"We're going to let whatever's there stay." "Then we found out Cranberry Lake has a soft muck bottom. "Not all of those folks returned to their homes," says the tour guide, Ron Rudnicki. The mob leader greeted some guests by putting them in a brick jail. Bear traps speckled the property to catch any federal agents chasing the bootleg Canadian whiskey that Capone had flown to the lake. On a recent tour, a guide pointed to a stone watchtower where gunmen stood guard for intruders. There was a garage on grounds to maintain Capone's automobiles, and a barn for horses. The complex generated its own electricity. The Hideout, as the retreat is now called, was built by 200 men who moved hundreds of tons of stone and earth and built a retaining wall by the lake for a terrace. "He was a self-described country gentleman."Īl Capone may have had the most splendid of hideaways: 400 acres lined with pine and oak trees, a lake large enough to land a seaplane and a lodge built of fieldstone 18 inches thick. "He said he was out of the beer racket," says David Palmer, the lodge's current owner. Joe "Polack Joe" Saltis, a Chicago beer baron who led one of the city's most violent gangs, built the Barker Lodge & Resort on 150 acres beside a national forest in a northern Wisconsin town called Winter, complete with a two-story cedar lodge, lakefront view and golf course.
Ralph "Bottles" Capone retired there to run a hotel, hunt grouse and play golf, gin and pinochle.
"That's why the Mafia doesn't really approve it anymore - it just exposes them to more trouble."īut during Prohibition, the 2 1/2 -day route from Chicago to pristine lakes and pine forests was well-traveled.Īccording to Gangster Holidays, Jack "Greasy Thumb" Guzik, the reputed head of the Chicago gambling syndicate, fished for musky in the area. "Today with all the cell phones and the ability to trace things, you can't hide out," says Carl Sifakis, author of the Mafia Encyclopedia. Now, finding a refuge is a more complicated affair.
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