Little Bohemia: Dillinger's Last Wisconsin Night

A few miles from this stretch of highway, a log lodge built in nineteen twenty-nine on the shore of Little Star Lake became the scene of one of the most embarrassing moments in the history of the FBI.

In the spring of nineteen thirty-four John Dillinger was the most wanted man in America. His gang had robbed banks across the Midwest, broken out of jails, and made the Bureau's new director, J. Edgar Hoover, look powerless. On April twentieth, nineteen thirty-four, Dillinger and six associates arrived at Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters. The owner, Emil Wanatka, welcomed them in but quickly grew nervous. His wife secretly contacted the FBI office in Chicago.

Special Agent Melvin Purvis led agents north, racing to reach the lodge before the gang departed. They arrived on the night of April twenty-second with almost no time to plan. As they crept toward the lodge, three innocent civilians , local workers who had just finished supper , walked out to a car in the parking lot. The agents opened fire, believing the men were Dillinger's crew. One civilian was killed and another wounded. The gunfire alerted the gang, and Dillinger and all six of his men escaped into the dark Wisconsin woods.

The FBI did manage to capture three women companions, but Baby Face Nelson escaped and shot and killed Special Agent Carter Baum during his getaway. But the headline that reached newspapers across the country told a simpler story: Dillinger had slipped right through the government's hands, and an innocent man had paid for the mistake with his life.

Hoover's agents caught Dillinger three months later outside a Chicago theater. He was shot dead on July twenty-second, nineteen thirty-four. But Little Bohemia Lodge still stands along this Northwoods corridor, still run as a bar and restaurant, with bullet holes preserved in the walls and windows and a museum of memorabilia from that chaotic April night , a lasting monument to the night the FBI came to the Northwoods and went home in disgrace.