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Explore Lumberjack Country
Contact the author to arrange for a brief and easy walking tour that includes the site of a 19th century logging camp, a former ice road where thousands of sleigh loads of timber once traveled, the remains of a 19th Century river dam used to hold back water for spring drives, and other historic sights between legendary Lake Namakagon and Hayward, Wisconsin. Includes readings by the author and informal discussion. See https://TheTreasureofNamakagon.com. for details.
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Looking for Treasure?
Find examples of THE TREASURE OF NAMAKAGON Study and Discussion Guide, plus maps, new engraved illustrations, and much more. Visit our website, https://TheTreasureofNamakagon.com
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What the readers are saying –
"Weaving mystery into history, "The Treasure of Namakagon" vivifies the tumultuous nature of 19th century life in the legendary north woods."
Michael Perry, bestselling Wisconsin author
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"Open with caution. You won't want to put this one down."
LaMoine MacLaughlin, President, Wisconsin Writers Association
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"A twisting, thrilling mix of mystery, adventure and legendary treasure, still waiting to be found. .... ...a great fund raising idea for our lake associations. Wisconsin history buffs will find this book a treasure in itself. An exciting adventure for all ages.”
Waldo Asp, Northwest Waters President and AARP County Chairman
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"... A very talented writer. Consider me fan!"
Jeff Rivera, Media personality, bestselling author
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“Like a live history lesson, Brakken takes his readers on a ride down Northern Wisconsin’s untamed Namakagon River, back when giant virgin forests lured heroic lumberjacks to seek their fortune. In scene after scene, the reader is surrounded by the beauty of pristine woods and lakes, rooting for the good guys to beat out the greedy ones, even learning step by step how to place the giant saw so the magnificent tree falls in just the right place.”
A. Y. Stratton, author of Buried Heart
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“Brakken’s new book animates the long history of conflicts over Wisconsin’s water and mineral resources. The interplay between citizens, corporations and government will be familiar to people following today’s debates over mining and groundwater protection in Wisconsin, or energy development in other regions.”
Eric Olson, UWEX-Lakes Director
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The Treasure of Namakagon
This action-adventure is founded on historical facts blended with fiction. Most of the characters in The Treasure of Namakagon are not real, but they could have been. References to the Namekagon River log drives, life in the logging camps, and fraudulent timber sales are based on true events, as is the gunplay that resulted from a ploy to charge for timber floated over a dam near Hayward. The rivers, the lakes, the towns, in this story are all real. So are most of the hotels, taverns, depots, and other buildings mentioned. These and other historical references help bring this tale to life.
Add in historical accounts of silver and gold found in the region and Chief Namakagon trading shards of silver for supplies. Although many still search for Chief Namakagon’s secret silver mine, it has yet to be rediscovered. Perhaps, though, the real treasure was the vast white pine forest that, until the 1880s, gave northern Wisconsin its character, its life.
This book will plunge you into Wisconsin’s single, greatest economic event—the post-Civil War harvest of the largest stand of white pine in the world. Estimates said that timber would take a thousand years to cut. It was gone in just fifty. Tens upon tens of thousands of lumberjacks descended on the north to harvest the “green gold” and cash in on the wealth. Many northern Wisconsin towns sprang up in the middle of nowhere and boomed into bustling cities full of life, fast money, fortune seekers, loose women, and lumberjacks. Rowdy wilderness towns quickly gained notoriety—and popularity. In the woods, wasteful harvest practices, poor forest management, and outright greed prevailed.
Most of those boom towns failed soon after the pine was cut, shrinking to impoverished settlements and, in some cases, ghost towns. Our forests will never be the same. The great Wisconsin pinery, as it was called, will never return.
What does remain are the tales of the lumberjacks and those who arrived in the north along with them. This adventure is based on those great men and the hard but colorful lives they lived in the late nineteenth century. This story is also based on the history of Mikwam-migwan, better known as Chief Namakagon, and his legendary lost treasure.
Open this book and step back in time. Share in the rich history of life in the great Wisconsin pinery during the lumberjack days of the 1880s. Share, too, in a great north woods adventure.
Maps, more photogravure graphics, ordering information for related books and more can be found at https://TheTreasureofNamakagon.com. Like us on facebook(R), too!
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