Holt and Balcom Logging Camp Museum in Lakewood announces that its 2015 season officially starts June 13. The museum will be open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays until Aug. 29.
On June 27, Holt descendant Don DeWitt will give a presentation featuring movie footage filmed by his great-grandmother, Lucy Holt.
Holt and Balcom Logging Camp Museum is the oldest logging camp in the U.S. sitting where it was built (1880-81).
Camp curator Kathleen Marsh reported that school tours are well under way. Students from Wausaukee, Suring, Wabeno and Pulaski toured the camp or are scheduled for tours.
“Education of school children is our primary mission,” Marsh said.
Tours are scheduled and run by camp manager Bob Brown, with assistance from long-time volunteers Bernie VanDreel, Jon Marsh and Don Siefert.
“As part of their study of Wisconsin history, fourth-graders visit the camp each year to learn firsthand about their logging heritage,” Brown said. “The tours are interactive and hands on. Students get to stamp and saw a log, sit at the long tables in the cookshack as they learn about camp life, see a diorama picturing the camp as it was in 1887, walk about the dingle where they can get up close and personal with camp implements, and relax on benches in front of straw-mattress beds as they learn about the many hand tools used in logging’s early days. Thanks to a recently acquired artifact, they can even sit on an actual log cut and stamped by a Holt and Balcom crew over 125 years ago.”
Holt and Balcom is located off County Road F, 1.5 miles east of Lakewood on Country Club Lane behind the McCauslin Golf Course Clubhouse. Special tours of the museum for family and community groups can be arranged by calling Brown at 715-276-3505.
