Luck, WI

Luck is a Polk County village on Big Butternut Lake, with Wisconsin Highways 35 and 48 passing through the local road system. Danish immigrants founded two nearby settlements in 1869: Luck on Big Butternut Lake and West Denmark on Little Butternut Lake. The communities eventually came together, and a local naming story says travelers who reached the big hotel before sundown had made it "in luck." The village's 2020 population was 1,093.

The place's signature industry was made of hard maple and string. From 1946 through 1965, the Duncan Yo-Yo Company operated in Luck, and nearly every family had some connection to turning local maple into yo-yos shipped around the world. Donald Duncan Jr.'s television campaign drove demand beyond what the Luck plant could produce. The Luck Museum and Historical Society holds Duncan yo-yos, while the Smithsonian's Duncan collection records how television marketing drove demand the local plant struggled to meet. That is an unusually specific industrial history for a lakeside village: a household object became the town's defining product.

Big Butternut Lake still organizes the village. It covers 384 acres, reaches 19 feet at its deepest, has a public boat landing, and supports panfish, largemouth bass, northern pike, and walleye; the village's official calendar also lists Music in the Park and regular village-board meetings at the hall. The village hall at 135 First Avenue is the regular meeting place. The Town of Luck describes a wider landscape of trails, lakes, creeks, forests, farms, businesses, and parks, including the Ice Age Trail and Straight Lake State Park, with the Luck School District serving local students. County Road N enters the local road system, and County Road B is nearby. Luck's two founding lakes, one maple-toy factory, and a highway through the village are enough to read the place before you arrive.