After working for more than a year on an unsuccessful bid to buy land and build a Catholic summer youth camp in the Wilder Forest in northern Washington County, the Minnesota Catholic Youth Partnership is turning its sights to northwestern Wisconsin.

Youth Partnership officials recently signed a letter of intent to purchase the 700-acre Heartwood Resort and Conference Center in Trego, Wis. The sale is expected to close in mid-January.

“We have found a beautiful property that is going to work great for our needs,” said Tim Healy, the partnership’s president. “What is so amazing about it is that it already has almost everything we wanted in a camp.”

Plans call for the Heartwood Resort, which includes a lodge with 12-foot pine rafters, cabins and dormitory-style buildings, to be used as a Catholic youth camp in the summer, and for conferences, family camps, men’s and women’s retreats and “Faith and Science” camps during the school year, Healy said. It has ample rooms for the campers, and a variety of houses, duplexes and cabins that will ideally suit the Youth Partnership’s staff needs and work great for family camps, he said.

“We are excited to have the ability, starting day one, to host a wide variety of different programs for the people of the St. Paul and Minneapolis Archdiocese and surrounding dioceses,” he said.

The Youth Partnership will be working with Extreme Faith Camp to create a “place where young people can encounter Jesus Christ within nature, through relationships and the Sacraments,” he said. “We are so blessed to have a property with such beauty and diversity: over 700 acres of woods, lakes, trails, the Namekagon River, fields for games.”

The owner of Heartwood, Mark Wallskog, purchased the property in 2019 from Thrivent Financial. It is located about two hours northeast of St. Paul.

Prior to Thrivent’s purchase in 2005, it was owned by Northwest Suburban Council of the Boy Scouts of Des Plaines, Ill., and Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minn.

The property includes a lodge; three hotel buildings with 54 rooms; five cabins; four homes and 10 duplexes that sleep 12 to 14 people each. It encompasses Hoinville Lake and has more than 12 miles of hiking trails, athletic fields, a sand volleyball court and tennis, basketball and pickleball courts, said Joe Sorenson, general manager.

A long, crooked road

Heartwood, which has hosted other Catholic youth groups in the past, was not officially on the market, Sorenson said. Minnesota Catholic Youth Partnership officials “had talked to Mark a few years ago, and he was not ready to sell,” he said. “They came back in September this year, and he accepted the offer. It’s almost move-in ready for this group.”

Said Healy: “We originally looked at the property three years ago, but it just did not work out at the time. We have been on a long, crooked road, and God led us back to where we started.”

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A sale price was not disclosed.

Heartwood will continue hosting events booked through May and will continue to host weddings that are booked through next fall, Sorenson said.

Healy’s enthusiasm for the site is “not only inspiring, but contagious,” Sorenson said. “We really feel that this is going to be good not only for the resort, but for the community. They want to staff it with locals – with people from the community – so staff will be staying. We are happy about that.”

Minnesota Catholic Youth Partnership officials originally planned to purchase the 600-acre Wilder Forest in May Township from the Wilder Foundation, but withdrew those plans after they had difficulty obtaining local approvals for the camp, Healy said.