The end of an era ...
The legendary lodge is being demolished, but the property’s new owners hope to revive old trails, construct new buildings and turn Telemark into the ultimate outdoor recreation destination
Mount Telemark outside Cable doesn’t exactly look like a mountain. With a vertical of just 370 feet, it’s barely more than a hill. It’s actually a kame — an accumulation of debris left behind by glaciers. A trash dump, in a way.
But that trash dump is anything but. Or at least it used to be. Say the name Telemark to a Wisconsin skier of a certain age, and they know it. At one time, the area was not only a hopping ski resort, but also the starting line of the American Birkebeiner, North America’s largest ski race. The tiny hill put tiny Cable, a town of 825 people, on the international map.
In its heyday, the four-star Telemark Lodge hosted performers like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Elvis Costello and Frank Sinatra. Emeril Lagasse got his start as a sous-chef in one of its restaurants. The resort hosted international competitions and affluent visitors who flew into the adjacent airport just for the day.
Mount Telemark Ski Area was built — and given its mountainous name — in 1947 by Tony Wise and H.B. Hewett, two 20-something veterans who returned from World War II with big dreams for their hometown. Hewett would leave the business a short time later, but Wise would turn the little hill into a big attraction and employer in an area that had emerged from its lumber-dominated past without a major winter industry to carry it into the future.
Nearly 75 years after Telemark was born, however, Wise’s dream was starting to look like a trash dump. The lodge at its base sat in a state of disrepair, closed since 2013 after a series of bankruptcies and short-term closures dating to 1984. While the Birkie lived on, its starting line had been moved away from the lodge, and other trails on the property were overgrown and unusable.
But a new plan from its new owners, the nonprofit American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation, hopes to bring it back to life and once again make the hill a must-visit for outdoor enthusiasts.
The ABSF has plans to rejuvenate Telemark into “the ultimate outdoor recreation destination,” according to executive director Ben Popp.
The 750-acre property already provides access to just about every kind of outdoor activity, from cross-country skiing and mountain biking on the Birkebeiner Trail to kayaking on the Namekagon River, which is part of the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway.
The ABSF hopes to expand those opportunities by reviving some of Telemark’s old ski trails and increasing snowmaking on them, plus adding new multi-use trails. They also hope to partner with other groups and businesses to build new spaces that could include a tap room, café, swimming pool, camps for youth groups and maybe a few boutique hotels, creating a kind of all-inclusive resort for outdoor recreation.
With renewed interest in outdoor activities across the country thanks in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a promising plan for a property that has a storied history in the area but has sat mostly idle for almost a decade.
Unlike the property’s previous owners, the ABSF isn’t hoping to bring the lodge back to its glory years. The nonprofit’s purchase of the property was contingent on the lodge coming down,
and demolition began in April.
It’s a bittersweet end for the lodge, but it signals the beginning of a new era at Telemark, one that is still rooted in Wise’s primary dream for the property: a world-class outdoor recreation center that draws visitors from all over to the heart of Wisconsin’s Northwoods.
Tony Wise’s ambitions
It’s hard to turn a corner in the Hayward area without seeing something Wise had a hand in — from his most famous ventures, Telemark and the Birkie, to things he’s not as well known for influencing, including the establishment of the nearby St. Croix National
Scenic Riverway and a National Guard armory in Hayward.
Born there on March 15, 1921, Wise was a diehard promoter of the area and had a keen interest in its history and the environment.
He included his philosophies on those things in a 1981 resume, according to Tom Kelly, his publicist and public relations director from 1975 to 1984 and author of the 1984 book “Birkie Fever.”
“Protect the land. It is the basis of all wealth and happiness,” Wise wrote.
On civic responsibility, he said: “Creating jobs for your community is one of the highest forms of citizenship you can perform.”
Wise launched a parade of business ventures aimed at serving those purposes, from the Lumberjack World Championships to Historyland, a now defunct tourist center that included a re-created logging camp, Ojibwe village and historical buildings.
His first venture was the Mount Telemark Ski Area, which he opened after he returned from serving in Germany in World War II, where he learned to downhill ski in the Bavarian Alps.
One of Wise’s six children, Bridget, said she thinks his time in Europe, coupled with his time on the East Coast
earning an MBA at Harvard, are what influenced him to think big when he returned home to Hayward.
