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Visit the wicked Fox Cities, full of place names like La Grand Butte des Morts (the Big Hill of the Dead") and Winneconne ("the Place of Skulls") that date from an era when "settlement" was frequently synonymous with "slaughter." Even after the firm establishment of modern civilization, there remained an uneasy truce between lined pockets and bared knuckles that was often only brokered by heavy drinking. Stumble across the frozen Fox River and barge into local watering holes, where the only pauses in the revelry are discussions about desecrating Joe McCarthy's grave. Points of interest include the Oshkosh rat-betting scene, the Appleton "Union Street Resorts" and the Neenah tavern, where a world-champion boxer hid from the doctor who had bought his bones."

Thousands of young men embarked on the adventure of a lifetime when they joined the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.

Service at Wisconsin's popular state park offered notoriety absent at most camp assignments. While most of the CCC work around the country was in remote forests and farmlands, at Devil's Lake tourists could view CCC project activity each day, forging that labor into an essential part of the park experience. Historian Robert J. Moore interviews veterans and mines the archives to preserve this legacy so that the gasps of wonder at nature's marvels remain mixed with respect for the men who helped bring them forth.

The city of Madison is no stranger to odd goings-on and events that just don't add up. Plunge into murky waters in search of the Lake Mendota monster or briefly part the clouds of the Great Airship Mystery of 1897, which was witnessed by such credible sources as "Wisconsin judges, good church-going folk and those not predisposed to drink whiskey." Please don't stare for too long at Myrtle Downing's shoes, which were said to be made from human skin. Revisit some of the murders that earned the intersection of Murray Street and Desmond Court the epithet "Death's Corner." And that is just a portion of the unsolved crimes, strange creatures and bizarre happenstance that make up Mysterious Madison.