What in the world does an event between the 1949 and 1950 football seasons have to do with the Packers?

Read David Fleming and find out:

Located 17 miles outside of town, Rockwood Lodge was constructed in 1937 as a retreat for the Norbertine monks. The cross-shaped building featured a striking steeple portico, an oak front door the size of a drawbridge and an expansive lobby with a 10-foot European chalet-style hearth perfect for massive roaring fires.

The majestic estate had mesmerized Curly Lambeau, a Green Bay native and the Packers’ founder and coach. One of the game’s true visionaries, Lambeau imagined his entire team, and players’ families, living at the Lodge throughout the football season. And in May 1946, he persuaded the Packers’ top executives to buy the property and transform it — no matter the cost — into what is believed to be the NFL’s first stand-alone training facility, a living monument to the greatest franchise in sports.

The Packers paid $32,000 (about $380,000 today) for the Lodge, a cost that represented roughly 25 percent of the team’s entire operating budget. It cost an additional $8,000 to turn the building into a state-of-the-art football facility complete with lockers, classrooms, dorms and a restaurant-quality kitchen. To house married players and staff, the team shelled out $4,000 more on six prefabricated cottages, which were then named after Packers legends like Don Hutson and Johnny Blood. …

Lambeau had already won six NFL titles, more than any other coach. But for him, the ultimate football dream was fulfilled in May 1946, when his players and their families drove onto the immaculate grounds of his football utopia for the first time. “Curly was well ahead of his time with the idea of Rockwood Lodge,” says Bob Harlan, president and CEO of the Packers from 1989 to 2006 and now the team’s chairman emeritus. “Maybe too far ahead. Rockwood was a beautiful place that in the end turned out to be a total disaster.”

FOR NEARLY THREE decades, Curly Lambeau had played the role of hometown hero to perfection. After starring at halfback for Green Bay’s East High, he went on to play for Knute Rockne at Notre Dame. When his promising career was cut short by a severe case of tonsillitis, Lambeau returned home and founded the Packers in 1919. He then spent the next 27 years building his legend as a player, coach and GM, becoming the father of Green Bay football.

But by 1946, after those six NFL titles, Lambeau’s focus was drifting, to say the least. He was at odds with the Packers executive committee, a group of a dozen power-hungry civic leaders that served as the publicly owned team’s de facto front office. Lambeau also stubbornly clung to the Notre Dame box offense (basically the single wing) while the rest of pro football had moved on to the far more versatile T formation. And after divorcing his high school sweetheart, the coach’s philandering had become notorious around town. …

While the Lodge appeared to have it all, there were major issues just below the surface. Literally. The practice fields were made of a thin layer of soil and grass laid over the area’s natural jagged bed of limestone. During Lambeau’s typical three-hour scrimmages, the unforgiving grounds shredded the players’ feet, knees and shins. It got so bad that Lambeau sometimes had to bus the team back into town to practice on softer practice fields next to City Stadium. As former Packers offensive lineman Dick Wildung once said, “Rockwood Lodge was a beautiful place, but it was just no good for football because of that damn rock.”

In constant pain, desperate players began to self-medicate. Defensive end Don Wells would sneak out to bars in nearby Luxemburg and stumble back to the Lodge in the middle of the night singing rye-soaked renditions of the gospel song “When the Roll Is Called up Yonder.” But every time he woke from a bender, Wells wasn’t in heaven. Instead, he was stuck at the place the players had begun to call the Rock, presumably referring to Alcatraz.

Physically wrecked before the games even started, the Packers went 12-10-1 the next two seasons. In 1948 they fell to 3-9, suffering just the second losing season in team history. TheMilwaukee Sentinel placed the blame at the front door of Curly’s mansion: “What’s wrong with the Packers? Rockwood Lodge is No. 1 on the list.

The team had hit rock bottom on the field, and the franchise was headed for financial ruin off of it. Members of the executive committee could barely contain their vitriol for the Lodge or for the man who had stuffed the bill into their shirt pockets and whistled as he danced away in his fancy saddle shoes. George Calhoun, co-founder of the franchise, went so far as to proclaim, “I just want to live long enough to piss on Lambeau’s grave.” …

ON TUESDAY, Jan. 24, 1950, strong winds above the bay howled through the empty Lodge. The players had all scattered to their offseason homes. The lone remaining family was that of the caretakers, Melvin and Helen Flagstad. Home from school because of a forecast of freezing rain, the youngest Flagstad children, Danny, 12, and Sandra, 10, had wandered into the cavernous east wing of Rockwood to play blindman’s bluff. The children were in the middle of the game, climbing over a stack of mattresses, when Sandra stopped abruptly, a look of terror on her face. “I smell smoke,” she cried. Danny walked over and opened the door nearest the source, and a burst of flames knocked him to the floor. Still in their stocking feet, the children dashed down the grand staircase, out the front door and into the waist-deep snow, where they watched the wind-whipped flames engulf the once-magnificent Lodge. …

Neighboring farmers and volunteer firefighters arrived quickly on the scene, but efforts to save the despised Lodge seemed to lack urgency. The town of Preble sent a tiny truck, but it broke down four miles from Rockwood. The four-man crew from the Duquaine Lumber company in New Franken, armed with a Jeep and 600 feet of hose, made it to the fire but didn’t raise a finger. “It was no use,” one of the men told the Press-Gazette. “Nothing could have been done to keep that fire down.”

The idle crowd of about 40 onlookers, including Packers fullback Ted Fritsch and future Hall of Fame halfback Tony Canadeo, spotted smoke that soared 100 feet into the air and visited the site as though watching a bonfire. “Well, I guess it’s back to the Astor Hotel!” exclaimed Canadeo, referring to the team’s much-preferred former training-camp home in downtown Green Bay. Later, he added: “Hey, I didn’t set the Rockwood Lodge fire, but I was sure fanning it.”

The only official response from the team came from Frank Jonet, the Packers secretary-treasurer. He eagerly confirmed that the Lodge was fully insured and estimated the initial losses to be at least $50,000 — which just so happened to be almost the exact amount of the Packers’ debt. Says Harlan: “Rumors were rampant at the time that the Packers set that fire because they needed the money more than they needed the Lodge, but they certainly were never proven.” …

No report on the official cause of the blaze has ever been uncovered, and only circumstantial evidence remains. The insurance money immediately brought the franchise back from the brink of bankruptcy and protected the Packers from being disbanded by the NFL. Which means Rockwood Lodge was home to either the most perfectly timed spark of good luck any destitute franchise has ever known — or the most fantastic crime in NFL history. …

On the eve of the first 2013 preseason game at Lambeau, almost 20 miles to the northeast, the former site of Rockwood Lodge is once again awash in green and gold. Purchased by Brown County in 1974 and renamed Bay Shore Park, the land where the Lodge once stood is now a favorite pregame camping spot for Packers fans, most of whom are blissfully unaware of the history and controversy embedded in the rocky soil under their feet.

Many fans wait for the Packer-yellow sun to set below the greenish waters of Green Bay before returning from the bluffs to set up camp for the night. The order is always the same: Packers flags are unfurled first, then the camping gear. And as dusk blankets the woods in darkness, the fans honor the Green Bay Packers the same way they always have here on the site of Rockwood Lodge.

By lighting fires.