Other stories in "Interesting towns"

• Mining for art in Mineral Point
  In southwest Wisconsin, artists and shoppers alike are drawn to a lovely village.
• Exploring Thunder Bay
  Beauty is all around Lake Superior's biggest town.
• Where the Germans are
  In southern Minnesota, New Ulm hangs on to a colorful heritage.
• Memorable McGregor
  A picturesque river town in Iowa claims more than its share of character.
• Destination Dubuque
  A shabby Mississippi port now is a tourists' playground.
• Swiss at heart
  In Wisconsin’s Little Switzerland, New Glarus hangs onto a colorful heritage.
• Alexandria's enigma
  This Minnesota resort town has many lakes and one mysterious stone.
• Gawking in Lake Geneva
  On mansion-lined footpath, walking is a spectator sport.
• Languid in Lanesboro
  In summer, head for lovely Lanesboro and go with the flow.
• Cruising La Crosse
  These days, the riverfront is an even bigger draw than the bars.
• Beloved Bayfield
  On Wisconsin’s north coast, the love affair between a village and its visitors goes way back.
• Playtime in Ely
  At the edge of the wilderness, fun starts when the snow falls.
• City on the bay
  In a calm corner of Lake Superior, Ashland gets a second wind.
• Trail mix
  For people on the go, St. Croix Falls is a crossroads.
• Plainly Superior
  Scratch the surface of Duluth’s homely twin and see it sparkle.
• Summer in Park Rapids
  In the heart of Minnesota lakes country, town is a tourist hub.
• Summer in Stillwater
  Historic Minnesota river town is a favorite weekend getaway.
• Madeline's magnetism
  The largest of the Apostle Islands has a personality rooted in an uncommon past.
• Truly Amana
  The busiest of Iowa's seven Amana Colonies is both a living historic monument and a shopping heaven.
• Winter is Washburn's time to glow
  Frozen lake opens up wonders that can't be reached in summer.
• Winter weekend in Monticello
  Come for the swans; stay for the shopping and skiing.
• Wisconsin's birthday town
  In laid-back Spring Green, any day is worth celebrating.
• Bazaar on the prairie
  To see the world, head for Winnipeg.
• Madison for all ages
  Famous for collegians, Wisconsin's capital also fascinates children.
• Living high in Hayward
  For coddled guests, Hayward's comforts belie its reputation.
• Afloat in Winona
  Beneath the surface, a Minnesota river town moves fast.
• Illustrious in Iowa
  Among the northeast bluffs, extraordinary people lived and worked.
• Going to Kansas City
  Blues and barbecue are just bonuses in this vibrant but easygoing town.
• Finding Embarrass
  Minnesota's cold spot is stronghold of the Finns.
• Door to the Door
  A longtime gateway, Sturgeon Bay also is a great getaway.
• Cuyuna lode
  In an old mining area, friends go prospecting.
• Copper Harbor refuge
  Early fortune-seekers left their mark on a village atop Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula.
• Best little towns that charm the tourists
  Ten places have personality to spare.
• Bemidji's behemoths
  A northwoods Minnesota town changes, but faces stay the same.
• Agate Central
  In Moose Lake State Park, an interpretive center caters to rockhounds.
• A spin down the Kinni
  From friendly River Falls, it's a wild ride on water, then roads
• A pocket of Norway
  In northeast Iowa, Decorah still is Norwegian after all these years.
• Artsy Grand Marais
  On Minnesota's North Shore, rough-hewn village is a cultural outpost.

Beer and megabytes

In Chippewa Falls, a colorful past blends seamlessly into the present.

In Chippewa Falls, people owe a debt to two kinds of folks: the bubbas and the geeks.

The first came to harvest the lumber and stayed to drink the beer, or so claims the brewery: "It takes a special beer to attract 2,500 men to a town with no women,'' says Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing, founded in 1867 and now the oldest business in town.

Then came the guys with slide rules. The son of the city engineer spent his childhood in Chippewa Falls tinkering with radios, then went off to war and college. Seymour Cray co-founded Control Data in the Twin Cities but in 1962 returned to Chippewa Falls, where he opened a lab, putting the locals to work on the world's first supercomputer.

Most of Cray Research moved in 1989 to Colorado, where Seymour Cray died after a 1996 car accident. The Leinenkugels still run the brewery but sold it in 1988 to Miller, which merged with South African Breweries in 2002 to become the global corporation SABMiller.

But Chippewa Falls claims them both. A complete collection of Cray's groundbreaking computers is enshrined at its Museum of Industry & Technology. And Leinenkugel is more popular than ever, with a fun new Leinie Lodge and a fan club of more than 160,000.

Today, this western Wisconsin town happily pays tribute to the past. The pure water of Chippewa Springs still is bottled and sent around the country, as it has been since early settler and Congressman Thaddeus Pound, grandfather of poet Ezra Pound, decided it had restored his health. Sokup's Market, established in 1891, still is owned by Sokups, who still deliver groceries. Olson's still is making its Homaid ice cream daily, as it has since 1923.

