Eagle River Twisted History Tour opens for 11th summer season

While vacationers like visiting the Eagle River Area for some fun on the lake, there is some eerie history lurking beneath Main Street, and all of it is brought to life by a single woman who has made it her mission to run twisted history tours.

The Eagle River Twisted History Tours are entering their 11th year of operation in the area, and Lizzie Lumley says she was initially inspired after visiting historical sites and attending other history tours with her family, and wanted to fill in a niche she noticed was absent in the North Woods.

“I knew Eagle River has a lot of history, so I was thinking I would do my research and see what I could do about starting my own tours,” she explained.

Lumley gave her first tour in 2014. Now she is a one-woman show (doing her own marketing, website maintenance and research) giving tours, typically one hour in length, on Eagle River history, ranging from logging to gangsters to Native American conflicts and even alien encounters.

When she first started, Lumley says she went through local archives and did her research, with help from the Eagle River Historical Society (ERHS), and even dug through newspaper archives — such as with the News-Review — to ensure her stories were as accurate as possible.

Lumley is a snowbird, spending the off-season running a wedding planning business in Florida, but she does have ties to the area, with her family running The Last Resort on Otter Lake.

But this interest in history, she said, is a hobby, and she explained she has enjoyed the process of meeting people, teaching local history and even helping boost local tourism by encouraging those on her tours to check out local businesses.

When it comes to her tours, Lumley said that she is always learning something new, often even hosting people on her tours who have intimate connections to the histories she’s telling.

“It’s nice when the long-time families come on and they’re like, ‘oh yeah, I remember this area that is correct’ and I’m like ‘yep, I know I’ve done my research so I know,’” she said.

She also added that former ERHS president Craig Moore helped her in her journey of ensuring that the stories she was telling on her tours were accurate, as well as former Eagle River Fire Department deputy chief, Jim Bonson, turning this venture into a community effort.

“(Bonson) came on my tour and then there was a couple things that he was like ‘actually this happened in this location’ whereas I was told by numerous other people the wrong information he’s like ‘no, I know it I’m the fire chief this is where this explosion happened’ I’m like ‘okay got it,’ so that’s kind of I’ve been learning along the way,” explained Lumley.

Even tourists have helped Lumley in refining her content, or offering her new depths and perspectives to the history she discusses on her tours.

“I get a lot of locals and people on the tour who’ve moved away and then came back and they’ve told me some things, and I’ll be like, ‘that’s not how it happened at all,’” she said.

“So I had a couple of things where you get rumors coming down from different groups, but then you have to go and investigate to make sure it’s true. That’s one of the things that was important to me is to tell a true, true story because I know there’s some tours out there that embellish on things, but I don’t do that.”

And, ultimately, Lumley said that she hopes to ignite an interest in local history in an area that is predominantly a vacation destination for tourists.

“I want to keep the history of Eagle River alive. People come up here on vacation, they’re out like at the bars around the lakes, and they don’t really appreciate what Eagle River came from and is all about, so that’s what I try to show them,” she said.

Some of the stories Lumley tells on her tour range from mobster shootouts to Native American conflicts to gangster John Dillinger hiding a suitcase full of cash in the North Woods to an alien story in which an Eagle River man was served pancakes by extraterrestrials; Lumley emphasizes that this is not a haunted history tour, as in her research, she could not find reliable information supporting ghost stories in the area.

Lumley concluded that these tours are very much a passion for her rather than a career, and she is always open to hearing more about local stories and histories from those who attend her tours.

Each tour is 60 minutes long and involves approximately 0.6 miles worth of walking in the downtown Eagle River area. While some of the history being touched on in the tours can skew toward the more grim and dark, Lumley assured that the tour is family friendly as she avoids going into gory details. Pets are also welcome to join the tour.

The Twisted History Tours are offered Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. There will be no tours on July 4, Aug. 22 or Aug. 23.

The cost is $15 for adults and children aged 0 - 10 are free.

Private tours are available upon request with a six adult minimum required. Private tour admissions are $20 per person while children 10 and under are free.

To book a tour, call or text 561-706-0974 or email ertwistedtours@gmail.com.

More information about the history tours can be found at eaglerivertwistedtours.com.