Isle was once in the center of a huge white pine forest that stretched from southeastern Wisconsin to the Canadian border and beyond. When the timber companies finished clear-cutting the land in the 1880s and 90s the railroad companies sold it to the poor immigrants of northern Europe who were told that if the land could grow trees it could grow crops. It took three generations to learn otherwise.

In these stories you will discover people who came across the ocean from Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Germans and French were there too. As well as the Poles and Finns and Russians. These were the first people to grub out the tree stumps and pick the rocks to clear the fields and plant the crops that grew so poorly in the sandy soil.

Within these grand sweeps of history people came, lived and died in Isle. These are their stories, written so the young strangers who reside in present day towns like Isle will know of the giants that had gone before them.