The town was among the first to fix up its ornate turn-of-the-century buildings, placing its commercial district on the National Register of Historic Places. Up on the bluff, it turned a 1907 neoclassical Catholic high school into the gleaming Heyde Center for the Arts.

Nationally, people have noticed. In 1996, the National Trust for Historic Preservation gave it one of its first Great American Main Street awards. In 1997, Time magazine called it one of the Top 10 small towns in America. In 2000, the National Trust made it one of its first Dozen Distinctive Destinations.

Hollywood thinks Chippewa Falls is pretty cute, too, making it the hometown of Annie Hall in the 1977 Woody Allen movie and of Jack Dawson in 1997's "Titanic.''

But visitors may find it a little sleepy. At Foreign 5 gift shop on Bridge Street, flip through the pages of "It's a Small Town If . . .'' and you'll recognize Chippewa Falls: "If Sunday is what Sunday was (closed)'' and "If visitors are always asking, 'What's there to do around here, anyhow?' ''

Quite a lot — if you know where to go. One September, my husband and I went there to ride on the 19½-mile Old Abe State Trail. From the point at which the Chippewa River balloons into Lake Wissota, we rode the paved trail north, passing a llama farm and yellowing cornfields on our way to Jim Falls, where we saw a 10½-foot statue of a bald eagle.

Old Abe was only a few months old when he was traded by an Ojibwe man to a Jim Falls farmer, who sold him to Company C of the Eighth Wisconsin as it was preparing to leave for the Civil War. Old Abe served as mascot in 42 battles and after the war received his own room and caretaker at the State Capitol. He was in demand at national events; one of his last appearances before his 1881 death was alongside former President U.S. Grant.

From Jim Falls, the trail travels between river and slough, where we spotted a great blue heron; on a wooden bridge, two couples were grilling hamburgers and fishing for smallmouth bass. We passed the 1906 steel truss bridge at Cobban and soon saw the 175-foot pulpwood stacker above Mill Yard Park in Cornell, whose founder, Ezra Cornell, plumbed its natural resources to endow Cornell University in New York.

Then we rode back to Lake Wissota. If we'd had a canoe, we could have paddled to our room at the Pleasant View B&B, a contemporary inn nearby. Our room had a view of the lake and sliding glass doors that opened onto a deck; in the morning, our breakfast was delivered on a tray, which we ate on the deck.

Then we went hiking at the Chippewa Moraine Interpretive Center, 15 miles west of Cornell, and when we returned, we drove over to see the state park on Lake Wissota, created by and named for the Wisconsin-Minnesota Power and Light Company. After its dam was completed, Chippewa Falls called itself "The Power City.''

By the time we finally got downtown, it was already 4 p.m. on a Saturday. The town was pretty much rolled up except for Olson's, where we sampled the Homaid pistachio nut and tiramisu ice creams, and old-fashioned Irvine Park, where we looked at the bison and elk behind chain-link fencing.

It was busier the next time we visited, in August for Pure Water Days. At Sokup's, we bought a still-warm tripleberry pie from Connell's Orchard.

At the Museum of Industry & Technology, Teresa Simpson showed us Seymour Cray's first, refrigerator-sized computer, made in 1960 with thousands of rejected Tandy transistors that he fixed himself. The legendary genius did all his math on a slide rule, Simpson said, and his designs with a No. 3 Ticonderoga pencil and graph paper.

"It was pretty crazy, but it had to start somewhere,'' she said.

We missed the last tour of Leinenkugel Brewery, which didn't stop the nice folks at Leinie Lodge from pouring me a free glass of Sunset Wheat at the crowded bar. The northwoods-style lodge now is the biggest visitor draw in the Chippewa Valley, which includes Eau Claire and Menomonie; it turns out people really like to drink free beer, sit chatting in leather furniture around a stone fireplace and shop for Leinie-themed soaps, salamis, sweatshirts, Christmas ornaments and picture frames.

Across Jefferson Avenue, we drove into Irvine Park to see the new trompe l'oeil facade for the concrete bear den, created during the annual Brush Bash, a three-day workfest by traditional sign-painters led by local artist Kurt Gaber. Downtown, on both sides of narrow Harmony Park, they've also painted a mural that follows Chippewa Falls history from the Ojibwe and the logging era to Leinenkugel, Mason Shoes and Seymour Cray.

By then, the town was starting to roll up again, and we thought we’d missed our last chance to eat when we discovered Higher Grounds, a coffee shop in the 1883 former offices of the Chippewa Lumber & Boom Co. It closes late on Fridays and Saturdays and often hosts live music; we were happy just to eat panini sandwiches and smoothies and admire the caffeine-bordello decor: purple tin ceiling, vermillion and teal walls, light glowing out of fabric sconces.

