Lost Dauphin State Park
Static map displayed.
Lost Dauphin State Park is a very small, 19-acre park along the Fox River, just south of De Pere, and the Town of Lawrence runs it; I didn’t see the words “state park” on any of its signs. It is part of a 4,800-acre tract that the United States granted to Eleazer Williams, who in 1822 led a delegation of New York Indians to the Fox River valley, hoping to found an Indian empire in the West, and later settled with his wife in a cabin by the river. After the French Prince de Joinville visited him at Green Bay in 1841, a story spread that Williams might be the Lost Dauphin, the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and John H. Hanson’s book The Lost Prince made it famous. I spent the middle of the day on July 22, 2022, there, a sunny summer day, and walked the short trails through the woods and out to the lawn above the river.
Photos from Lost Dauphin State Park
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The marker for Eleazer Williams, put up in 1961.
The park’s sign, carved in stone.
A trail through the woods.