As you enter Ashland on US-2, some 40 miles west of the Michigan border, Lake Superior finally pokes its great nose at you. Ashland (pop. 8,620), a big fish in sparsely populated north-woods Wisconsin, likes to call itself the “Garland City of the Inland Seas,” but it’s really a town full of trestles, all the roads dipping and drooping under the mud-brown wood framework or plain faded steel of Soo Line bridges. Built up on an ever-so-slight rise above the lake, the town has an attractive Main Street with many well-preserved old buildings and a lakeshore lined with great parks, frigid-looking beaches and gritty pull-offs where you can gaze at the gargantuan Ashland Soo Line Ore dock, the largest of its kind in the world.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, The Depot (715/682-4200) at 400 W. 3rd Avenue is a luxurious restaurant inside a restored Soo Line depot, with great—but pricey—regional fare, and a downstairs brewpub. The nicest hotel in town—with a fine restaurant to boot—is the grand Hotel Chequamegon (shuh-WAH-muh-gun; $100 and up; 715/682-9095), on the lakeshore at the junction of US-2 and Hwy-13. Following a 1955 conflagration that destroyed the structure, the reconstruction has managed to capture the decorative charm and original grandeur.
Another big attraction, in interest if not actual size, is the newish Northern Great Lakes Interpretive Center (daily; free; 715/685-2680), 2.5 miles west of downtown, along US-2 at the Hwy-13 junction. The spacious building is full of interpretive exhibits tracing local history and industry; outside there’s a nature trail through 180 acres of mixed forest and wetlands, and a 5-story tower gives a panoramic view.
For a change of pace, head 50 miles south from Ashland to Phillips, where the Wisconsin Concrete Park (free; 715/339-6475), 8236 N. Hwy-13, preserves the hundreds of creative concrete-and-glass sculptures of Paul Bunyan, Abe Lincoln, and lots of farm animals, all made in the 1950s by former logger and self-taught artist Fred Smith.
