Field Trips, Evening Programs and More

Each summer Madeline Island Wilderness Preserve sponsors free field trips and evening programs, open to both youth and adults, featuring the natural history of the Apostle Islands area, and highlighting issues important to the area's protection and preservation. The field trips are held in The Preserve or at other locations on Madeline Island. The evening programs are usually held at the Madeline Island Museum. Our Annual Meeting, held on Memorial Day Weekend, features a speaker on a timely environmental topic, and our 4th of July Parade entry highlights an important environmental issue. View our Events pages to explore our programs and events, and our 4th of July Parade page to enjoy our previous parade entries.

We also feature an educational article in our annual newsletters. Below are some of those articles:

By Ned Hancock

“Burroughs,” “Capser,” and “Meech” are names of people on signage at three Madeline Island Wilderness Preserve trailheads. And “Harmon” is on signage in an eponymous forest. But who were these people?

“They left footprints on the sands of time,” to borrow from Longfellow (many of whose stories in his The Song of Hiawatha trace back to Madeline Island). To be sure that the footprints left by Burroughs, Capser, Meech and Harmon don’t disappear when a seiche washes away our sandy shores, for posterity’s sake let’s review what we know.

The Burroughs Trail, fire marker 3060 North Shore Road, is on land given to the Wilderness Preserve by Lyle Wendell Burroughs, MD, and wife Robina (1933-2017), as a “memorial to the Anishinaabe who preserved this land over many generations.” Lyle was the son of Ida Burroughs (née Benjamin) and nephew of Theodore (Ted) S. Benjamin. Starting in the 1940s, Ted accumulated seven miles along the north shore of Madeline and all of Manitou Island. He orchestrated the creation of Benjamin Boulevard. Ted and his family operated the W.R. Benjamin Company in Granite City, Illinois, manufacturer of Makit Toys, similar in concept to Tinkertoys, featuring wooden sticks and spools/connectors for construction. The plan was to use the lumber from these landholdings for the factory. The Makit toy line was eventually sold to the Lincoln Log Company. Lyle’s connection with Madeline was, of course, through his uncle.

The Capser Trail, just north of downtown La Pointe off Big Bay Road, takes its name from Leo and Isabella (“Bella”) Capser. Leo summered on the island from 1903 until his death in 1975. He regularly sat in the pagoda greeting islanders and fellow summer people as they came off the ferry, old friends often sitting with him discussing the news. Every day, and to evening cocktail and dinner parties, he wore the same outfit: white trousers, red flannel shirt, and yellow tie. Along with his wife, who has been described as a “Miss Daisy,” he was the energy, mastermind, and money behind the establishment of the Madeline Island Historical Museum in 1958. He searched not just on Madeline for artifacts but also took his classic wooden boat out to the islands where many treasures, now in the museum, were found.

Bella and Leo Capser inside Madeline Island Museum
*Photograph from the Wisconsin Historical Society collection.*

Bella Capser’s brother was Reuel D. Harmon. At the north end of Madeline Island, stretching between School House Road and North Road, is the 1000 acre “Reuel Harmon Forest.” As is stated eloquently in the 2003 Wilderness Preserve Newsletter: the forest’s “well-drained soils are beautifully cloaked with a mixture of northern hardwoods – sugar maple, yellow birch, red oak, paper birch, and aspen – plus scattered hemlock and the occasional white pine.” Reuel Harmon’s generosity allowed the Wilderness Preserve to buy this land from Werco Wisconsin, a land investment company. Reuel passed away in 1994 at age 90, but before then he was president of Webb Publishing and served on more than twenty non-profit boards, including Carleton College, the St. Paul Foundation, and the Bush Foundation.

About a third of a mile along the Capser Trail, from the trailhead on Big Bay Road, is the “Nucy Meech Trail,” named for the charismatic Nanette Harrison Meech (1917–1993). An early and influential member of the Wilderness Preserve, she has been immortalized in a biographical plaque along this eponymous trail. She lived and traveled around the world but spent her last 40 summers in her cabin on Madeline. Her son Charlie was the founder of the Madeline Island School of the Arts.

Naming trails after benefactors is almost as old as our country. The “Crawford Path” to the summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire was established in 1819 and named for Abel Crawford. It is the oldest continuously used trail in the United States. The Madeline Island Wilderness Preserve will continue to honor and cherish its beloved benefactors in a similar fashion, less their footprints be lost on the sands of time.

Originally written for the Island Gazette.