St. Wenceslaus Church and Cemetery

In the 1860s and 1870s settlers from Bohemia (now part of Czechoslovakia) came to this area and worked at the Leland Lake Superior Iron Foundry and the Gill sawmill. Catholics attended mass at Holy Trinity Church in Leland until the church burned in 1880. In 1890 the first St. Wenceslaus Church was built and the cemetery established. Ornate metal grave markers reflect the Bohemian heritage, as do the names Bourda, Houdek, Hula, Jelinek, Kalchick, Kirt, Kolarik, Korson, Kovarik, Maresh, Novotny, Reicha, and Sedlacek, which appear in the cemetery. The church membership doubled by 1908. In 1914 volunteers hauled bricks and other materials to this site and built the present church. This Late Gothic Revival church was completed during that year.