Local Lake Liked: Wisconsin Town Among Best in Midwest

Lake Geneva was named one of the top small towns in the Midwest by USA Today’s Reader Choice Awards, 10BEST.

This should come as no surprise to Wisconsinites who have spent any time there. There’s shopping and dining in town, golf courses nearby, plenty of activities on the water, as well as a host of things to do nearby, such as hot air ballooning, horseback riding, and ziplining, as well as hiking and mountain bike trails. A walk along the Lake Shore Path gives you a chance to see the architecture of the stately waterfront homes up close. And, refreshingly, the residents don’t hunt you for sport when you walk past.

The Drink Wisconsinbly Week in Review staff has even been known to post up at lakeside bars of Lake Geneva for hours and offhandedly mention work once in a while so we can sneak it onto our expense report with a clear conscience. (Please don’t mention this to our supervisors.) In short, it’s really nice.

Now, lists ranking towns are popular fodder for media outlets looking for easy content to create. They thump their chest when places in their area do well and dismiss the results when an area burgh does poorly, citing some judging criteria that makes the list flawed.

Lake Geneva ranked fifth, and we only have a minor quibble with that. It should be higher, of course. Our main gripe, however, is that it’s the only Wisconsin town that placed in the top 10. Michigan and Indiana both had three! That’s pretty fishy, right?

So we reached out to Drink Wisconsinbly Department of Rationalizations and Crazy Theories in hopes of getting to the bottom of it.

With this being a readers’ poll, one theory they came back with is that Wisconsin has so many incredible towns that the vote was split like 87 different ways, which allowed other inferior states to swoop in and take our rightful spots.

They also suspected there could be some ballot stuffing happening. Again, two states had three towns on the list! At least Minnesota kept its cheating subtle, forcing only one of its ghastly locales to the top.

Their third and most plausible theory is that the people of Wisconsin were out enjoying their delightful small towns and were simply too busy to be bothered with some silly readers’ poll.

However, the list came together, and whoever was pulling the strings, we can all agree that they were right about Lake Geneva. And also not putting any place in Illinois on it either.