Celebrating over 50 Years in business

Est. in 1971

Three Generations of Ownership

When Jim King was 15 years old,

he visited Wisconsin from Illinois and decided at that point he was eventually going to live in Wisconsin. It took him 14 years to get here.

After high school, Jim joined the Navy for 4 years. After his service he went to college for business and finance and worked for a life insurance company and lived in Rockford and Champagne, Illinois.

In 1957 Jim came back to Wisconsin on a fishing trip where he “fished his heart out”. He told his wife Dorothy he needed to figure out a way to move to Wisconsin. So, he went back to school to get his teaching degree and applied to every town 50 miles of Hayward, WI with a population over 1000 people. He heard back from a few locations including Cumberland, which he was most impressed with because they spent most of the interview talking about fishing and hunting. He was offered the position and moved to Cumberland in August of 1959. Along with his teaching job Jim worked at a real estate office selling insurance and real estate.

Jim was also a rock hound

and was up north one day looking for agates and met a lady doing the same at a gravel pit near Shell Lake, WI. That lady was the current owner of Camp Brigadoon. At the time the camp was non-operational but was previously a camp for children during the summer. As a real estate agent Jim offered to list it for sale but she wasn’t interested and told Jim that he should buy it. He and Dorothy joked at the possibility but in time considered the offer and figured out how they were going to raise the money and bought Camp Brigadoon in 1971.

Jim and Dorothy ran the camp together until Dorothy passed away in 1990. At that time one of Jim’s sons, Steve King, was home and they were walking around the camp ground. During the walk Steve casually picked up a piece of trash and asked his dad if he would be interested in him coming back and working the camp together. Jim agreed.

Jim and steve ran the camp together

starting in 1990, at the time there were only 60 sites. The two of them worked together to expand the camp ground, cutting down trees, clearing brush, plumbing and endless other projects all themselves.

Jim and Steve continued to work together expanding, updating and changing Camp Brigadoon until Steve’s passing in 2019.

Camp Brigadoon still lives on and is now managed by Steve’s step-daughter Jenny Thorp. She will continue the legacy of the camp Jim and Steve worked so hard to create.

“When you have a dream and you’re focused you can accomplish a lot, and my dream was fishing” – Jim King