Working in New York City now, Bridget said she better appreciates just how much he was able to accomplish in rural northern Wisconsin without bigcity resources, and she wonders what he might have done if he had stayed on the East Coast.
But she thinks his time in the service also pushed him to come home and build up his hometown — a feeling she thinks other WWII officers shared.
“(They thought), we’re going to go back to where we’re from and make it better,” she said. “I think he loved Wisconsin and saw the beauty of northern Wisconsin and thought, wow, this is such a viable destination.”
Wise’s own thoughts on people staying close to home are quoted in a 1999 Sawyer County Register article:
“To solve those (economic) problems, the young and aggressive must stay and not migrate to larger cities. They must be so proud to live here that they will put all of their energies and inventiveness into creating a recreation and wood products economy that will provide a good year around living for everybody,” he said in 1953.
Mount Telemark is born
Wise did put all his energies and inventiveness into that little hill in Cable, which he bought for $750 and named after Norway’s Telemark region, where his grandmother was from.
Ever the promoter and prone to hyperbole, he called Mount Telemark “the Sun Valley of the Midwest.” He pushed newspapers to write about skiing and organized ski trains from Chicago. By 1949, the hill was attracting 77,000 visitors annually.
Wise built up the ski area from two rope tows to having the Midwest’s longest chairlift in 1965. In 1961, he installed the world’s largest snowmaking operation.
By the ‘70s, Wise realized the woods around Telemark might hold more potential to attract visitors, and he turned his sights on another type of skiing.
In 1972 he hired U.S. Olympic crosscountry ski coach Sven Wiik to help develop Nordic ski trails at Telemark. Those trails would grow into today’s 100-kilometer Birkebeiner trail system that is also open to hiking and mountain biking.
But Wise didn’t stop there. He wanted to create a “first-class tourism” experience, Bridget said, and in December 1972, the $5 million Telemark Lodge opened. The lodge, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice Herb Fritz, had 200 rooms, two restaurants, a nightclub, a huge fireplace (which by varying accounts measured anywhere from 40 to 55 feet tall), a theater, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis courts, a golf course and horse stables.
At its dedication, Olympian Billy Kidd called Telemark “the finest ski hotel in the world — and the only ski area where the lodge is bigger than the mountain.”
“He always was looking to take it up a notch and make it bigger and better,” Bridget said.
To draw people to his new lodge and cross-country ski trails, Wise held the first American Birkebeiner in February 1973 between the Lumberjack Bowl in Hayward and Telemark in Cable. The 55-kilometer race was modeled after the Birkebeiner Rennet, a race held in Norway since 1932. Both races re-create a 13th century event when two soldiers, known as “Birkebeiners” for their birchbark leggings, skied the infant Prince Haakon to safety during the Norwegian civil war.
Bridget said her dad “always made everything exciting” and recalled that first Birkie when he piled their family into his Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight and practically drove it on the trails to various race checkpoints.
It wasn’t the only time he’d treat that car like an off-road vehicle. Bridget said once a year he’d drive their family to the top of Mount Telemark for a family picnic.
“Dad was a lot of fun. My dad was an amazing dad,” she said.
The start of the Birkie moved to Telemark in 1977, with skiers making their way up the hill at the start of the race, and filling the lodge before and after.
Bridget said her father never thought of the Birkie as just a small-town event and promoted it as such, pushing for — and getting — national media coverage from outlets like the New York Times.
Thinking big paid off. Today’s races draw 13,000 skiers annually from around the world, and in 1977 Norwegian King Olav presented Wise with the St. Olav Medal, given to people for spreading Norwegian culture abroad.
Wise didn’t stop with the Birkie. In 1975, he convinced U.S. Olympic crosscountry ski coach Marty Hall to bring the team to Telemark for a training camp. Hall was impressed not only with the trails, but also the fact that his athletes could go from their hotel rooms to training in just a few minutes — a rare luxury in the cross-country skiing world.
That year, Telemark hosted the U.S. Olympic trials, featuring Bill Koch — who would go on to win the country’s first medal in cross-country skiing, a silver, at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Austria.
