Wisconsin Nude Beach Draws opposition

And yet for decades, nudists have basked on Mazo Beach, a secluded sandbank on the lower Wisconsin River about 30 miles northwest of Madison. With estimates as high as 70,000 visitors a year, the spot, which is owned by the state, has become one of the largest nude beaches in the country that is not on a coastline, weathering angry protesters, conservative politicians and wary neighbors along the way.

“We especially warn our Girl and Boy Scout groups,” said Scott Teuber, a canoe and kayak rental company owner in Sauk City, who tells such customers to stay on the far side of the river when floating past the beach.

Sunbathers here have become particularly worried about their reputation recently, after a wave of X-rated arrest reports led the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to announce that it was closing public access to 68 acres of forest surrounding the beach in an effort to crack down on sex in the woods.

Some nudists — who call themselves “naturists” — fear that such conduct could taint years of cooperation with the state and put their clothing-optional status in jeopardy.

“If someone is misbehaving, we really want them to stop,” said Nicky Hoffman, head of the Naturist Society, a nudist organization based in Oshkosh, Wis. “It ruins it for everybody.”

The state has long been trying to stop both drugs and sex at Mazo Beach, a problem that grew in the mid-1990s as word of the beach spread across the then-fledgling Internet, according to Jeremy Plautz, a state conservation warden in the area.

In 1999, the Natural Resources Department drove out people who were living in tents on the beach and established a curfew, setting the beach’s hours at 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. It also installed a parking lot and a gate at the top of a gravel road leading down to the river, forcing visitors to walk or bike about a mile before they could undress by the water.

But that was not enough for some of those who objected to the nudists. A pastor led protests in the beach parking lot. Republicans lawmakers tried banning nudity on state-owned land, but the effort fizzled.

Although it is a misdemeanor in Wisconsin to “publicly and indecently” expose one’s genitals, a succession of state and county officials have taken the position that mere nudity is not enough to warrant prosecution at Mazo Beach unless there is some other disorderly or lascivious conduct involved.

This year was not the first time the state closed some of the woods near the beach to separate the lewd from the simply nude; in 2007, it made 13 acres off limits. Now, with problems persisting, it has added two part-time deputy wardens and increase patrols at the beach after a rise in arrest numbers last summer suggested that the problems might be getting worse.

Citing a heavy workload and a small staff, Mr. Plautz said Mazo Beach was patrolled just 32 times from 2007 to 2011. Even so, last year alone, the agency arrested 42 people for drugs and sexual activity in just nine days of patrolling the area, up from 15 arrests during six days in 2010. There have been at least six citations so far this year.

Even as clothing-optional resorts and cruises gain popularity, it has gotten harder to find nude beaches on public land in the United States over the past 20 years, with some people being given tickets for nudity in places like New Jersey, California, Florida and Hawaii. In such cases, lewd behavior is often cited, said Bob Morton, the Texas-based executive director of the Naturists Action Committee, the legal arm of the Naturists Society. “That is the excuse that authorities have used, whether it’s real or not,” he said.

While the state has made no imminent threat to shut down Mazo Beach, some of its visitors worry about what would be lost if it ever did close. On a recent Friday, parents with children and middle-aged skinny-dippers extolled the freedom and nostalgia of sunbathing nude, the exhilaration of connecting with nature au naturel.

Claudette Richards, 58, who has been coming to Mazo Beach for nearly all her life, said it was a place where she had found body acceptance, including after she had a mastectomy. “It’s a place to be who I am,” she said, sitting in the sand, the scars from her surgery exposed to the open air.

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