Cassandra Johnson and her husband, Donald, both PADI Master Instructors, own Breezeway Bubbles Scuba in Verona, Wisconsin, just outside of Madison. One of their favorite local dive spots, Devil’s Lake, is about an hour’s drive northwest in Baraboo, in a state park that’s home to one of Wisconsin’s 15,000 lakes.
Its name may sound nefarious, but it actually comes from a misinterpretation—by early European settlers—of the spiritual practices of the Ho-Chunk community, which honors the lake as Tee Wakacak, “a sacred place of extraordinary sanctity,” according to the state park’s visitor guide. Its original name more accurately translates to “Sacred Lake.”
The Baraboo Range topography is over 1 billion years old, and the state park is part of nine sites in Wisconsin that make up the Ice Age National Scientific Reserve. Retreating glaciers created a 360-acre, mile-long kettle lake reaching just under 50 feet at its deepest…