Nelsen's Hall Bitters Pub

Nelsen's Hall on Washington Island is known as the oldest legally operating tavern in Wisconsin, a status it traces to Prohibition, when Tom Nelsen obtained a pharmacist's license to serve his bitters as a tonic. Nelsen drank a daily shot of bitters and lived to ninety, and staff say his spirit still lingers. Objects vanish and reappear, footsteps are heard on the stairs, doors close by themselves, a hotel guest once cut short a stay after an encounter in a bathroom, and a worker building shelves in the hand-dug basement felt a tap on the shoulder. The pub serves its famous bitters shots, and the stories are part of the experience.