Hello again folks! I’m back with another installment of the blog series titled “Stories of Metonga”. I hope you are enjoying these mini-history lessons. I know I am. I’m also working to develop my Fall programming schedule for Extension which includes local history classes and family history classes. Stay tuned for more details!
The last Metonga blog post provided a glimpse of how our earliest pioneers made their way via the County Road to Crandon and Metonga. Today we’ll actually get a glimpse of both Metonga and Crandon Lake Avenue as our earliest settlers saw it.
If we continue on our path of following the March 1887 Forest Republican article, we are now on paragraph three which begins “an opening in the forest…”
Crandon’s earliest pioneers took great pride in photographing Lake Metonga from not only East Hill and from the roof of the Courthouse as the above pictures show, and they also took great pride in photographing Metonga from Lake Avenue. Early newspapers describe the work involved in clearing the forest from the courthouse square and the “lake road”. In November of 1886, the Forest Republican reported that “Lake Avenue is now open full width to Lake Metonga. A great improvement” Early photographers took advantage of this photo opportunity as the following photos show while standing on the roof of what is now the Subway building.
Next week we will continue our series focusing on the north end of Metonga where the “banks are high”. Enjoy the photos! [Extra credit points to the readers who find the dog sleeping on the sidewalk and the little boy taking a break]