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Jolly Cedarburg

In southeastern Wisconsin, a historic village has perfected the art of the party.

When a small town is about as pleasing as can be, what else can it do?

Why, make sure everyone notices, of course.

In 1972, an old Yankee mill town just north of Milwaukee started a Wine & Harvest Festival. Two years later, it started Winter Festival. Eight years after that, it started Strawberry Festival. And people poured into Cedarburg by the thousands.

"It's charming and quaint and sweet and walkable, and when you throw a festival on top of that, it makes it very irresistible to a lot of people," says Kristine Hage, director of the chamber. The nonprofit festival organization now employs two year-round coordinators, she says, and "in the last few years, it's just taken off like a shot."

But in the early 1970s, the town was not so charming. Many of its antebellum limestone and cream-brick buildings were in disrepair, and an oil company wanted to tear down the 1864 stone woolen mill on Cedar Creek and put in a gas station.

But a preservation-minded mayor refused the permit, and a local couple bought the mill, started a winery and rented space to shops, calling it Cedar Creek Settlement. Another local couple bought an 1853 inn that was being used as a biker bar and made it an inn again.

Stone and clapboard cottages were restored and used as shops and studios, and the 1886 Washington House was turned back into an inn, after years as offices and apartments.

Today, Cedarburg has two districts on the National Register of Historic Places, each with more than 100 buildings, and it's a favorite weekend destination for people in Milwaukee and Chicago.

The big mill, with its winery, shops, cafe, blacksmith forge and galleries, is the hub for celebrations. In November, the wreaths, ribbons and twinkle lights come out, and Cedar Creek Settlement begins to celebrate Festive Friday Eves, with live music, dancers, wine-tasting, cookie-decorating, luminarias and outdoor cookouts.

"We always come at the holidays," says Cindy Meckl of Oconomowoc, Wis. "It's not necessarily what we buy, it's the atmosphere."

I met Meckl and her family in June when they were in a long line outside the Cream & Crepe Cafe, always their first stop. They had come to Cedarburg for their first Strawberry Festival, which draws 40,000 people to the town of 11,000.

My husband and I got to town early and spent Friday bicycling on the Ozaukee Interurban Trail, which goes through Cedarburg on a route once used by the Milwaukee-Sheboygan trolley. When we got back, Cedarburg's Washington Avenue was lined with artists hunched over easels, putting final touches on their entries for the Cedarburg Cultural Center's annual Plein Air Competition.

The historic buildings look good in oil paintings, and Jim Hempel's featured a woman in a straw hat walking a dog past a flower shop. His model was his girlfriend, Karen Spinti, who grew up nearby and was a first-grader when the mill was restored.

"It's always been a cute town," she says. "I'd go into the mill building, poking around the shops with my sister and mom. It's exactly as it was when I was 8 or 9 years old, except now there are more coffee shops."

Links to the past

The influx of admiring tourists sometimes annoys such residents as Debbie Menzel, who boxed up our florentines and custard-filled eclairs at GrandDad's Bakery.

"People view Cedarburg as an old-fashioned movie where time has stopped," she said. "I guess because I live here, I don't see it that way."

But the scenery encourages the illusion. There's the state's last original covered bridge, in a park north of town. There's the five-story 1855 Greek Revival gristmill, part of it piled with bags of feed and seed for birds and pets. There's the 1926 filling station, built in the style of a Japanese teahouse.

It doesn't look frozen in time. McMansions have popped up close to the 1876 lattice-truss bridge, whose planking is held together with hardwood pins. The red-roofed filling station is a jewelry store now, and the gristmill is a microbrewery.

But it's still easy to imagine the town as it was 150 years ago, as we discovered while sitting over pizza and Silver Creek ale along the millstream, listening to water rush over the dam and throwing crumbs to two ducks that had waddled over. Links to the past are everywhere.

At the 1886 Washington House Inn, our high-ceilinged room was named for John Armbruster, who we knew was a jeweler because we'd admired the ornate 1884 street clock outside his store, now run by another John Armbruster.

The elegant but unpretentious inn was our kind of place: In the evening, we found a plate of chocolate-dipped strawberries in our room, and the morning buffet included as much freshly squeezed orange juice as we could drink, plus freshly baked breads, hardboiled eggs, yogurt, homemade granola and platters of fruit.

Vicky Aitken and Mary Elizabeth O'Hara of St. Louis have been staying at the inn for more than 20 years, since they picked up a Cedarburg brochure at the Wisconsin border and drove up on a whim. Now, they come to Cedarburg several times a year — in the summer, for Aitken's birthday in September and during the holidays.

"We do a lot of shopping, believe me," Aitken said. "It's a great walking town, which is really important."

Berry popular

On Saturday morning, white tents began sprouting up and down Washington Avenue. By 10 a.m., Amy's Candy Kitchen was packed with people ogling fat caramel apples covered with pecans, cashews, white chocolate and M&Ms.

