The GREAT ESCAPES

IN WISCONSIN AND MINNESOTA, HISTORIC LAKESIDE RESORTS KEEP ALIVE A CENTURY OF TRADITION. GENERATION AFTER GENERATION, THEY HAVE YET TO GO OUT OF STYLE.

- JACQUELINE KEHOE

At Stout's Island Lodge, the world is quiet. Nearly off the map on Wisconsin's Red Cedar Lake, the historic resort has been a Northwoods escape for 121 years. "Your mindset changes immediately," says Bob Kody, a 12-times-plus guest at the iconic retreat. "It's just like the old days. For once, you're without distraction."

Nearing the end of Stout's season, the sugar maples, oaks and birches are flaunting their October colors, and the lodge is starting to quiet too. After circling the trails on a morning walk-the island is car-free-I grab a coffee and a coveted seat in the Great Room, right next to the grand fireplace. Ella Fitzgerald's "Sentimental Journey" is playing, and though it's only been 24 hours, I can tell I'm about to have my own.

A man comes in to toss a log on the fire, a couple plays chess in the corner, and I dally with a book on the resort's historyhow the timbered lodge was originally built bark-on, à la the Adirondack Great Camps; how its owner Frank Stout, who inherited a lumber fortune, practically owned half of Chicago but still considered this his "Island of Happy Days"; how the steel walking bridge just steps away was a gift from Andrew Carnegie. I was in the home of a legend, welcomed like a good friend, experiencing the origins of a Midwestern legacy: life on the lake.

"We do not take a back seat to the finest Adirondack Camps," says Tom Dow, co-owner of Stout's since 1990. "This is an Adirondack Camp that got away."

Accidentally Adirondack