Packers Heritage Trail: The Town, The Team, The Fans From Lambeau to Lombardi

by Cliff Christl

The Packers Heritage The Town, The Team, The Fans From Lambeau to Lombardi tells the improbable story of how the Green Bay Packers miraculously survived and, even more miraculously, attained unmatched success against their big-city rivals over their first 50 years. The book bridges two eras of unequaled dominance in the NFL and two coaching legends, Curly Lambeau and Vince Lombardi. It also weaves throughout the richly romantic side of this How the Packers became a community property, owned and beloved by their fans in a one-of-a-kind town. The Packers can lay claim to a history unlike any other team in professional sports. This book tells it in more detail and more accurately than it has ever been told before. The city of Boston, the Cradle of Liberty, has its Freedom Trail. In football-crazed Green Bay, a Cradle of the National Football League, there is the Packers Heritage Trail with its resplendent downtown plaza and 25 landmarks with commemorative plaques. Most of the sites where Packers history unfolded from 1919, the year Lambeau co-founded the team, through 1968, Lombardi s final season in Green Bay, are still standing in some form and comprise the Packers Heritage Trail. The Packers Heritage Trail book tells about the team s hardscrabble start on the fields of Hagemeister Park and City Stadium, examines the bizarre and never-before-told story about the packing plants that sponsored the Packers in the beginning, and takes you behind the scenes at some of the most momentous and sometimes discordant meetings where franchise-changing decisions were made. The Packers are a unique franchise. This book takes a unique look at their history that makes it a must-have for all fans of the Green & Gold.

Genres: Football

240 pages, Hardcover

Published September 11, 2017

Reviews

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

Christl has plenty of information and plenty of opinions, too. If the reader cares to sort through grumpiness, the actual stories and anecdotes are plentiful and good! The book is light on the actual process of how the Heritage Trail came to be, which is a little disappointing, and the ‘As You Tour’ section was a little rough around the edges. The main focus of the book - historical Packers stories - is achieved well.

[Jim Melcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book for Christmas. It has many interesting stories and photographs, and I learned a great deal about Packers and Green Bay history that I had not known before. The thing I would mark it down for is that Christl is so darned curmudgeonly and grumpy about virtually any other book written about the Packers' history. He spends far too much time talking about how worthless he thinks some prominent Packers books are, particularly early on in the book. This fits with Christl's style, of course; he's a known curmudgeon. A Packers board I read has an occasional column by someone writing in his style called "Cleft Crusty". But for anyone interested in Packers history through the Lombardi era, or Green Bay or NFL history, the book is a fine choice. I mostly enjoyed it a great deal.

[Robert Kemp · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tour through the city of Green Bay and the local area, featuring buildings and locations of interest in the history of the Green Bay Packers. Good information for life-long Packers fans, such as myself. Makes me want to travel the trail in person.

[Robert Mead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent and well researched information on the Packers history and how this relates to local points of interest in Green Bay.