Wyalusing State Park (Point Lookout)

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.

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.

Outdoors

Sits exactly where the Trempealeau River meets the Mississippi -- climb the CCC-built stone shelter atop 520-foot Brady's Bluff and you're looking down at Trempealeau Mountain, one of the few true river islands in America with its own freestanding mountain.

History

The oldest European settlement on the Upper Mississippi, founded where the Fox-Wisconsin water route from the Great Lakes met the big river -- the restored 1870 Villa Louis mansion sits on the grounds of the original Fort Shelby, watching the same convergence that made this a fur-trade crossroads for two centuries.