Chippewa Falls isn't exactly cutting edge, but it's become expert at recognizing the value of the old as well as the new. Few thought the abandoned 1907 school that's now the Heyde Center could be salvaged, says director Deb Johnson; the roof was falling in and it was full of pigeon poop. But residents did it anyway, restoring the neoclassical hilltop building with 100,000 hours of volunteer labor.

"It's just incredible what people have done,'' says Johnson. "It's just beautiful. People walk in and you hear them go, 'Oh, man.' ''

Johnson herself is both old and new; she grew up in the area but moved to Honduras, returning to take the Chippewa Valley Cultural Association job last month.

"It's so nice coming back,'' she says. "There's such a sense of community, and the friendliness of the people, I'd just kind of forgot about it.''

Around Chippewa Falls, long memories have served the town well.

Trip Tips: Chippewa Falls

Bicycling: The paved Old Abe State Trail runs 19½ miles along the Chippewa River between Chippewa Falls and Cornell, with a one-mile city trail leading into Brunet Island State Park from Cornell. The southern trailhead is north of Chippewa Falls at the junction of county roads O and S, two miles west of Lake Wissota State Park.

A newly signed five-mile loop, partly on streets and sidewalks, connects downtown to the bicycle trail, following Duncan Creek through wooded Pig Alley to the Leinie Lodge on the west and Timber Terrace Golf Course on the east. Get a map from the Visitor Center at the intersection of River and Bridge Street; to get to the trailhead, follow Spring Street across the Marsh Rainbow Arch Bridge. Spring Street Sports at 12 W. Spring Street also has information about routes, 715-723-6616, www.springstreetsports.com.

Brewery tours: Free tours are given 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Thursday and Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Friday and 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. The lodge is open before and after the tours, until 8 p.m. Fridays. Reservations are recommended; 888-534-6437, www.leinie.com. To get there, follow Wisconsin 124, or Jefferson Avenue, through downtown.

Tubing: It's very pleasant to tube down the Chippewa River, especially on weekdays. Loopy's Bar off Wisconsin 29, west of town, rents tubes and shuttles guests upriver, 715-723-5667, www.723loop.com. The biggest event of the year is FATFAR on June 15, the Frenchtown Tube Float & Regatta.

2008 events: May 8-10, The Past Passed Here, with a fur-trade and logging encampment. May 26, Memorial Day parade. June 12-Oct. 16, armers market noon-5:30 p.m. Thursdays. June 14, Leinie Lodge Family Reunion. June 14-July 13, Wisconsin Renaissance Faire on weekends.  June 26-29, Country Fest in nearby Cadott. July 17-20, Rock Fest in nearby Cadott. Aug. 8-10, Pure Water Days, with Saturday parade. Sept. 19-21, Oktoberfest. Thanksgiving-New Year's, Christmas Village light festival in Irvine Park.

Museum of Industry and Technology: It's at Grand and Rushman avenues and is open 1-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. Admission is $3, $1 youths. 1-715-720-9206, www.cfmit.org.

Cook-Rutledge Mansion: Tours are given in summer at 2 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays. Admission is $5, $1 for children.

Accommodations: Just north of downtown on Lake Wissota, Adams' Pleasant View B&B is well-located, walking distance from the start of the Old Abe State Trail. It's a contemporary home with five rooms, some with double whirlpools, fireplaces, sofa sleepers and/or lake views, $129-$179, including evening cookies, wine and juice. 1-866-947-7682, www.pleasantviewbb.com

In town, McGilvray's Victorian B&B is a 1892 Georgian Revival house with three rooms, $89-$125, 1-888-324-1893, www.mcgilvraysbb.com.

Glen Loch Motel, on Jefferson Avenue/Wisconsin 124 just north of town, has doubles starting at $60-$65 in the summer, including continental breakfast. 1-877-770-0705, www.glenlochmotel.com.

Dining: At Bay Street and Business 29, or River Street, Higher Grounds offers Belgian waffles, bagel melts, wraps, panini, salads, smoothies and pastries. Check for hours, 715-726-0551, www.highergroundsinfo.com.

Treats: Olson's Ice Cream Parlor at Bridge and Willow is open daily. Across the street at Sokup's, pick up chocolates or one of Connell's excellent pies.

Shopping: People with hard-to-fit feet make a beeline for the Mason Shoe Outlet store, and tie collectors to the XMI Factory Outlet. Downtown, Foreign 5 has a variety of gifts. Most stores are closed Sundays.

Nightlife: The Heyde Center for the Arts schedules many concerts and plays.  Call 715-726-9000, www.cvca.net.

The Higher Grounds often hosts live music.

Apple orchards: There's a cluster of orchards and a winery just southeast of town: Autumn Harvest Winery/John McIlquham Orchards, with pumpkins, apples, wine-tasting and a free corn maze at the junction of county roads J and K; Schaefer's on County Road K; and Connell's Orchard, Peterson's Lafayette Orchard and Bushel and a Peck Market on County Road OO.

Information: 866-723-0340, www.chippewachamber.org, www.chippewacounty.com.

Last updated on June 29, 2008