Timber!: The Story of the Lumberjack World Championships

A Man with a Plan

Tony Wise was a visionary, as well as a wise man. Born and raised in northern Wisconsin, Wise returned to Hayward after a distinguished army career during World War II brimming with ideas on how to make the community a hotbed of skiing. His plan to turn Hayward into a mecca for tourism was kindled by his wartime experiences with the Fourteenth Armored Division in Bavaria, where he served as a captain. Watching soldiers ski in the mountains made him wonder if his home area could become an attraction for cross-country skiing. Wise had earned an MBA from Harvard University, and he was determined to mesh his business acumen with his belief that Americans would take to skiing in Wisconsin the way they had in Europe. Born on March 15, 1921, in Hayward, Wise was part of an established north woods family that had been in Sawyer County since the nineteenth century. A grandfather, Anthony Wise, founded the A. Wise Land Company. After his military service, the enthusiastic and ambitious Tony Wise moved back to Hayward in 1947 with his commitment to revving up the local postwar economy implanted in his mind. Using five thousand dollars in savings accumulated over the years, Wise made the down payment on a new ski resort, called Telemark, and it opened for business in December of 1947 with an old airplane engine powering the towrope. Over the following years, Wise was also the man behind the creation of the American Birkebeiner, the marathon ski race that is the premier event of its type in the United States, and a tourism 30 A Man with a Plan A Man with a Plan park called Historyland. In 1960 he was instrumental in establishing the Lumberjack World Championships in Hayward and promoting them into the dominant event of its kind in the world. Diane McNamer, the executive director of the championships, said she first met Wise in the mid-1970s and actually worked as a cocktail waitress at the Telemark resort for a while. Wise was not a huge man, standing about 5 feet, 10 inches, and he had light brown thinning hair, the hairline receding from front to back. It was not his physical magnetism that made people listen to his ideas, that sold his schemes, but the passion behind them. Wise could explain his visions in such a way that others saw the value in them, too. He talked fast, and when he was on the go, which was most of the time, he walked fast. Some in the small community felt it was destined to remain a remote place tucked in the woods at the end of the road. It took persuasion to make them believe otherwise. Wise talked of luring thousands of visitors to town each winter for skiing, each summer to watch lumberjacks, and year-round to visit Historyland. He was right. The ripple effect from those who came to visit Wise’s operations was significant. Tourists spent money at restaurants and hotels and bought souvenirs. As long as they could cope with the cars and foot traffic, everyone benefited. Like his other enterprises, Wise’s Historyland attracted attention not only from tourists with money to spend but from reporters with ink to spill. Gareth Hiebert, a columnist for the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, in the Minnesota city located about 150 miles southwest of Hayward, made a pilgrimage north in 1965. He couldn’t get over the crowds of people in the streets of the little town. Muskie fishing (always a lure), boating and canoeing, and the north woods in general were partly to blame for fifteen-minute waits to reach the counter in a bakery, but the real culprit, Hiebert noted, was Historyland’s appeal. Hiebert called Historyland “a real magnet, with things to do and see, and eat,” and a place covering three hundred years of Wisconsin history on sixty acres of land. Hiebert noted that Wise employed one hundred Indians from five tribes at his Native American educational exhibits and village and marveled at an eight-car train and five different restaurants on the premises, observing that Historyland’s managers must believe that “a well-fed tourist is a happy tourist.” The reporter read Wise’s mind. Not everyone could, or thought like him, either. 31 A Man with a Plan “He was a man who said, ‘Why not?’” McNamer said of Wise...