Summer Cottagers on Madeline Island

Modern tourism on and around Madeline Island traces its origins to the heyday of lumbering and mining in the area. Spurred by railroad promoters and word of mouth from early visitors, the area began to attract summer visitors — among them Mrs. Abraham Lincoln and her son Robert Todd Lincoln. They stepped ashore on Madeline Island briefly in 1868, visiting Father Frederic Baraga's historic mission in La Pointe. Some 60 years later, President Calvin Coolidge visited the island.

Though a few resort hotels did business in Bayfield and Ashland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with only short-lived success, summer cottages began to spring up along Madeline Island's southwestern shoreline around 1895. The first group of cottages, known locally as O'Brien's Row, was soon eclipsed by a larger cluster of summer homes begun in 1899 by Colonel Frederick Woods of Lincoln, Nebraska. His sons and friends built neighboring homes, and Nebraska Row, as the stretch of houses came to be called, marked the emergence of Madeline Island as a seasonal retreat.

By the early 20th century, summer excursions to Madeline Island had become a yearly ritual for many a wealthy family seeking respite from the heat and bustle of Midwestern cities. One of the early summer denizens, Leo Capser, began vacationing on the island in 1903. He and his wife Bella took great interest in the island's long and colorful history, and in 1955 recruited fellow summer residents to support a campaign to establish Madeline Island Historical Museum.