Telehenge: Ruins of Telemark Lodge

What looks like a strange stone ruin in the Northwoods was once the heart of Midwestern skiing. The entrepreneur Tony Wise opened Telemark here in nineteen forty-seven as one of the first ski areas in the country. In nineteen seventy-two he spent millions building a soaring star-shaped lodge, centered on a towering stone fireplace.

The next year Wise founded the American Birkebeiner, a fifty-kilometer cross-country race that grew into the largest ski marathon in North America. But Wise eventually went broke, and the grand lodge fell into disrepair and closed. In twenty twenty-one the lodge was torn down, leaving only the chimney and an elevator shaft standing like a monument. Locals call these surviving remnants Telehenge.