Couderay, Wisconsin: The Hideout: Al Capone's Northwoods Retreat (Closed)

I tried to visit Al Capone's Hideout today, May 26, 2009 and found it to be closed with a "no trespassing" sign. The sign that apparently used to be on the main road is gone. The website is defunct and the phone number doesn't exist any more.

This is one of several former gangland hideouts of Al Capone that are now tourist attractions, satisfying any curiosity that falls midway between a visit to Hearst Castle and an episode of Cops. "Hideout" gives the wrong impression; this is an estate, if an odd one. It has walls 18 inches thick, a guard tower, a bunkhouse, and a private jail cell and exercise yard (for gangland rivals, not Al). The current management offers 40-minute guided tours of the grounds -- ten buildings in all. There's also a gift shop and a restaurant -- which used to be Al's eight-car garage -- and a "nationally recognized recreation," with wax dummies, of the 1929 St. Valentine's Day massacre.

Al Capone, America's most notorious gangster, built a gangland hideout in Wisconsin's North woods near Couderay in the mid-1920s. Today, 40-minute tours of this estate take viewers through Capone's living quarters in the impressive main lodge and around the ground's 9 additional buildings including the gun tower, bunkhouse and jail cell, a single-person cell which is surrounded by a small exercise yard. The estate's 18-inch thick walls were built to withstand potential firepower from rival gangs as well as the Feds.

In Capone's heyday, this is one of the places he would go to "get away from it all" -- at least from the coppers anyway. I was only 10 or so when my family and I went there, but it's still around, it was a lot of fun. You get to tour his house, there was a place where he'd hold prisoners, there's a guard's tower when you first drive up, his old garage is made into a great restaurant. My family and I keep meaning to go back again but, it hasn't happened yet -- I know my 3 year old would get a kick out of it.