Lake of the WeekWeekend Guide
8 Ways to Spend a Weekend at Elkhart Lake
The thing at Elkhart Lake with federal protection is not the water. It is the pavement. The public county roads around the village are on the National Register of Historic Places for the sports car races of 1950, 1951 and 1952. They got there because a 2002 county reconstruction project would have straightened that geometry away.
The lake itself has no inlet stream. About 71 percent of its inflow arrives as groundwater rather than surface water, per a Great Lakes Water Institute study. On summer Sundays no motor-driven boat may run on it, electric trolling motors excepted.
Below: the roads and their fourteen markers, the basin under the boats, the Sunday rule and the federal lawsuit over wake surfing, the downtown restaurant named for a raided gambling house, two supper clubs in Calumet County — Schwarz's about 20 minutes northwest, the Altona out in New Holstein — and what is left of Road America's 2026 season. One of the two supper clubs will not take a reservation.
Drive a course that is on the National Register
The two historic race circuits, on live Sheboygan County roads
Racing at Elkhart Lake, photographed 18 June 1961 — nine years after the street races ended. Unknown photographer via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain) The artifact here is the road itself, and there is nothing to book or pay to see it. The Elkhart Lake historic race circuits went onto the Wisconsin State Register on September 23, 2005 and the National Register of Historic Places on February 17, 2006, under reference number 06000053. That made them, in the preservation society's own words, the only other open-road race circuits preserved this way besides Watkins Glen.
It nearly went the other direction. In early 2002 the Sheboygan County Highway Department announced a reconstruction of County Road A that would have straightened, widened and leveled it. The project ran on federal highway money, which put it under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. The circuits were declared eligible for preservation in July 2004, construction stopped, and in February 2005 the county withdrew its federal funding request. The Register nomination that followed was sponsored and funded by the Elkhart Lake Historic Race Circuits Preservation Society, an all-volunteer Wisconsin 501(c)(3). The roads keep their 1950s geometry because of that fight.
Find the fourteen markers, starting with Wacker's Wend
Roadside on both circuits
Fourteen historical markers stand on live public roads around the two circuits: Wacker's Wend, Hamill's Hollow, Schoolhouse Straight, Kimberly's Korner, Dicken's Ditch, the 1950 start/finish line, The Marsh Turn, Ted's Turn, Peck's Alley, Briggs' Bend, The Hard Right, the 1951-52 start/finish line, the state historical marker and The Hard Left. The society's map page locates every one of them, and finding them is a drive rather than a walk. Kimberly's Korner is named for James S. "Gentleman Jim" Kimberly, a grandson of Kimberly-Clark co-founder John Kimberly. He ran the company until 1950, then retired to race sports cars full time. He won the 60-mile feature at the inaugural Elkhart Lake races that same year in a Ferrari 166 MM, later served as president of the SCCA, and has the club's most-improved-driver award, the Kimberly Cup, named for him.
Wacker's Wend is the harder one. Fred Wacker was one of the Chicago Region SCCA men who scouted Elkhart Lake from a chartered plane. The last street race here ran September 6 and 7, 1952. Thirteen days later, on September 20, Wacker lost control of his Cadillac-Allard at Watkins Glen, killing seven-year-old Frankie Fazzary and injuring twelve spectators, per the International Motor Racing Research Center's account of the 1952 Glen race (racingarchives.org). That crash effectively ended American open-road racing; legislatures, Wisconsin's among them, banned racing on public roads. The corner sign on a Sheboygan County road carries the name of the driver in the wreck that closed the era Elkhart Lake had just finished celebrating.
Look at what a kettle does to a small lake
Elkhart Lake, Sheboygan County — 292 acres, 3.74 miles of shoreline
Downtown Elkhart Lake. The village streets themselves were the racetrack until 1952. Royalbroil via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5) The DNR lists Elkhart Lake at 292 acres, with a maximum depth of 119 feet and one boat landing. Its species list runs smallmouth bass abundant, largemouth common, and musky, walleye, northern pike, trout and panfish present — categorical abundance labels, not population estimates. Keep Elkhart Blue, the lake association, puts the mean depth at 46 feet and the shoreline at 3.74 miles. Both depths matter: an average of 46 feet across 292 acres describes a steep-sided hole, not a wide shallow pan with one deep spot in it.
