On a meandering drive home from a northern Wisconsin bike race I passed through the town of Cumberland Wisconsin.
It’s in the middle of nowhere.
It’s a pretty town. Too pretty. Like something out of a Stepford Town movie. What’s going on with Cumberland?
The wikipedia article is what a small town (2,300 people) article should be — it reads as though it were put together by a local school. There are a few items that stood out for me…
… 34.2% German, 24.7% Norwegian, 14.1% Italian, 10.3% Irish, 9.6% Swedish and 8.2% English …
… 35.1% of all households were made up of individuals …
… median income for a household in the city was $32,661, and the median income for a family was $41,612…
They have a fancy Carnegie library. From the history …
… After the railroad began to operate, settlers quickly arrived in the area and by 1884 there were 24 saloons located in the area … In February 1893, the state board of health sent a representative to set up a quarantine on the Italian settlement due to unsanitary conditions … In April [1895], telephone lines were also erected in the city limits… On March 15, 1905 a $10,000 donation from Andrew Carnegie established a Carnegie Library in Cumberland …
How common were telephone lines in 1895? Why did they gets such a big Carnegie donation in 1905? Does all this have anything to do with the what lives at the bottom on the lake?