pictures. Do you have anything? He said, “Well, I’ve got – I got, Grandpa – Grandpa Fuller’s slide collection. You want to come and see it? So, I get over to his house, and here’s about 300 slides, all Kodachrome, the good stuff, and every slide had a little note on it about the day it was taken and what the subject was. It was a – it was a historical jackpot. And so, I ended up using a lot of those photographs in my book –

[return to the previous slide described above]

– and they’re all credited to a guy named John Lore, but a lot of times the photographs were really of something close-up, but the background had a picture of some building that’s no longer there.

[return to the limnological map of Lake Mendota]

So, that’s kind of the end of the story here. There were a few other boat operators. I stopped at about 1965, 1966.

[Don Sanford, on-camera]

There’s still a few others that I haven’t covered, but I decided, I think, I’m just going to wrap it up there, my book ends in the – in the early ’80s, so I’m not going to stretch my history about this, I’ll save that for another time.

So, again, so that’s sort of the end of my little story. Thank you so much for coming, and I really appreciate it. And I think we’ll take questions after we – Bruce stops the tape.

[applause]