It is a kettle, formed 10,000 to 15,000 years ago when a large block of glacial ice buried in the till melted and the ground above it collapsed. It is also classified as a spring lake: no inlet stream, a continuous outflow, and about 71 percent of its inflow arriving as groundwater rather than surface water, per a Great Lakes Water Institute study. Water coming up through Kettle Moraine gravel instead of down a silty inlet is the association's explanation for the clarity it claims — some of the clearest water in Wisconsin, in its telling. We found no published Secchi reading behind that, so read it as the association's claim rather than as a measurement.
Check the day of the week before you trailer a boat
The single public launch, County Road P just south of County Road JP
The rule is on the village's own regulations page: no motor-driven boat may operate on Elkhart Lake on a Sunday, 12:01 a.m. to midnight, from the second Sunday in June through and including the second Sunday in September. In 2026 that works out to June 14 through September 13. Electric trolling motors are allowed. The rest of that page: slow-no-wake all year from 7:30 p.m. to 10 a.m. and at all times between the shoreline and the no-wake buoys, a 35 mph general limit, and boats expected to run a counter-clockwise course.
The lake is also in federal court over the other kind of wake. In November 2025 the village passed an ordinance providing that no person may use ballast tanks, ballast bags or fins to make a boat run bow-high, with fines of $500 for a first offense and $1,000 for a repeat within a year. On April 20, 2026, Elkhart Watersports Alliance, Inc., representing 14 members who wake surf here, sued the village and its trustees (Wisconsin Public Radio, April 30, 2026), arguing that the ordinance violates Wisconsin state law, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Public Trust Doctrine and the U.S. Constitution, and that it amounts to an outright ban rather than a restriction.
The group asked for a federal order barring enforcement, plus nearly $1.8 million for lost boat and equipment use, more than $911,000 in docking fees and $1.35 million in emotional damages. Village Board President Lynn Shovan said the village was trying to protect the health of the lake, citing safety and the effects on the lake bottom. WPR had the case pending as of early May 2026, and this page is reporting it from that coverage rather than from the docket.
Before you go: Launching requires a parking permit: $5 a day or $20 a year for Sheboygan County residents, $15 a day or $40 a year for everyone else. The village does not say whether the Sunday closure also covers Little Elkhart Lake or Crystal Lake.
The restaurant that kept a raided gambling house's name
The Paddock Club, 61 S. Lake Street, downtown
The Milwaukee and Northern Railroad reached Elkhart Lake in 1873 and brought vacationers, race enthusiasts, gamblers and gangsters up from Chicago, Milwaukee and Green Bay. In the village's own telling, illegal gambling "became the accepted standard in the state" and Elkhart Lake became a gambler's paradise. The era ended with a raid: the original Paddock Club's gambling equipment was destroyed.
The restaurant carrying the name now opened in June 2007 at 61 South Lake Street, and says on its own site that it took the name from "the infamous Paddock Club which thrived during the area's legendary gambling era of the early 1900's." It cooks off a seasonal menu, and reservations go through Resy.
Before you go: Bar at 4 p.m., dinner 5 to 9, Tuesday through Saturday. (920) 876-3288. That is the whole operating week, so between June 14 and September 13, 2026, a Sunday here has no gas motor on the water and no table at this address.
Order dinner in the bar at Schwarz's, then wait to be called
Supper clubSchwarz's Supper Club, W1688 Sheboygan Rd., New Holstein (St. Anna) — about 20 minutes northwest
Schwarz's sits in St. Anna, in Calumet County, which holds a registered service mark as the "Supper Club Capital of the Midwest." It does not accept reservations, and its own Visit Us page sets the NOT in capitals. What it runs instead is a documented procedure. Someone hands you a menu in the bar, you give your name and your dinner order at the same time, and you drink until you are called. The salad, the relish tray and the bread basket are already on the table when you sit down.
