Cedar Lake Resort Fire

[AlumniClub]

A massive fire burned a lakeside resort to the ground Wednesday afternoon.

The fire broke out just before 2 o'clock at the Cedar Lake Resort near Kiel in southern Manitowoc County. Two people were inside when the fire started, the building owner and an employee; they escaped unhurt.

Firefighters from ten area departments were in what they call "defensive mode" since they arrived and found flames were already through the roof.

By the time they put the flames out, the resort was a total loss. The structure worth hundreds of thousands of dollars collapsed.

At the time of this writing, firefighters were still snuffing hot spots and the air was filled with smoke. Firefighters say the investigation into the fire's cause will likely take through the night.

Cedar Lake was a long-standing resort, restaurant, banquet hall, and living area that was used year-round for special events, particularly weddings and banquets.

Neighbors say the resort was a popular gathering place for many people for many years. "In 1937, on July 7th, my mother and dad had their wedding anniversary here, so that's 69, 70 years. So it's been here a long time. It's a well-known resort," Frank Zimmerman said.

For more than 70 years, the Cedar Lake Resort was "the" place for people in the Manitowoc County area to hold social functions.

"It's kind of a central, more centrally located area. You have the resort right on the lake which is big enough to handle a large crowd," Dean Crom of the Sheboygan Walleye Club said.

The Sheboygan Walleye Club's fund-raising event scheduled for Saturday at the lodge is cancelled. It's the club's one major fund-raiser of the year but board members decided Wednesday to cancel the fund-raiser all together.

"We'll try to find another place next year depending on what happens there," Crom said.

Crom said he truly hopes once the charred mess is cleaned up, a new Cedar Lake Resort one day takes up that land.

"Every week you always see something in the paper, this is going on at Cedar Lake, and he kind of was a social function area, big concerts were there. He did a lot of stuff for entertainment value in the community," said Crom.

For now, all they have are memories that go back nearly an entire century.

SOURCE: WBAY.com