SMALL JUNK from the Geneva Shore report

 

The Caboose Culture of Lake Geneva.  A third of a mile of Chicago & Northwestern and Milwaukee Road cabooses fashioned into rental units that are managed like a motel sit on their tracks almost unnoticed in Lake Geneva.  Most people think the cabooses are part of the nearby railroad museum, but End of Line Caboose Hotel Lake Geneva WIthey are not.  43 railroad cabooses were purchased and brought to Lake Geneva in the eighties to become what was known as the End of the Line Hotel.  Lake Geneva hosts the longest contiguous procession of cabooses in the world!  Now the old conveyances, all redone to modern specifications, are rented out between April and October every year.  There are few vacancies.  The End of the Line rentals are located at 301 East Town Line Road, about a three-minute drive from downtown Lake Geneva. From the town center, take Highway 50 (the main drag) east.

Turn right on Wells (the light just after the Burger King). Follow Wells to the first stop sign, turn left. Go about two blocks, and you’ll see End of the Line on your left.  Take your kids.  They’ll love the old train cars and the people in them will love your kids right back.  See if you can rent a caboose for sometime in the summer.  They’re mostly booked up but at about a hundred a night for the whole family, and tons of cultural adventure, they are a steal and a lot of fun if you can get one.

 

The Lake Geneva Regional News, Volume 7, No. 11, February 1946. 

The newspaper that once advertised Lake Geneva as the Switzerland of the United States ran an article that has tentacles reaching all the way forward through the years: “Opposition To Parking Proposal Enlivens Council Session.  In the new council chambers last night it was democracy-in-action as some 20-odd Lake Geneva citizens voiced their opinions on suggestions made by a special committee to improve parking conditions in Lake Geneva.  Those attending were unanimous in disapproving the committee’s report.  The chief objection was that natural beauty would be marred if streets were widened to allow additional parking spaces.  Some of the opponents maintained that an essential parking problem does not exist.” 1946!

 

Dennis Jordan, Lake Geneva’s City Administrator, is not gone yet.  No, Lake Geneva’s quieter, less expressive cousin of Darth Vader, hasn’t retired yet.  He announced his coming retirement last year but he’s not gone. We know he’s not gone because there is absolutely no progress with respect to the Pillar of Salt Investigation.  Mr. Carstensen is still socially pinned to Lake Geneva’s cultural wall like a big unmoving butterfly.  He hangs up there on that wall and waits.  The State of Wisconsin twiddles, knits and crochets away, waiting for Mr. Jordon to pass on so they can finally close the case, having only socially destroyed a couple of decent hard-working men.  Since the State of Wisconsin Attorney General’s office works directly for Governor Scott Walker it’s fitting that nobody in Lake Geneva’s administration is going to be attacked or even smeared by the revelations that have to be buried deep inside the seven thousand pages of this investigation.  They are, after all, not union people.

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