Who has heard tall tales about the lumberjack hero Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox. “Out of the Northwoods” tells the true tale of Bunyan’s origins in the Wisconsin northwoods. It includes eyewitness accounts of how the first Bunyan stories were shared on frigid winter nights around logging camp stoves in the Wisconsin pinery. It describes where the tales began, how they moved out of the forest and into print, and why publication changed them forever.

By sifting through the unpublished manuscripts of early editors of the tales, Michael Edmonds unearths dozens of authentic Bunyan stories told aloud by Wisconsin lumberjacks between 1885 and 1915. Edmonds recounts a saga of lies, hoaxes, thefts and greed that transformed the private jokes of working-class loggers into mass-market picture books for toddlers. The central characters include a genial northern Wisconsin con-man who claimed he invented the lumberjack hero, a spunkyUniversity of Wisconsin co-ed who collected the tales in logging camps in 1915, and a mild-mannered curator of the Wisconsin Historical Museum who lifted federal documents to keep the truth alive.

The Wisconsin Historical Society Press, founded in 1855, is the state’s oldest publisher.