At the end of the famous book, Tarzan of the apes swoops in to rescue his beloved Jane Porter in the Northern Forests of Wisconsin. This part in the closing chapters of the book never made it into the dozen film adaptations produced over the decades, which is why most Northwoods folk aren’t quite familiar with that part of the adventure.
Edgar Rice Burroughs was born in Chicago in 1875. He worked in a battery factory, and later as a pencil sharpener salesman. He took to reading pulp magazines in his spare time. These cheap, adventure-filled booklets printed on low-cost pulp paper, instead of more expensive glossy paper, were extremely popular. Burroughs began writing around the age of 36, and one of the first serials he had published in a pulp magazine in 1912, was about Tarzan.
In the first book, Tarzan of the Apes, a British lord and lady are marooned on the coast of Africa. After their deaths, the child they had is raised by great apes in the jungles. Named Tarzan by his adopted family, he develops superhuman abilities, which allow him to fight vicious beasts, and swing through the trees with ease. At the age of 18, he meets Jane Porter who was marooned on the same African coast, and falls in love with her. Toward the end of the book, pulled by a love triangle, she must return to her home in America. Jane is from Baltimore, Maryland, but her family has a property in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, which they visit for respite at the end of the book.
While Jane is out for a stroll in the woods, a forest fire erupts. Unbeknownst to Jane, her jungle love Tarzan had followed her to the States and arrives in the Northwoods just in time to save her from the flames. Tarzan uses his amazing strength to swing Jane through the pine treetops, out of harm’s way. At the end of the novel, Tarzan receives a telegram at a Northern Wisconsin train depot which confirms he is the heir to a great fortune, he is found to be John Clayton, viscount of Greystoke.
Burroughs bibliophiles’ surmise that, growing up in Chicago, Edgar was sure to have had a knowledge of the Northwoods of Wisconsin. After all, people from the city have been visiting the north country on vacation for over 100 years. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Northern Wisconsin experienced many forest fires, including the famous Peshtigo fire in 1871. The chronology of the Tarzan books put him in the area in 1909. These connections certainly would have inspired Burroughs in his writings and made for an exciting last adventure in Tarzan of the Apes.
A Burroughs fan club recently visited Rhinelander in September, following in the footsteps of one of their favorite characters. They visited the forests near Rhinelander, and the train depot telegraph room at Pioneer Park Historical Complex to relive some of the moments of one of the most popular books in history, Tarzan of the Apes.
Source: “Tarzan of the Apes” Edgar Rice Burroughs , Wikipedia: Topic; Edgar Rice Burroughs
