Mabel Tainter Center for the Arts

Culture

Trails cross the remains of a fortified Middle-Mississippian town occupied roughly A.D. 1000-1300, including reconstructed stockade sections and two restored platform mounds. The open prairie setting makes the village plan easier to read than at a conventional artifact museum.

Outdoors

Alma is wedged onto a single street between a 500-foot bluff and the river -- climb the walking trail from town and you're not just looking at the Mississippi, you're looking straight down onto Lock and Dam No. 4, watching barges lock through in miniature below your feet.

Culture

Wisconsin Historical Society site on the Ringling Bros.' original winter quarters; live big-top shows in summer.

Culture

Cranberry-industry museum in a century-old warehouse (now branded Discover Cranberries & Cranberry Country Cafe); cranberry ice cream in the on-site cafe.

Roadside Americana

300-ton Victorian-steampunk scrap sculpture, among the world's largest; open seasonally (roughly Apr-Nov, closed Tue/Wed), free with donations suggested.

Outdoors

A lumber baron's widow bought this 1,183-foot mesa in 1909 to stop a quarry company from blasting it apart, then donated it to the city -- today a 1938 WPA stone shelter frames the single best view of La Crosse, the Mississippi, and the Minnesota bluffs beyond, with a statue of the woman who saved it standing watch.