Ziggy and Evelyn Schwarz opened it in 1957 as a small country tavern. Lisa and Stephanie Schwarz and family run it now, second and third generation. By the club's own account it butchers its own meat, hand-breads the onion rings, and goes through about 900 pounds of prime rib and ten pounds of Grandma Schwarz's pickled mushrooms in a week, serving up to about 700 people on a Saturday night.
Before you go: Closed Monday and Tuesday, and on Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Wednesday and Thursday the bar opens at 3:30 with dining 4 to 8; Friday is the same bar time with dining to 9; Saturday the bar opens at 3 and dining runs 3:15 to 9; Sunday the bar opens at 2:30 and dining runs 3 to 8. There is no reservation to make and no boat access — it is inland. (920) 894-3598.
Take a buffet at the Altona, named for a town that lost its name
Supper clubAltona Supper Club, 2306 Calumet Drive, New Holstein
Altona was a 19th-century German settlement near New Holstein, itself named for the Altona that is now a borough of Hamburg. In 1872 the railroad complained that its mail kept getting confused with Altoona, Wisconsin. The settlement lost its name and was absorbed into New Holstein. Herman Muenster built the supper club and opened it in November 1937, and the property has passed through eleven ownerships since. The historic name came back in 2006, when the Glenn and Bridget Braun family bought it after a stint as "Hunter's Rae." David Braun and Jason Hunsader took over in 2007.
The format is buffets rather than plated service: a seafood buffet Friday night, a meatlovers buffet Saturday, and a large brunch buffet Sunday from 9:30 a.m. It is also the one kitchen in this story a person can walk into at noon — Sunday through Friday; on Saturday it opens at 3:30.
Before you go: Hours run Monday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., Friday to 9, Saturday 3:30 to 9 p.m., and Sunday 9:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. The reservation policy and the buffet prices are not on the site, so call (920) 898-5255 before driving over.
See what the ban on street racing produced
Road America, Elkhart Lake — 4.048 miles, 14 turns
Road America, built after Wisconsin banned racing on public roads. The whole loop fits in one frame. USDA NAIP via USGS (Public domain) When the legislatures banned racing on public roads, Clif Tufte built a private one. The Wisconsin Historical Museum's account of the founding has him as a local highway engineer and quarry operator who drove the area's back roads and drew a four-mile track duplicating his favorite turns, then incorporated Road America, Inc. in October 1954 with Ed Leverenz, Terrett Arndt and Gertrude Laun. Most of the grading was finished by June 30, 1955. The track opened the weekend of September 10, 1955, with Phil Hill's Ferrari Monza beating Sherwood Johnston's D-Type Jaguar by a nose in a photo finish.
The Grand Prix course measures 4.048 miles with 14 turns, and the track says that original configuration has never been altered. Its own calendar makes the June Sprints the longest-running event on it: June 5 to 7 this year, the 71st running. NASCAR is not on the 2026 schedule at all. The Cup Series last ran here in 2022 and moved to the Chicago street course in 2023.
Before you go: Four race weekends are left in 2026, all off the track's own calendar: GT World Challenge America August 28–30, Ferrari Challenge September 12–13, Art on Wheels Vintage Weekend with VSCDA September 18–20, and the SCCA National Championship Runoffs October 1–4. The weekend that puts cars back on the old street course is July's Vintage Weekend, and it is gone for this year: the Racecar Parade and Concours d'Elegance ran on Lake Street Friday, July 17, 6 to 8 p.m., the sports car concours Saturday the 18th at the same hours.
Everything above is checked against the best source we could reach and dated, because hours and seasons move. The lawsuit is the exception: it is reported from news coverage as of early May 2026, not from the docket. One claim did not make it in at all. Several travel write-ups say the 1886 Osthoff hotel on this lakefront burned down. Otto and Paulina Osthoff built it for 120 guests; it later became the Harand Camp of the Theatre Arts, whose alumni include Jeremy Piven, Billy Zane and Virginia Madsen. The village's own history and the camp's own history describe a purchase in July 1989 and a replacement of the buildings, with no fire, and the current Osthoff Resort opening in June 1995. Without a primary source for a fire, we left it out. If you have one, or a newer number than any above, tell us and we will fix the page.
All the data for Elkhart Lake — depth map, surveys, launches