Bayfield and Madeline Island
Island · Bayfield, Wisconsin
Wisconsin's smallest city, with a population of about 584, sitting on the Lake Superior shore as the gateway to Apostle Islands National Lakeshore — and Madeline Island, the largest of the twenty-two islands and the only one not in the national lakeshore, reached by a twenty-five-minute car ferry. Bayfield was a lumber and commercial fishing town that reinvented itself around the islands and its orchards; Madeline Island was a centre of the Ojibwe world and then the fur trade for two centuries before either. In deep winter the ferry stops and an official ICE ROAD is plowed across the channel as a seasonal extension of County Highway H.
415 Washington Avenue, Bayfield, Wisconsin, 54814, United States
Apostle Islands National Lakeshore is free and open year-round; the Bayfield headquarters visitor centre at 415 Washington Avenue is open daily 9:00 to 16:30, and Little Sand Bay Visitor Center is CLOSED for all of 2026. The Madeline Island car ferry runs from spring until freeze-up around mid-January, with no reservations; an official plowed ice road and a windsled cover the winter. Big Bay State Park is open 6:00 to 23:00 year-round, but its campground and beach car park close 8 September 2026 until roughly summer 2027. The Madeline Island Museum runs 23 May to 27 September, Wednesday to Sunday.
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