Sentimental Sunday: Diarymen's Country Club History

After posting a few weeks ago with a photo of my dad and his two older siblings at Dairymen's Country Club in Wisconsin, I decided to learn a little more about this place that has such good memories for my dad.

I found a book via WorldCat called The Story of Our Club: An Interpretive History of Dairymen's Country Club, Boulder Junction, Wisconsin, by Felix B. Streyckmans, published in Evanston, Illinois (my birthplace) by Schori Press in 1968. I requested it through interlibrary loan and the 79-page book arrived a couple weeks ago.

Dairymen's Country Club was established in 1925 near Boulder Junction in Vilas County in north-central Wisconsin, by a small group of Midwestern dairymen, primarily from Chicago and Milwaukee, with the purchase of the 1500-acre A. B. Dick estate on what was then known as Big Clear Crooked Lake (now known as Home Lake). The estate had nice woods with virgin timber, the big lake (with a beautiful white sandy beach and stocked with muskies and walleyes), cabins, a dining hall, boat house, barns, and other improvements, along with equipment such as farm implements, an automobile, boats and canoes, firefighting apparatus, and road machinery. The estate had originally been the Oliver Goff public resort that had opened in 1895, with the oldest cabin dating to 1892. Fifty members were able to use the facilities as they were in the summer of 1926.

A golf course was built in 1930. Additional major land purchases in 1937 and 1945 as well as some smaller purchases (in 1952 and 1963) brought the size of the club up to around 6000 acres in 1968. These acquisitions included complete control of six additional lakes and access to four others, as well as other resorts. Camp McKinley on the southern shore of Wolf Lake, just to the north (established in 1901 by the Oxley family), which at that time could accommodate 35 guests, was acquired in 1937, and the Mel Majors resort, also on Wolf Lake at Piney Point, was acquired in 1963.

Besides its lakes, fishing, and forests, Dairymen's is also known for Patsy, the pet deer (c. 1931-November 14, 1949), the longest-lived deer on record (in 1968), and the trio of rare albino deer that lived on the grounds in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Camp McKinley and its facilities eventually became known as Wolf Lake Lodge, while the original facilities were called Home Lake Lodge. In 1968, there were accommodations to lodge 100 people at Home Lake in 28 cabins and a dining hall that would seat that many, as well as a clubhouse, shuffle board, tennis courts, swimming beach, diving area, and boat landing. Wolf Lake had 12 cabins and a chalet that could accommodate 40, with a dining hall/clubhouse that could hold 50, while Piney Point had five housekeeping cabins. Besides typical summer activities, Dairymen's is used in the winter for cross-country skiing, ice fishing, snowmobiling, and snow shoeing.

On July 10, 2005, fire destroyed the Wolf Lake Lodge. A new 11,450 square-foot lodge was finished in June 2007. It's topped with a muskie weather vane pictured above (photo taken by Fabian A. M. on August 4, 2007, and used under a Creative Commons license).

Despite the name, Dairymen's has long included members beyond the dairy industry.   According to my Aunt Beete, my grandfather Paul Robert Pape (1896-1970) was the insurance representative for a Chicagoland dairy company and that's how he got to become a member. (Thanks cousin John for this information!)

© Amanda Pape - 2010