Richard Bong State Recreation Area
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Richard Bong State Recreation Area, in western Kenosha County, was meant to be a jet fighter base. The government bought the land in the 1950s and named the base for Major Richard I. Bong of Poplar, Wisconsin, America’s top ace of World War II, but the base was abandoned in 1959, days before the concrete was to be poured on its runway, and the state took over the land. I have been there twice, both times at the end of May: the early afternoon of May 29, 2021, and the morning of May 29, 2022. The first time, I walked the boardwalk out over the cattail marsh and its ponds under a clear blue sky. The second, under a gray one, I went through a gateway of twisted branches and past a big oak to Vern Wolf Lake, named for a naturalist and poet.
Photos from Richard Bong State Recreation Area
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A gateway of twisted branches.
Vern Wolf Lake.
A big oak beside the trail.