Experience Nature: Trails, Wildlife, and Outdoor Adventure at The Preserve
The Preserve in Hayward, Wisconsin, offers a variety of amenities designed to enhance the outdoor living experience:
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Private 5 Acre Homesites, heavily wooded and surrounded by rugged natural beauty.
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Direct Trail Access: Private trails connect directly to the renowned Birkebeiner Ski Trail and CAMBA mountain bike trails, providing year-round recreational opportunities.
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Proximity to Round Lake: The Round Lake boat launch is just one mile away, offering convenient access for water activities.
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Private Trail Network: Approximately 10 kilometers of private trails are available for residents, suitable for skiing, hiking, and biking.
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Scenic Natural Areas: The community surrounds the 250-acre Mosquito Brook Headwaters, a Class-1 Brook Trout Stream, providing picturesque views and a serene environment.
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Custom Home Building Services: Residents can choose from pre-designed home plans, work with Hill Construction for custom home building, ensuring personalized living spaces or bring their own builder to build their home.
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Homeowners Association (HOA): An active HOA maintains community standards, oversees road and trail maintenance, and enforces covenants to preserve the natural environment.
These amenities collectively create a community that harmoniously blends outdoor recreation with comfortable living.
Boardwalk to larger island park
Lighted Flowage Ski Trail
Flowage Trail
About the Mosquito Brook Flowage
Scenic Overlook
Aerial View
Lighted Cross Country Ski Trail
The Mosquito Brook Flowage is the headwaters of the Mosquito Brook, a Class 1 Brook Trout Stream. This Flowage was dammed for logging in 1939, creating a 300 acre lake, with average depth of 7′. The dam, located on private property (not ours), degraded over the years and was washed out in 2020 in a large rainstorm, draining the impoundment. DNR recommendations are to not replace the dam, to preserve the cold-water trout ecosystem, and promote cold water feeding the Mosquito Brook, in order to help the native Brook trout population. The Preserve property surrounds most of the original flowage.
Currently the flowage consists of a 300 acre wetland, with spring ponds around the perimeter, feeding the creek flowing down the middle. Beavers have created a dam that has backed up some water in the flowage. The DNR plans to remove the remainder of the beaver dam in early 2025, and monitor water temps on the flowage outflow over the summer of 2025, and then in fall 2025 the DNR plans to make a management plan for the flowage, based on a full summer’s temperature data. This will likely never be a lake again. It will likely end up as a trout stream flowing up the middle of the 300 acre wetland bog.
We don’t have much pull with the DNR on this management. Our preference is to have the DNR put in a boulder spillway instead of a dam, that allows fish to pass but holds back some water, so as to have enough water to canoe and kayak, but the DNR will make this ruling, and has indicated this is unlikely. So best case, its a shallow non-motorized wetland lake that we can paddle, and worst case, its a beautiful wetland bog with trout stream. And in this case, we might have a cool interpretive bog walk in our future~! Regardless, this is a gorgeous ecosystem, home to scores of waterfowl and wildlife, and we aim to work with the local natural resource partners to preserve it in all its glory, so the natural ecosystem stays as unmarred as possible, and so the residents of The Preserve can enjoy the views from the fabulous non-motorized trail system around the flowage, forever.
The Preserve development honors the lake’s original Ordinary High Water Mark (OHWM) as the boundary between the lots and the Natural Area, and strictly prohibits any tree clearing or other land disturbing activities around the shore of the Flowage. Retired fisheries biologist Frank Pratt calls this a very ecologically significant area, and we will be working with the DNR to help develop a management plan for this incredible natural area.
Covenants are in place to limit the effect of the development on the Natural Area.
Hayward, WI Outdoor Community with 5 Acre Lots for Sale
Our private trail network surrounds most of the flowage, and will be groomed for cross-country skiing and fat tire biking in the winter, and will be mowed for hiking and mountain biking in the summer.
The 3.5 miles of trail around the flowage features excellent views of the natural area, including abundant waterfowl and brook trout habitat, as well as beautiful Northwoods scenery. There is also direct access to the Birkebeiner Cross Country Ski trail network and CAMBA mountain bike trail system.