Outside Hoffmann's Meat Market, people stood in line to buy freshly grilled strawberry brats. But it was quiet inside the 1917 store, where garlic sausages hung from hooks and pails of extra-fine lard lined the counter.

"Four years ago, we started making the strawberry brats, because as you can see, we were dead," said Heidi Regnitz. "We made 125 pounds the first year, and this year we made 672 pounds."

Regnitz grew up in town and says she would gladly trade all the gift shops for the pet store, shoe store and department store of her youth.

Those shops, however, are very popular. All That Pizzazz! was packed with shoppers looking at tile birdhouses, hand-painted martini glasses and beaded purse pins that read, "I came, I saw, I bought."

People filed in and out of Savon Nouveau, sampling lotions and smelling soaps.

At Cedar Creek Settlement, the winery was filled with people buying bottles of Strawberry Blush, Settlement Gold and Waterfall Riesling. Upstairs, shoppers walked narrow hallways past shops displaying pottery, paintings, vintage wear and antiques.

In the mill's courtyard, contestants were vying to see who could lap up bowls of strawberry shortcake fastest and blow the biggest bubble of strawberry gum. On Washington Avenue, people were downing glasses of Sprecher Strawberry Hefe Weiss and painting their own strawberry clay pots.

Mostly, the strawberry was a good excuse for a June festival, although once there was a big strawberry farm outside town. But it was sold to make room for condos — a familiar story. There are more condos and subdivisions in nearby towns, plus the franchises, big-box retailers and strip malls that blight towns everywhere.

Not in Cedarburg, though. They're miraculously absent from Cedarburg. Beyond the downtown historic district, there are modest homes. There's a drive-in, a city pool, a castle playground, a Piggly Wiggly. It looks exactly like — a small town.

It turns out the same people who worked hard to restore the town are working hard to keep the town what it is.

"They don't put up with too much in Cedarburg," says bakery worker Menzel.

"Cedarburg isn't going to change for another 50 years," says artist Rick Zarling.

Chamber director Hage says there will be no runaway development in Cedarburg.

"The pressure from developers is pretty relentless here, but the political powers in this town are a force to be reckoned with," she says. "There are a lot of people looking out for Cedarburg."

Trip Tips: Cedarburg

Getting there: Cedarburg, Wis., is half an hour north of Milwaukee and 5½ hours  from the Twin Cities. 

Holiday events: From mid-November through December, Festive Friday Eves at Cedar Creek Settlement are held with live music, wine-tasting, food sampling, holiday projects and luminarias. Each evening has a theme. 1-866-626-7005, www.cedarcreeksettlement.com.

First weekend in December, Holiday Art Fair at the Cedarburg Community Center, Winter in the Garden at the Cedarburg Cultural Center, Christmas at the Kuhefuss House Museum and Christmas in the Country arts and crafts show at Cedar Creek Settlement.

Festivals: February, Winter Festival, with ice-carving, barrel and bed races, hayrides, beer tasting, music and Alaskan malamute dog weight pulls.

June, Strawberry Festival,  and September, Wine & Harvest Festival,  www.cedarburgfestivals.org.

Nightlife: The Cedarburg Cultural Center on Washington Avenue hosts theater, concerts, art exhibits and heritage talks, www.cedarburgculturalcenter.org.

Bicycling: The 30-mile paved Ozaukee Interurban Trail, once a trolley line between Milwaukee and Sheboygan, starts just north of Milwaukee and goes through Cedarburg to Port Washington and beyond. www.interurbantrail.us; 1-800-403-9898, www.ozaukeetourism.com.

Accommodations: Reserve weekend lodgings far in advance — up to a year for Strawberry Festival and Wine & Harvest Festival.

The Washington House Inn, a restored 1886 cream-colored brick inn and 1870 annex on Cedarburg's main street, has 39 attractive rooms and suites, $95-$245, including wine-and-cheese social hour, use of sauna and a large breakfast buffet. From January through May, a midweek package includes the best room available and a $25 dinner certificate. 1-800-554-4717, www.washingtonhouseinn.com.

The Stagecoach Inn B&B, a restored 1853 stone inn and 1847 annex on Cedarburg's main street, has 12 attractive rooms, $85-$150, including a large continental breakfast. From January through April, rooms are 25 percent off midweek. 1-888-375-0208, www.stagecoach-inn-wi.com.

Dining: In Cedar Creek Settlement, the Cream & Crepe Cafe serves entree and dessert crepes. Off Washington Avenue, Klug's Creekside Inn serves steaks, a seafood buffet and German specialties. On the edge of town, Galioto's Vintage Grille serves steaks, fish, ribs and pasta.

Information: 1-800-237-2874, www.cedarburg.org

Last updated on July 4, 2008