A mural of the Rock Lake Monster and another Lake Mills legend are coming to Main Street

Lake Mills residents chose the name Legendary Lane for the alley through a survey, and Legendary Lake Mills Executive Director Raina Severson said the main street business chamber organization brainstormed with the Lake Mills Historical Society to come up with a list of local legends.

“We thought it was a no-brainer to have a mural highlighting one of the whimsical Lake Mills legends and folklore,” Severson said in an email to the Lake Mills Leader. “We wanted to choose legends that Lake Mills locals can connect to but will also tell visitors of our town a little bit about what makes Lake Mills, indeed, legendary.”

The renovation will turn the alley between Bumper to Bumper at 201 N Main Street and the future location of the Tyranena Brewing Company taproom at 203 N Main Street into a public pedestrian corridor connecting the street to the municipal parking lot behind the businesses.

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), a public-private state agency that promotes business development, in April awarded a $5,000 grant for the project to the city’s business chamber organization Legendary Lake Mills.

“We want to thank WEDC for their support as well as the chair of our Design Committee, Hope Oostdik, for applying for the grant,” Severson said in a WEDC press release. “We look forward to using this grant to better our community for our cherished community members and visitors alike.”

Legendary Lake Mills and WEDC will partner on the project with the City of Lake Mills, as well as local property owners at All Together Studio, a design and urban planning firm based in the Chicago suburb of Evanston.

“We as a Design Team are working diligently to pull all the pieces of the restoration together,” Oostik said in an email. “We are trying to source locally and work collaboratively with the City staff to begin construction. Looking forward to the renovation and art work!”

Legendary Lake Mills solicited feedback from residents online on what the mural should feature. Residents chose from several local legends, including the Rock Lake monster, the pyramids, and the portion of the Underground Railroad that supposedly ran through farm homes in the area.

“This grant award is very exciting and brings a special energy to our downtown and community-wide spring makeover,” Severson said. “We can’t wait to begin to gather stakeholders and the community’s ideas to beautify and recreate the area.”

The project was the winner of WEDC’s first Place-Makeover Contest. An April WEDC press release said the project was chosen “due to its high visibility, the level of traffic associated with its future intended use, potential for meaningful transformation and its size and scale.”

“This space now may just be a humble alleyway but with the right vision it can become an important connector for downtown Lake Mills,” Missy Hughes, WEDC secretary and CEO, said in the WEDC release. “There’s a lot of energy being created in this part of Main Street with Tyranena Brewing Company investing in a second taproom and beer garden.”

The contest is part of the Wisconsin Main Street Program, which according to the WEDC website is a program designed to revitalize and promote historic and traditional business districts in Wisconsin’s villages, towns and cities.

Severson said they hope to have the project completed in early fall.

Legendary Lake Mills said it is looking for volunteers to help with the project. Those interested can reach out to Severson at raina@legendarylakemills.com.

What are the Lake Mills Legends? Rock Lake Monster

Stories of a monster in Rock Lake have long captivated residents of Lake Mills, according to historical records curated by Lake Mills Aztalan Historical Society President Robin Untz.

A September 3, 1896 edition of the Lake Mills Leader described an “immense serpent or water beast of unusual size and peculiar shape,” spotted in Rock Lake, with “feet and scales somewhat like an alligator,” according to an eyewitness account.

In Sea Serpents: Wisconsin Occurrences of These Weird Water Monsters, folklorist Charles Brown collected descriptions of the monster, detailing a creature as long as a boat, with “huge jaws about a foot or more,” and a “most sickening odor.”

Dr. Roland Liebenow in People, Their Places & Things-Even More Tales From Lake Mills wrote that the beast was reported slain in the 1986 Leader by a Captain William Howe, who “struck it a mighty blow with his oar, upon which it sank into the depths. The next morning it was found dead on the shore.”

“The final conclusion,” Liebenow wrote, “Was that it could not be identified as either a fish or a serpent … could this not have possibly been a large Musky? Since no photos were taken, the mystery remains.”

The Pyramid City

Facing a 16-year drought around the year 1300, the indigenous peoples of area near what would become Rock Lake built pyramids as sacrificial altars – or so went the story of the Rock Lake pyramid, originally promoted during the Great Depression by city publicist Victor Taylor, according to Liebenow.

Liebenow wrote that youths hired by Taylor in 1935 to dive into the lake and inspect the sites reported they were pyramidal in shape. Other expeditions to the lake bottom found rock formations and “round openings in the tops of these structures,” as well as “numerous animal effigies,” though always, Liebenow noted, “with inconclusive results.”

According to Liebenow, it’s possible Rock Lake wasn’t always a lake, but a river or a pond transformed into a spring-fed lake during a significant seismic event like an earthquake, although he also wrote the legend might have originated as a “promotional gimmick” to bring tourism to Lake Mills during the economic downturn.

“We can only speculate,” Liebenow wrote.

Special thanks to Lake Mills Aztalan Historical Society President Robin Untz. To learn more about the historical society, visit www.LakeMillsAztalanHistory.com or find them on Facebook.