Sitting on the Baraboo River, this town is the access point for Devil’s Lake State Park, Wisconsin’s largest state park. The hiking trails around the lake on quartzite bluffs rise 500 feet above the water. The surrounding Baraboo Hills, which were once higher than the Rocky Mountains before one billion years of erosion, form an attractive backdrop to this charming community. The Mid-Continent Railway runs steam-engine excursion trips through the Baraboo Hills with restored wooden passenger cars through the summer months from the wooden 1894 depot and museum in North Freedom.
Planning a visit? Stay at Fox Hill RV Park & Campground.
This was a sawmill town before German immigrant Heinrich Friedrich August Ringling moved his large family here in the 1870s. Five of the Ringling Brothers honed juggling routines here before staging their first circus in town in 1884. “Circus City” now houses the Circus World Museum with one of the country’s richest collection of circus memorabilia. The A.I. Ringling Theatre, one of America’s earliest grand movie palaces, still operates on 4th Street.
Wattled crane
Baraboo is home to the International Crane Foundation, dedicated to perpetuating the existence of some of North America’s largest birds. The flock, the only one of its kind with all 15 species of cranes, is open to the public from April through October.