Recently I came across an interesting story about La Farge
while conducting research focused on the year of 1972. When reading through
some copies of the La Farge Enterprise newspaper
from that year, I came across an article titled, “Know Your Town”. The article was a compilation of the
attributes of La Farge for growth potential and the list was put together in
the spring of that year for a specific purpose.
As with most things happening to La Farge during that era, the list had
to do with the dam project. Back in
those days forty years ago, everything that happened in the community seemed to
be connected in some way to the dam being built north of town by the Corps of
Engineers.
When Governor
Patrick Lucey had given his reluctant blessing to the dam project after his
“Intensive Review” conducted a year earlier in 1971, some conditions were laid
down by the governor in order for the project to move forward. One of those conditions was that land
planning, which would include zoning, should be implemented for all of the land
around Lake La Farge. This decree for
zoning to control development around the lake included the townships of Stark
and Whitestown, where nearly all of the lake’s shore land would be located, but
also encompassed the village of La Farge, located to the south of the proposed
lake’s waters. To help with the zoning
plans, the governor directed the Mississippi River Regional Planning Commission
(MRRPC) to assist the village and townships in the process. Working with the planning commission of
Vernon County, the MRRPC staff and a consultant hired by the governor’s
planning office, La Farge formed a local planning board to develop a plan to
initiate the required zoning. As part of
that plan, the local planning board did an assessment of the village’s
businesses, organizations, housing, school, demographics and other aspects of
the town. From that work by the local
planning board had come the material for the “Know Your Town” article.
Darlene
McNatt, wife of Paul McNatt, the president of the village board at the time,
had written the article. The information
from the report was going to be used for another purpose in La Farge besides
drawing up a zoning plan. In 1972, La Farge
had been without a doctor for over a year and the village owned a nice new medical
clinic building but had no doctor to practice there. After trying unsuccessfully to recruit a
doctor to town on their own, the community leaders were looking at other ways
to possibly meet La Farge’s medical needs.
The medical
building had been without a doctor since Dr. Connie Lee had left La Farge a
year earlier. Eventually the building
was used to house the village’s library and a new Head Start program. After having no success at recruiting a
replacement for Dr. Lee, La Farge turned to a federal government program for
help.
The
National Health Service (NSA) Corporation was created to assist rural
communities like La Farge recruit medical personnel such as doctors and
dentists. The federal NSA program would
place the doctors in a community, pay their salaries, and provide equipment and
staff for the practice for a period of two years. Hopefully after that two-year time of NSA
service, the doctor would have established a practice and would stay in the
community.
As part of
a Kickapoo Valley application for the NSA program in April 1972, La Farge
requested the services of two doctors and a dentist. At a public meeting held in the village that
month, over three hundred people attended to hear more about the NSA programs and show
support for the village’s application.
Actually, La Farge was much better off than many communities applying
for the medical personnel because of the community’s new clinic building. That clinic could adequately house the
practices of the two doctors sought in the application. The village owned the clinic building and a
rent-free option was available for the proposed NSA team of doctors. This kind of community support was crucial in
successful bids for NSA doctors.
Another public meeting was held at Soldiers Grove, which was also
seeking a NSA doctor for their community.
In May, Congressman Vernon Thomson announced that the Kickapoo Valley
NSA application had been approved for funding and that a doctor would soon be
coming to La Farge.
Within a
month after Thomson’s announcement, two NSA physicians, Dr. Doug Collins and
Dr. John Weiler, were in La Farge looking for housing for their families and at
equipment needs to start their practices at the La Farge clinic. Dr. Collins settled on property on Otter
Creek, while Dr. Weiler and his wife, Kay, moved into a new house built by Art
Nelson on the hill in the eastern part of the village. The Weiler’s received a rather rude welcome
to the Kickapoo Valley when the house where they lived was hit by lightning
during a violent August thunderstorm.
The doctor and his wife survived the resulting fire unharmed, but most
of the interior of the house was ruined and they had to camp out in the clinic
for temporary housing. Eventually things
settled down and Dr. Weiler opened his practice in the La Farge Clinic on
September 5. Kay Weiler worked as a
nurse in the practice and four other people were hired to staff the
practice. All of the salaries of the personnel
were paid by the NSA grant until the practice could generate enough business to
operate financially.
Lots of
things were happening in La Farge in that summer of ’72. The village hosted the Vernon County June
Dairy Days on the first weekend of the month.
The sponsor and host for the dairy days celebration was the Citizens For
Kickapoo group. The “pro-dam project”
organization had been formed in 1971 to fight for completion of the dam
project. The group needed funds to
continue to lobby for the project and the Dairy Days provided over $5,000 for
the cause.
Serious construction on the dam
structure would begin in that summer of 1972 and over 6,000 acres of land
located north of La Farge had already been purchased for the project. Soon the waters of the Kickapoo River would
be backed up and form Lake La Farge.
The dam project remained controversial as the
construction season began that spring.
In May, the Corps of Engineers announced that nearly $1.2 million in
contracts for the construction of the dam’s intake tower, water conduits and
stilling basin had been let.
Construction on the dam structures began soon after the announcement of
the federal funding and soon after that, the Madison-based John Muir Chapter of
the Sierra Club announced another legal challenge to stop the dam’s
construction. It was the second attempt
by the environmental preservation group to stop the Corps of Engineers dam
project on the Kickapoo River at La Farge.
A year earlier, the Sierra Club had
tried to stop the La Farge Dam Project by asking for an injunction in federal
district court in Madison, but was unsuccessful in their bid. Undaunted, the Madison-based environmental
group filed another injunction in May of 1972 to stop the La Farge
project. The second injunction asked the
U.S. District Court to stop the La Farge project because the Corps of Engineers
had not properly prepared an Environmental Impact Statement according to
federal law. As he had done the previous
year, Judge James Doyle denied the injunction to stop the project and allowed
the construction on the dam at La Farge to continue.
And
La Farge continued to prepare for the completion of the project and the coming
of the waters of Lake La Farge.
