Get to Know Us at Lake Arrowhead Campground, Montello, WI

Untitled Document

Lake Arrowhead is a family built, owned, and operated campground. In the 1960s, Bea and Arnold Malsack decided they wanted to start a campground business and moved their family from their small appliance store in Slinger, WI to a beautiful plot of farmland and forest in eastern Marquette County. Lake Arrowhead Campground, named after the numerous arrowheads found regularly throughout the property, opened in 1971 with around a dozen campsites and a small campstore.

The campground was nearly entirely staffed by four people, Arnold, Bea, their son Phil, and his fiancée Linda. Linda and Phil had met in college and were eventually married in 1973 on the campground property. Each worked another full time job in addition to the campground, with Phil spending 22 years at the Marquette County Sheriff's Department primarily as Sheriff and Chief Deputy Sheriff. The campground was officially purchased by Linda and Phil in 1975 and the couple lived in a small house attached to the campstore.

In the early 1980s Phil and Linda began having children and in 1989 built a new home adjacent to the campground for their family of five. Their children, Emily, Jessica, and Adam would grow up on the campground property, spending nearly every waking hour in the summertime out on the grounds with their camper friends.

In 1998 the family had the opportunity to purchase Puckaway Shores Campground, a small ten acre park a mile and a half down the lakeshore from Lake Arrowhead. After a complete renovation of the campground, Lakeside Campground opened in spring of 1999 as an all seasonal park right on the shores of Lake Puckaway.

By 2010 the Lake Arrowhead and Lakeside campground operation had grown to nearly 40 staff members and 320 sites. All five family members are part owners and still actively involved in the operation of the campground.

Adam Malsack
General Manager

Eldest of the Malsack children, Adam grew up catching turtles and camping in the woods behind the campground. Adam became a paid employee of the campground at age 9 when he began helping with Sunday trash collection. He stayed the closest to home for his education, attending college in Ripon and Madison studying fields including Mathematics and Engineering. When he isn't working at the campground, Adam loves to take car trips and spend time in the outdoors, and is involved in a local community theatre.

Jessica Malsack
Recreation Manager

Jessica is responsible for everything fun at the campground. She books the bands, she plans the egg tosses, she organizes Father's Day breakfasts. The most traveled of the Malsack children, Jessica has spent the last five winters in Africa with her husband. Also the most artistically inclined of the family, Jessica is great at the creative component of campground planning and management. Jessica has a keen interest in people which led to her studying Anthropology while in college in Texas and makes her especially good at understanding the needs and wants of a family of campers. In her free time Jessica enjoys photography and travel.

Emily Truell
Administrative Manager

Emily Truell, the manager formerly known as Emily Malsack, handles the office, retail space, and site reservations. Emily is very precise with her work and an excellent keeper of "the details," making her ideally suited for keeping track of reservations and financial transactions. She's also the Malsack you are most likely to come into contact with first, as she takes the majority of the phone reservations throughout the year. Emily graduated from Western Washington University in 2008 with a degree in Recreation, and is a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist. In her spare time she loves to read, volunteer, ski, bike, kayak, and learn languages. She lives near the campground with her husband, Alex and her cat, Waffles.

All five Malsacks go camping when they have time off from the campground.
A granite monument dedicated to Bea and Arnold Malsack, founders of Lake Arrowhead Campground, is inset in concrete at the northwest end of the pool area.
Linda and Phil had their wedding ceremony in the vicinity of where site 93 is today.
Phil was a junior in college at the University of Wisconsin -- Madison when he and his parents opened the campground.
The Malsack children regularly camp in an camping trailer they purchased for $250 which was manufactured the year the campground opened.
Lake Arrowhead Campground opened the same year as Starbucks and Disney World.

----------------------------------------------------------

(920) 295-3000 | W781 Fox Court, Montello, WI 53949