Customer Reviews

La Pointe: Village Outpost On Madeline Island

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La Pointe, Wisconsin is not a town one simply chances through. In fact, to reach the town, a visitor must drive to the very end of our country and board a boat for a half hour boat ride across a stretch of Lake Superior. Nor, for that matter, is La Pointe a particularly prominent locale. Of course, being on the water, it has its visitors. (And it is, indeed, a fine town in which to visit, stay and shop.) La Pointe is, however, not a major tourism destination, a major shipping port or, to my knowledge, a leader in any of the things that makes a city "prominent."

Things were not always so. Instead of being remote, La Pointe was once one of the most convenient locations for transacting business. Instead of being overlooked, it was once the center of thriving industry. As remote as an island off the shore of Northern Wisconsin now seems, in the fur-trading years an island near a land containing vast supplies of furs and within a great body of water providing easy (relatively) transportation east was quite nearly ideal. Thus, as a fur-trading station did La Pointe gain prominence, swell in importance and, eventually, take its current form as a small, sleepy town primarily reliant on a steady moderate stream of tourists.

Hamilton Nelson Ross provides a complete, if sometimes fussy, history of this small town. Beginning with prehistory, continuing through the fur-trading heyday and several succeeding boom-bust industries, and finishing with modern La Pointe, Ross thoroughly recites the names, locales and happenings of the island city.

The story is, while perhaps not the most important topic ever written upon, a genuinely interesting history of a place of some importance to the settlement of North America. Some readers may find, as did I, that Mr. Ross insists upon somewhat more detail than necessary to tell his story. His records may be valuable for future historians, but they, in my opinion, detract from the readability of his book. In sum, a fine local history that likely appeals more to a reader with particular interest in the subject.