A few years later, another race raised Telemark’s international profile even more — and might do so again again. Wise got Hall to help design a course for a cross-country skiing World Cup, and Telemark hosted the first one in 1978. It was there that Wise also gathered ski professionals from around the globe to found the Worldloppet, an international federation of cross-country skiing marathons that includes 20 races today.
In a full-circle moment, the ABSF hopes to revive those trails and make a bid to host the World Cup in 2024 — the same year the Birkie will celebrate its 50th race (it’s been canceled twice in its history due to lack of snow).
Telemark’s good times
The ‘70s were hopping times at Telemark. The lodge had accomplished what Wise hoped and the resort was a year-round destination for skiing, vacationing and entertainment — sometimes hosting five bands in one night. In 1983 the lodge employed 400 people and brought in $4 million annually, with the Birkie bringing in another $2 million, according to a 1984 Ski magazine article.
After the ski chalet burned down in 1977, Wise aimed even higher and in 1980 opened the $3.3 million, 64,000square-foot Colosseum, an indoor sports complex that had four tennis courts, a huge banquet hall, and could host indoor skiing.
But Wise didn’t just think big — he also thought locally, and was one of the first in the area to hire local Ojibwe to work at the resort and his other business ventures, including Historyland.
John “Little Bird” Anderson, who worked as a tour guide there, recalled Wise’s relationship with the Lac Courte Oreilles tribe in an interview with LCOTV in 2009 before he passed away in 2016: “The main thing I remember about is his kinship, his closeness to Native Americans. This was at a time when there weren’t very many natives employed by non-natives, anywhere.”
Wise also wanted Telemark to be a place not just for celebrities and elite athletes, but also families.
When a Facebook group called Lost Wisconsin Ski Areas posted about Telemark, the stories from some of those families came pouring in.
“Telemark was the first place I ever skied (1963?), and where our children learned how to ski (mid 70’s or so). I believe it was also where my husband first skied, probably in the late 40’s, early 50’s. We all have fond memories of the place,” Susan Hall recalled.
“So many memories here don’t know where to start,” wrote Dave Swanson, whose family owned a townhome at Telemark from the ‘70s through the ‘90s. ”As a kid they used to have nightly kid/teen parties that had movies and video game tournaments. … We used to sled the hill at night with food trays, they would make snow and turn all the lights on. Sometimes we would get chased off . ... The lodge was a world class operation in its heyday, always heard foreign languages spoken there, and there was always a buzz of excitement in the air.”
Under the buzz of excitement, however, was a buzz of financial instability. Bridget recalled her parents barely holding onto the resort after a nearly nosnow winter in 1960-’61. Major capital investments like the Colosseum, a tough economy in the ‘70s and more low-snow years in the early ‘80s further strained the budget, and Telemark struggled to compete with big ski resorts out West as airlines made it easier to reach them.
The beginning of Telemark’s end came in 1984, when Wise lost the property — and the Birkie — to bankruptcy. Telemark Enterprises bought the property, and the ABSF was formed to keep the Birkie alive.
Wise died in 1995, before Telemark went through three more bankruptcies and owners.
Telemark’s future
In 2012, the lodge was a shell of its former self when it was featured on the Travel Channel’s “Hotel Impossible.”
Crumbling concrete outside, dirty carpets inside, and a front desk that used a handwritten system to keep track of housekeeping were just a handful of the problems the lodge had — a far cry from hosting celebrities in the ‘70s.
The lodge closed permanently in March 2013 and went through one more owner before the ABSF closed on the property in February.
The nonprofit looked at trying to save some of the lodge, but after sitting vacant for eight years, and decades of lack of investment before that, it wasn’t feasible. Black mold filled the basement, pipes had burst, vandals had left their mark, and everything needed upgrading.
ABSF got an Idle Sites Program grant from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. to tear down the lodge, and began doing so this spring by removing anything recyclable and salvageable from inside — including huge cedar beams and the fireplace, which might find second lives in new buildings.
In May, the remnants of the lodge will be demolished and what can’t be recycled will be sent to a landfill. The Colosseum is already long gone, and other buildings on the property like the Hytte Recreation Center — once a hostel — will come down, too.
There is of course sadness in the community about the lodge coming down, Popp said, but he thinks overall people are excited that there’s finally some movement at Telemark.
