A small community in southeast Wisconsin is about to receive a small plaque with a historic designation. But both the community and the marker carry great significance.
The plaque recognizes the community called Lake Ivanhoe.
Designed to be a vacation oasis during an era of segregation and strife, three Black Chicago-based businessmen settled on the small lake, just a few miles away from the larger and better-known Lake Geneva.
Lake Ivanhoe offered not only fishing and swimming, but a grand pavilion where famous performers including Cab Calloway performed for property owners and visitors.
Saturday, Oct. 15, the Wisconsin Historical Society officially commemorated Lake Ivanhoe as the state’s first Black-founded resort community.
READLake Ivanhoe resident works to magnify first Black-owned community's place in Wisconsin history
Lake Ivanhoe resident Peter Baker has been talking up his community’s historic significance for years.
“I had my daughter, [and] she was proficient enough to do a powerpoint. We had the pictures to go along with the speech. I don’t remember all the places; I would do it any time anyone would ask me,” Baker says.
Baker’s family doesn’t date way back to Lake Ivanhoe’s beginnings in the 1920s. The Bakers move from Chicago came in the 1960s after he was invited to join a Chicago friend and his friend’s grandfather to fish the lake.
“Until today I remember everything about it. I remember exactly where we fished and pretty much to the spot. It would be right over there,” Baker recalls.
Baker urged his parents—his mom a teacher, his dad a postal work—to check out Lake Ivanhoe. “I said mom, It’s a Black community,” Baker says.
His dream came true. His parents bought a house, first to vacation, but then moved full time when Baker entered eighth grade. He thrived on the freedom of exploring the outdoors, the woods, the lake.
“My mother would literally bring us down here with our tent and we’d sleep here all night. I got a dog and turned him into a hunting dog and fishing rod,” Baker says.“How could life be better.”
“His mother didn’t have to call us. We’d go to the lake, go to his house to eat and then we’d go out and walk during the night,” Keith Woods says.
Woods was the kid whose grandfather took him and Peter Baker on that long ago fishing trip. Woods spent every weekend and holiday he could at Lake Ivanhoe, but wasn’t able to move here until years later. He and his wife raised their two kids here.
In its resort years Lake Ivanhoe hummed with music and activity, mid twentieth century kids grew up with the sweet sense of freedom. Today the demographics have changed but the love of community hasn’t. Somehow, Woods says, Lake Ivanhoe called him to live here.
Tom Kelly feels the same. His dad moved his family from Chicago and eventually built his dream house here after World War II. “We lived in a cottage when our house was built. We had to pump our water and we had an outhouse in the back,” Kelly says with a laugh. “That’s when I became countrified.”
Years later when he retired as a career military guy, Kelly was drawn back to Lake Ivanhoe.
“I retired in our original home. I have the same breed of dog I had as a child,” he says. " And I absolutely love it here."
Michelle Hatters’ parents both from Alabama built the house she and her sister grew up in Lake Ivanhoe.
“I went away for a while, my mom was ill, I came back and helped her. She wanted us to stay in the house. I purchased it and we’ve been here ever since,” Hatters says
That was in 2005.
Mary Katherine McIntyre’ s family followed her grandmother here from Chicago. “In 1997 I moved up here 100%. There’s no way on god’s green earth I would leave Lake Ivanhoe,” she says emphatically.
Tony Madison spent his early childhood here.
“My grandmother came up here in the 50s. She had a resort, a restaurant, bar a couple of blocks from here. I was a little kid so I don’t remember a lot, but I remember a lot of cars, and a lot of music and a lot of barbecue,” Madison recalls.
His parents moved their family to Milwaukee when he was 9-year-old, where Madison lives today, but he says his heart is here. “I’ve always been connected with Peter and Mary Katherine. I can’t stop coming back. I will love this place forever,” Madison says.
Lake Ivanhoe has changed. The people I talked with represent most of its remaining Black families. There are no resorts, no restaurants. There never was a post office or grocery store here.
Still, people continue to find their way to Lake Ivanhoe, among them are Ralph and Carrie Gronau.
They were looking to downsize. in 2010, the Gronau’s ended out buying the home of one of Lake Ivanhoe’s oldest families. “A gentleman called Tom Sawyer. He was one of the first people up here,” Carrie says.
After moving in, the Gronau's found records Mr. Sawyer had left behind. They were an introduction to Lake Ivanhoe’s rich history.
“We just found out so much information about this community and what a part they were of this community that before we even came to our first meeting here, we were like in love with this place. It’s just so fascinating,” she says.
Her husband Ralph chokes up thinking about his love of the community. “I see a lot of dedication and there’s traditional values. Really salt of the earth people. They’d do anything for ya,” Ralph says. “I’ve always felt that.”
Chicagoan Sharon Swift and her husband knew nothing about Lake Ivanhoe until a friend was looking to sell off family property there. That was in 2007. The Swifts eventually built on the site of an old cottage that was beyond repair. “I almost feel like I’ve always have lived here. Even though we spent almost 30 years on the South Side of Chicago. It’s just home. It’s all I can say,” Swift says.
Lake Ivanhoe is not the resort oasis it was in 1926 the about-to-be-erected state historical marker will commemorate, or the Black family-filled community Tony Madison and others remember four decades later. “I wish something like this could ripple throughout the whole world again. We felt so much connected with each other,” Madison says.
But among these residents sitting in their community clubhouse, it’s a place they hope thrives over coming generations.
