Hayward, Wisconsin

About Hayward

Hayward started as a sawmill town. Anthony Judson Hayward, a lumberman from Eau Claire, arrived in 1878 and built a mill on the Namekagon River; the city was organized in 1883 and is the Sawyer County seat. The big mill burned in 1922 after the timber was mostly gone, and the town turned to lakes and tourism.

Today it is known for musky fishing, the National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame with its 143-foot fiberglass muskie, the Lumberjack World Championships, and the American Birkebeiner, North America's largest cross-country ski marathon. The same trail system hosts the Chequamegon 40 in September.

Downtown is a few blocks of Main Street with bars, a brewpub, bakeries and bike shops. Cable, about 20 miles northeast on U.S. 63, is the other half of the Chequamegon area and where the race finishes.

Riding in Hayward

The Chequamegon Area Mountain Bike Association (CAMBA) maintains more than 135 miles of singletrack, 70 miles of groomed winter fat-bike trail and more than 200 miles of mapped gravel routes across Sawyer and Bayfield counties and the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. The terrain is glacial: short punchy climbs, no long ones, with sand and roots in places.

The Birkie trail is the spine of the area, a wide groomed corridor between Cable and Hayward that the Chequamegon 40 follows. Summer is the riding season; September brings cooler days and fall color, and by late fall the trails turn over to skiing and fat bikes.

Getting to Hayward

Hayward is about 66 miles from Duluth International Airport (DLH) and 115 miles from Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP), roughly two and a half to three hours by car from the Twin Cities. There is no useful transit; you need a car, and race weekend traffic between Hayward and Cable on U.S. 63 is heavy. Lodging fills months ahead for the festival.