That a flourishing nude beach should develop on the Wisconsin River near Mazomanie (pronounced MAZE-o-mane-ee) will be unsurprising after a few days exploring the area. Maybe it’s something in the air–or in the unglaciated earth of south-central Wisconsin’s green hills and valleys–that has encouraged so much public eccentricity, to the point of both genius and apparent lunacy.
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With that out of your system, you can better appreciate the area’s more benign oddballs. (“Eccentricity,” says Erwin Knoll, editor of the radical monthly the Progressive, which is published in nearby Madison, “is almost a conformist way of life in this part of Wisconsin.”) The most famous of them is Frank Lloyd Wright, who grew up just up the road near Spring Green and, though dead these 30 years, is very much a living presence in these precincts. Three miles south of Spring Green on Highway 23 is Taliesin, Wright’s home and still- functioning studio and school for architects; across Highway 23 on County T Road is Wright’s grave, in the little jewel of a graveyard at his family’s Unity Chapel, with its Wright-designed headstones. Other Wright buildings nearby are Tan-y-deri, the home of Wright’s sister, on the Taliesin property; the Wyoming Valley School (recently sold, new function undetermined), just south of Taliesin on Highway 23, and the Spring Green (Highway 23 and County Trunk C, 608-588-2571), one of Wright’s last designs and his only restaurant. The Spring Green is a beauty (though the bar seats, in the grand Wright tradition, are uncomfortably low), and it has a smashing view of the river and valley from a ridge. The Romeo and Juliet Windmill on the Taliesin property is covered with scaffolding while the Wright Foundation tries to raise $200,000 to restore it. Another renovation with attendant public begging is under way at Wright’s Seth Peterson Cottage in what is now Mirror Lake State Park, off Highway 12 north of Baraboo (608-254-2333). The Warehouse, an early Wright design with a Mayan effect, languishes unattended in downtown Richland Center. (Tours of Hillside Home School, the school building and drafting studio, on the hour 9 to 4 daily May through October–$5.25 adults, $2.10 children under 12; one-and-a- half-hour walking tours of the property around Taliesin at 10:30 AM Tuesdays through Saturdays June through September, $12, not recommended for children; 608-588-2511.) The Winsted Shop (140 S. Winsted St., Spring Green, 608-588-7544) carries lots of Wrightiana as well as a large selection of books on south central Wisconsin and the works of local authors including August Derleth.
Nearby, on Route 2 south of Spring Green, is the American Players Theatre (608-588-2361). which presents classics in repertory alfresco mid-June through early October. This year’s offerings include Macbeth, The Tempest, An Enemy of the People, and The Proposal, Etcetera!, three early one-act comedies and a monologue (“On the Harmfulness of Tobacco”) by Chekhov, in a bravura production featuring two of APT’s founders, Randall Duk Kim and Anne Occhiogrosso. The company first mounted this piece in 1985, and the translation by John Wyatt “in collaboration with” APT, accompanied by notes on the text, photographs of the production, costume renderings, and the music (Three One-Act Comedies, Players Academy Press, Spring Green), was published in 1986; pick up a copy ($15.95) at the theater.
To do: If you think of Spring Green as the center of your river-country universe, a one-hour radius will encompass hundreds of see-worthy towns, historical sites, state and county parks, nature preserves, specialized museums, galleries and studios, wine makers and cheese makers, and much more, including the city of Madison, should you need a respite from the dairyland wholesomeness. Day-trip planning can become complex, but a day without a plan, Sunday-driving the county roads (usually two-lane blacktops), can have its own rewards, as the Holsteins, silos, and satellite dishes of this prosperous land give way without warning to vistas on the meandering Wisconsin River, and serendipity beckons around every bend in the road. You’ll want the detailed “Southwestern Wisconsin Road Map” ($5 at local stores or from Milwaukee Map Service, 414-445-7361).
Lodging: Far and away the best lodging value in the area was the Blackhawk Ridge Wilderness Recreation Preserve, a 600-acre wooded property on Highway 78 between Sauk City and Mazomanie, with accommodations ranging from primitive campsites through “sheepherder wagons” and various forms of cabins to proper rooms with private baths. But it was sold this year to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources as part of the Wisconsin Riverway Project, and the DNR says it will not be maintained as a lodge, though some recreational uses (including five kilometers of lighted trails for nighttime ski touring) will be continued. Along the river, that leaves mainly motels. In a motel you look for clean, comfortable, and convenient: the Prairie House at Highway 14 and Highway 23 north of Spring Green (608-588-2088) is a cut above the usual, with large, tastefully done rooms, exercise facilities, sauna, and whirlpool; just next door and rather more expensive on weekends is the Round Barn Lodge and Restaurant (608-588-2568), with its indoor and outdoor pools. If living on U.S. 14 is not your idea of a civilized getaway, Wildwood Lodge (608-588-2514), in converted farm buildings on a pleasant wooded site south of Spring Green, off Highway 23 on Upper Wyoming Road, has a variety of rooms and suites at very modest rates; and Aldebaran Country Houses (on County Road T east of Highway 23, contact Derry Graves, 608-588- 2951) provides elegant country living in a farmhouse and two converted barns on the Lloyd-Jones farm where Frank Lloyd Wright spent his childhood–you rent a whole three- to five-bedroom house, with rates scaled from $30 per person per night to $20 per person per night, depending on how many people are in your party and how long you stay.
