Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
scenery along the Wild Rivers Trail
Side Trips
NearbyShellLakehasthewondrous
Museum of Woodcarving
(U.S.63N,715/468-7100,
9am-6pm daily May-Nov., $4 adults). This is the largest collection of wood carvings in the
world, all done by one person—a local teacher—over a span of 30 years; the masterpiece
is the incredibly detailed
Last Supper,
which took four years to finish. Joseph Barta, the in-
spired artisan, also fancied himself something of a poet. Not kitsch, but wondrous folk art.
The tip-of-an-arrowhead where Wisconsin and Minnesota share Lake Superior comprises
Wisconsin's blue-collar harbor town, Superior. To become the “Pittsburgh of the West,”
an old guidebook recalls, was Superior's ultimate goal, with hopes of steel mills raised
adjacent to the railroad and docks. But Duluth's direct access to larger ore ranges to the
west gave it a strategic advantage. Superior's shipyards would, however, develop the first
“whaleback,” a massive ore carrier.
