Madeline Island Museum in La Pointe stands on the former site of the American Fur Company Northern Outfit, with its main building once used as a company warehouse. The location reflects Madeline Island’s deep history as an ancient Native American settlement, a French fur-trading post founded in 1693, a 19th-century American Fur Company post, and a center of early missionary work. Local residents Leo and Bella Capser began organizing the museum in 1955, and it opened on June 15, 1958 before passing to the Wisconsin Historical Society ten years later. Its exhibits interpret Native, fur-trade, missionary, and maritime history central to Madeline Island and La Pointe.