Ride the Lumberjack Steam Train through the fall colors in the Northwoods

In the late 1800s, rugged lumberjacks toiled during the Northwoods’ long winters, cutting pines that helped build Milwaukee, Chicago and St. Louis. Sturdy horses dragged the felled trees on sleds over the snow to the banks of rivers. The logs were then rafted together and floated downstream, often to mills on the Wisconsin River in cities such as Wausau and Stevens Point.

Many of these loggers were farmers the rest of the year, and cutting trees provided them work and fed their animals when the snow fell. Some of them toiled in Camp Five, a logging outpost in Forest County near Laona.

By the early 1900s, the railroads had arrived "up north,” making it possible to log year round. In 1926, the Connor Land and Lumber Co. purchased what became known as the 4-Spot steam locomotive to haul timber out of the woods.

That relic of railroad history was beautifully restored and is now operating as part of the Lumberjack Steam Train, which includes several passenger cars, three cabooses and a box car converted into an observation car. The train navigates the three-mile route between Laona and Camp 5, which was turned into a logging museum by descendants of the Connor family beginning in 1969.

The 1916 engine is the only working steam engine of its kind in the world, said Cate Connor Dillon, who is president of the Camp Five Museum Board and operated the facility for 25 years. The museum was started by her mother 48 years ago and is now run by her daughter, Catherine Hurtgen.

Fans of Wisconsin’s early lumber history and steam trains can ride the rails for four Saturdays this autumn (Sept. 9, 16, 23 and 30) as part of the Lumberjack Steam Train Fall Festival. The last Saturday of the month also features a train robbery right out of the Old West, with cowboy bandits on horseback taking over the train and relieving the paymaster of his banknotes.

Two of the cabooses have cupolas, which offer up-in-the-trees vistas of the forest. In addition, a box car has been converted into an open-air viewing car.

Cate Dillon said the 4-Spot is a prairie-style locomotive, slightly smaller than conventional steam engines, and has two leading wheels, four coupled driving wheels and two trailing wheels. Among train aficionados, it is known as a 2-6-2.

Because it had performed so well for decades, the owners decided to keep it — even though they’d switched to more-efficient diesel engines in the 1950s.

Today, visitors who want to ride the Lumberjack Steam Train can board at a restored 1880s Soo Line Depot, about a quarter-mile west of Laona on Highway 8. The depot, on the old Laona and Northern Railway track, has an old-fashioned railway clock, roll-top desk, a period typewriter and barrel stove. Passengers can buy tickets inside the depot, just as people did at the turn of the 20th century.

The destination is Camp Five, a restored lumberjack outpost that was later turned into a company farm to raise livestock and vegetables to feed the hungry loggers and supply outlying camps. It has eight buildings that have been repurposed for visitors. The old hog barn is now a petting corral, the blacksmith shop has been converted into a museum, along with the old slaughterhouse, which has been decked out as a haunted house for the fall festival.

There’s also a boarding house where workers lived, several original barns and the home of the foreman, also know as Woods Boss. The site also has a Cracker Barrel Store and Choo Choo Hut Restaurant. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

Hurtgen said the company store at the site was built in the 1930s and resembles something out of “Little House on the Prairie,” with ladders on rollers that reach up to items on the highest shelves. For youngsters and their families, the museum grounds has a seven-acre corn maze.

Hurtgen said her grandmother was a champion of sustainable forestry and wanted to preserve a nearly vanished part of Northwoods history.

“Back in the 1960s, whenever they’d pull out the old steam engine, the whole town would find out and want to jump on it,” she said. “At the same time, my grandmother could see that a lot of the old logging implements like the sleds that horses used to get the logs to the rivers were being lost. So she decided we should create a museum, take people out there on the train to show them how things were.”

Cate Dillon said the museum has been fortunate because people like Ronald Hartman, a railroad engineer who is now in his 80s, offered his extensive knowledge of steam engines to the museum two decades ago. Now living in Illinois, he still drives the train on occasion, and has trained others to run the train and fix broken parts.

“We were very lucky that he found us,” she said. “He was living in Door County and said he was bored. He’s really done quite a lot.”

Hartman, for his part, said he’s looking forward to returning to Laona to operate the steam engine in September. He helped restore it in 2004 when the locomotive was stripped down to what he called its “bare bones.”

“It’s fun to run it, a real pleasure,” said Hartman, who operated steam and diesel locomotives for 26 years on the New York Central Railroad. “I love getting back up there. There aren’t any other prairie-style steam engines like it around anymore, so that makes it all the more special.”

More information: Rates for adults are $20, seniors 65 and older are $18, children ages 4-16 are $8 and a family with two children and two adults is $60. Children under 3 are free. See lumberjacksteamtrain.com.

For details on other things to see and do in the region, see goforestcounty.com.

RELATED:Things to do in northeastern Wisconsin

Getting there: The Lumberjack Steam Train is at 5068 Highway 8, Laona, about 215 miles north of Milwaukee via I-43 and Highways 41, 64 and 32.