Harmony Lane Properties

HISTORY OF HARMONY LANE PROPERTIES

Houses #21 - 24  are located on land originally purchased by the Thunder Lake Lumber Company on December 20th, 1859 from the state of Wisconsin*.   The geographic extent of this land is outlined (approximately) in red in the map above.  This property is bordered by the current Read property (house #20) to the north, "Government Point" or the Piper's point (house #25) to the south, Lake Julia from the west, and the Nicolet National Forest to the east.    

This property was eventually purchased by Irv & Dora Koten in the 1940s.  Their son Don built the first cabin on this property, "Koten Point" (house #21), in 1953.  A few years later, the Kotens sold pieces of the property south of their cabin to other families (houses #22-24). 

Although the ownership of these four properties/cabins has changed over the years - they have all remained within close friends and family.  

A breakdown of the ownership can be seen in the table below.

*Abstract of Title from the Forest Abstract Company - Crandon, WI, 1976

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

**Leland Augustine is the maternal grandfather of Charles (Pete) Schlueter - current  co-owner of the Schlueter property (house #23) 

Harmony Lane is privately owned and maintained by the owners of properties #21 -#24.  The road is unpaved and approximately 1.3 miles long from the entrance at Bradford Lane to the Mayer (Rick and Paula) property, with the Munkwitz/Schlueter properties at the halfway mark. Due to the relative low elevation among the Julia Creek watershed, many segments of the road experience seasonal flooding and erosion from nearby swamps.

The road  used be called "Ups-N-Downs" until ~1995 when the Forest County needed the road to have an official name for emergency response purposes.  The county named the road 'Harmony Lane' and installed a green roadway sign.

A bit of tomfoolery: The kids of "Ups-N-Downs" were not fond of the road being renamed. Unbeknownst to their parents for years, they dug up the new roadway sign and threw it into the woods.  Later that week, the current sign was reinstalled in reinforced concrete - so the name stuck.