Event

Lake Mendota Boat Tour

Ahoy! Board the yacht Grand Mariner for a cultural history tour of Lake Mendota. Historian Don Sanford will narrate the two-hour tour focusing on the social and cultural history of Mendota's lakeshore.

This boat tour, a presentation of the nonprofit Madison Trust for Historic Preservation, offers an exceptional vantage point from which to view shoreline structures by some of Madison's most distinguished architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Riley, Claude & Starck, and Law, Law and Potter. In addition, three one-of-a-kind vintage houses constructed of repurposed materials demonstrate that recycling is nothing new.

The event includes an on-board buffet lunch and a cash bar. In the case of severe weather, the boat will remain at the Mariner's Inn dock and the program and lunch will be held on shore.

Tour guide Don Sanford is the author of On Fourth Lake: The Social History of Lake Mendota, which will be published in August. When he is not researching and writing about Lake Mendota, Sanford is sailing, iceboating and captaining scenic boat tours on the lake. He is a past commodore of the Mendota Yacht Club.

IMPORTANT: We will be boarding at 1:15 pm. Departure is at 1:30 sharp. Boat will NOT wait for latecomers.