Lake Winnebago ice shoves come close to destroying decades-old restaurant

FOND DU LAC COUNTY, Wis. (CBS 58/WFRV) -- Wind-blown sheets of ice that pile up on the shore are usually a problem in spring -- but ice shoves on Lake Winnebago came dangerously close to destroying a decades-old restaurant this week.

The owner of Jim and Linda's Lakeview Supper Club in Fond Du Lac County says he wasn't even home when the ice shoves pushed onto shore. But friends captured it on video and alerted him to what was happening.

When Jim Koenigs returned, he couldn't believe what he saw. What took Mother Nature only 25 minutes to create, had stopped only a few feet from his back dining room.

"If nothing else, I can say the best part of 2020 as of day one is that it stopped out there, because it could have definitely crushed the building," said Koenigs. 

Koenigs is in touch with an excavating crew to remove the ice shoves before sturgeon spearing begins in February.