H. H. Bennett Studio
Near Baraboo, Wisconsin
Wisconsin Dells owes its identity as a tourist destination to one man with a camera. Henry Hamilton Bennett had grown up in Kilbourn City, as the town was then called, and bought a portrait studio in eighteen sixty-five. Finding little demand for portraits, he turned his lens on the dramatic sandstone formations and wooded riverways of the Wisconsin River Dells, hiking into the landscape with cameras he built himself, leaving only the lenses to other craftsmen.
His stereographic photographs of the Dells became popular across the nation, and sightseers began traveling to Kilbourn City specifically to see in person the scenery Bennett had shown them on paper. The town eventually renamed itself Wisconsin Dells, after the scenery he had made famous. Bennett's studio, built in eighteen seventy-five, remained in his family until the late nineteen nineties, when it passed to the Wisconsin Historical Society.
It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and still stands on Broadway today.
