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All the United States Wisconsin Washington Jacobsens Museum

Jacobsens Museum

Exhibits from an island in Lake Michigan are preserved in this hand-built cabin museum.

Washington, Wisconsin

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Nina Botting
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Jacobsen Museum   John Kees / CC BY-SA 3.0
Jacobsen Museum, Washington Island, WI   nherbst / Atlas Obscura User
Little Lake   Joshua Mayer / CC BY-SA 2.0
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Jacobsens Museum was built in 1931 originally to house the collections and crafts of its creator, Jens Jacobsen. A Danish immigrant, Jacobsen arrived on Washington Island in 1881 at the age of 14 and lived there for the rest of his life, dying at 85 in 1952.

In the 1920s, Jacobsen started building vacation cabins by hand on land he owned around Little Lake, the only inland lake on Washington Island. He built the cabins with walls of vertical cedar logs rather than the usual horizontal log style of American cabins and capped his achievement with the museum in 1931.

The museum contains locally found artifacts, fossils, and rocks, in addition to Jacobsen's own crafted model boats and scrollwork and examples of his furniture. Over the years donations to the museum from islanders have included the original telephone switchboard used until July 1968 and a 90-year-old pinball machine.

Near the museum, you can find two smaller cabins. One was built by Jacobsen as his summer home, and the other was originally built as a place for writing and study by the Norwegian-American economist Thorstein Veblen. He moved here from its original site on the northwest side of Little Lake. 

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Cabins Crafts Museums And Collections

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Open from June to mid-October.

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nherbst

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Michelle Cassidy

  • Michelle Cassidy

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October 24, 2022

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  • https://doorcountypulse.com/the-man-behind-the-jacobsen-museum/
Jacobsens Museum
2150 Little Lake Rd
Washington, Wisconsin, 54246
United States
45.407219, -86.94495
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Nearby Places

Schoolhouse Beach

Washington Island, Wisconsin

miles away

Washington Island Stave Church

Washington, Wisconsin

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Nelsen’s Hall & Bitters Club

Washington, Wisconsin

miles away

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Photo of Washington

Washington

Wisconsin

Places 3

Nearby Places

Schoolhouse Beach

Washington Island, Wisconsin

miles away

Washington Island Stave Church

Washington, Wisconsin

miles away

Nelsen’s Hall & Bitters Club

Washington, Wisconsin

miles away

Explore the Destination Guide

Photo of Washington

Washington

Wisconsin

Places 3

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