With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Al Capone's Wisconsin hideout for sale

WAUSAU, Wis. – The buyer of a scenic property in northern Wisconsin will get more than just its bar and restaurant: They'll have a former hideout of Chicago mobster Al Capone.

The 407-acre wooded site, complete with guard towers and a stone house with 18-inch-thick walls, will soon go on the auction block at a starting bid of $2.6 million.

The bank that foreclosed on the land near Couderay, about 140 miles northeast of Minneapolis, said Capone owned it in the late 1920s and early 1930s during Prohibition. Local legend claims that shipments of bootlegged alcohol were flown in on planes that landed on the property's 37-acre lake, then loaded onto trucks bound for Chicago.

"He spent a lot of time there," Chippewa Valley Bank Vice President Joe Kinnear said. "Whether it was for getting whiskey out of Canada or whoever knows. It is an incredible property."

The property was more recently used as a tourist attraction. It includes Capone's two-story stone home with a massive fireplace, two guard towers — reportedly manned with machine guns whenever Capone visited — a caretakers residence and other outbuildings.
Read entire article at Yahoo News