Allison Slavick, director of the capital campaign to raise money for the project, agreed that “there’s some melancholy. There are huge emotions that go with this project.”
She said people were particularly sad about the lodge’s fireplace, which greeted visitors in the main lobby, and continued up through the floors above.
The ABSF hopes to reuse at least some of the fireplace in the new property, possibly reconstructing it as an outdoor fireplace in a new picnic pavilion.
It’s part of the group’s goal of holding on to some of Telemark’s history.
“While we’re going to innovate and move forward, we can’t forget the history. I think that’s a big part of it,” Popp said. “It’s great that the Birkie’s come back to Telemark. This is the history. Tony started the Birkie. The fact that the foundation is now this integrally involved with the property ... it’s almost like it was meant to be.”
Where the plan deviates from the property’s history is the lodge. While past owners have tried to make the hotel the centerpiece of Telemark, the ABSF wants to focus outside.
“The business model this time is a little different in that we know that silent sports recreation brings people here, so we’re going to develop those even further, and then that in turn is what’s going to bring people here,” Popp said.
The plan, dubbed Sustainable Telemark, is for the ABSF to rehabilitate and add to the property’s trails, build a central ski touring center building, then let other people develop ancillary businesses on the property, which could include a craft brewery tap room, a coffee shop, a gear rental shop, camping cabins and maybe even small hotels.
“Our goal is we’re going to continue to do the things we do well ... then let other businesses come in and have an opportunity there,” Popp said.
What they do well is put on events — 45 every year — and take care of trails, which is why they’ll first focus on the center third of the property that has the property’s trails. Working in partnership with the Landmark Conservancy, which helps protect land across 20 counties in northwestern Wisconsin, the land will be put into a conservation easement, which means it will forever be protected from development.
Popp said the conservancy is not only good from an ecological standpoint, since the land is part of the Namekagon-St. Croix watershed, but also recreational.
“It ensures that there’s going to be silent sport recreation there forever, which is not just skiing, it’s mountain biking, birdwatching,” he said.
And it’s not just a place for elite athletes. Popp sees Telemark as a place for all outdoors lovers.
By this winter, the group plans to reopen some of the property’s original ski trails. There are also plans to add new ones that can be used for hiking and mountain biking, which could link to the area’s 300-mile CAMBA trail system — a bronze-level IMBA Ride Center, a prestigious designation that “recognizes the pinnacle of mountain biking communities.”
There’s hopes of putting in an observation tower at the top of Mount Telemark, and maybe one day reviving the rope tow for a sledding or tubing hill and a chair lift for a skiing and snowboarding terrain park. There’s also talk of
adding things for the local community, including a swimming pool and festival grounds for concerts and other events.
The ABSF plans to sell the western 190 acres of the property. A developer might purchase it for sustainable housing, and Landmark Conservancy has also expressed interest in buying the land to protect it. The sale of the land will provide a revenue stream, along with fundraising, to pay for the $5.85 million project of purchasing the property, tearing down the lodge and investing in new trails and buildings.
By 2022 those new buildings, or “hub,” hopefully will be on the east side of the property, near the bottom of Mount Telemark.
In addition to bathrooms and a place to wax skis, the hub will house the Birkie offices, the Tony Wise Museum of the American Birkebeiner (which are both currently in Hayward) and “all the things that accompany outdoor recreation,” Popp said, which could include everything from a café to a gear rental shop.
Conceptual renderings for the hub from LHB, a Twin Cities-based firm the ABSF hired to help lay out the area, show Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired buildings with large windows and soaring roofs. One houses a tap room, designed to net-zero and Living Building Challenge standards, another has a café with a bike-up window. An outdoor plaza has a large fireplace that anchors it all.
Those bird-safe windows and netzero buildings are part of the sustainable in the Sustainable Telemark name. In addition to constructing the new buildings as eco-friendly as possible, the ABSF plans to install solar to power the new complex.
The sustainable in the name also signifies the hope that this plan will finally give the property a viable economic future, once again providing the area with year-round jobs.
The two goals mirror Wise’s intention for the little hill that could once again help it live up to the mountainous name he gave it.
Contact Chelsey Lewis at clewis@ journalsentinel.com. Follow on Twitter at @chelseylew and @TravelMJS, Facebook at Journal Sentinel Travel.