A prominent Wisconsin family with connections to New Jersey has helped turn 17,500 acres of desert land in Israel into a natural tourist attraction called Timna Park.

Among the attractions underwritten by the family at the park — the legendary site of King Solomon’s copper mines — are a visitors’ center and an artificial lake.

“It’s a phenomenal place,” said Lois Infeld of Montclair, whose late father, Avrum Chudnow, donated some $4 million to enable the Jewish National Fund to convert the arid land 17 miles north of Eilat into a permanent attraction of historical importance of natural desert beauty.

Infeld visited the area for the first time last November. “They have these huge rock formations,” she said. “You can go hiking. There is an artificial lake next to the visitors’ center filled with water pumped out of the mines. There is all this wildlife and archeological formations. At night they have light shows, where they light up the rock formations and project hieroglyphics onto the rocks. It is amazing.”

Her father envisioned such possibilities when he first visited the area on a JNF mission in the early 1980s. Volcanic eruptions formed granite mountains there 170 million years ago, and copper mining began in Timna more than 6,000 years ago.

A multimedia presentation financed by Chudnow covers the conquest of the area by the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the Kingdom of Israel, and the Romans.

Chudnow “not only gave us his own generous contributions but helped us raise an additional $2 million through the last 25 years,” said Sarit Schoenbrun, JNF communications manager.

Chudnow, a successful attorney and real estate developer, died in 2005.

In November, Infeld was among 24 members of the family who fulfilled a pledge by making a pilgrimage to the park.

“It was a commitment to him,” said Infeld, a retired paralegal. “We put together four generations of our family on a bus and traveled through Israel for 10 days. It was something I had to do. There was something so special about being with all of our family for 10 days on a bus. There were teenagers, there were senior citizens, and there were people in between.”

Infeld returned from the trip with a determination to tell others about the park.

“When people tell me they are going to Israel, I tell them they have to go to Timna,” she said. “A lot of people don’t go that far south, but it is definitely worth going to see.”