Gansters from Chicago Had Hideouts In Northern Wisconsin
Channel: MentalHouse TV w/Khadijah
Date: 2021-07-27

In 1920, northern Wisconsin already was a playground for people from Chicago.

And when Prohibition flung open the door to organized crime, its remote lakes and forests became even more attractive to a certain kind of Chicagoan.

Al Capone had a fortified summer home on a lake near Hayward, to which hydroplanes flew whiskey from Canada.

His lieutenants frequented the saloons and brothels in Hurley. Rival Roger Touhy vacationed in Minocqua, fishing with a machine gun.

By 1934, Prohibition was over but the Depression was in full swing, and many people blamed the banks.

John Dillinger was the most-wanted bank robber, and he made a resort in Manitowish Waters famous when the FBI interrupted his stay there, killing a local but allowing Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and the other men to escape.


The spectacularly botched raid of Little Bohemia Lodge is at the center of the 2009 film "Public Enemies,'' starring Johnny Depp as Dillinger and Christian Bale as FBI agent Melvin Purvis. It was filmed at Little Bohemia and around Wisconsin.

Now it's tourists who are hot on the gangsters' trail, not FBI agents.

Over the years, Little Bohemia has hosted throngs of what it calls "bullet-hole customers,'' named for the holes that still can be seen. In April 1934, Dillinger had just been wounded in a shootout with the FBI in St. Paul.

His girlfriend, Billie Frechette, raised on northeast Wisconsin's Menominee Indian Reservation, was in custody.

He and his gang decided to get away and regroup. The owner of their favorite tavern in Chicago recommended a lodge in Wisconsin's north woods, run by a friend.

Manitowish was the kind of place where "every little lake had at least one illegal still working overtime,'' writes Bryan Burrough, author of the 2004 book on which the film is based, "Public Enemies, America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34.''
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