Thu 28 Jul 2005
My great grandfather and his son built most of the cabins here at Langewood sometime around 1930. Later on the effort cost him his life. After WWII he was installing electricity onto the property and had a heart attack, but at that time this part of Wisconsin was still remote and there was nowhere to go for medical help. He died in one of Langewood’s cabins.
During the late ’30′s my great grandparents and grandparents, Bill and Helen Lange, ran a summer resort in these cabins and named the place Langewood. They had regular customers who spent the summers here and relied on my grandfather as an informal fishing guide. To this day the cabin walls are covered with his fishing maps drawn for Langewood guests. They are also covered with animal skins, antlers, fishing lures, and old guns that give each cabin a rustic lodge feeling.
In fact, just about everything in these cabins is the way it was back in 1940 or 1950. The cookware, the gas ovens, the wood-burning heater stoves, one refrigerator (yes, it still runs), the cabinets, the kitchen hutches, dressers, beds, etc. There is a collection of vinyl records, a pump organ, a cabinet full of old games, a cellar full of antique tools, tackle boxes full of lures my grandfather used, and a wood rowboat that is still in great shape. It’s like living in a museum. Everything is a working antique.
Of course, if you grew up here, as all of us Hertzlers did, you don’t see this. It’s just Langewood.
