The People Were Remembered

(This is dedicated to the memory of James Daines, who passed on July 27, 2014.)

            James Daines did not want the stories to be forgotten.  He would tell his own story to anyone who would listen, but he wanted all of the stories to be told and remembered if possible.

            In September of 2000, a group of La Farge High School students and adult volunteers from the community gathered to begin a most remarkable oral history project here in the northern Kickapoo Valley.  Their objective was to gather information from people regarding their memories and experiences with the La Farge Dam Project.  The students and adult volunteers involved in this unique oral history project were trained in interviewing techniques and learned about the history of the dam project.  Then, they set out with tape recorders to get the peoples’ stories of this turbulent time in the history of La Farge and the Kickapoo Valley.

            How the oral history project came to be in the first place is intertwined with James Daines’ wanting the stories of the people involved with the dam project to be remembered.  When the “government land”, the nearly 9,000 acres of land purchased by the federal government for the dam project, was being returned by the federal government to the state of Wisconsin in the mid-1990s, a Citizen’s Advisory Committee deemed that the land should be used for the public good.  The land should be a place that all people could use.  After a lengthy process of looking at possible uses, it was decided that the land would be preserved in its natural state for everyone to enjoy.  The idea of the Kickapoo Valley Reserve was born and an initial management board was created to oversee the operation.  The management board soon hired Marcy West as the Reserve’s first executive director.

            Soon after taking the job, Marcy found herself in James Daines’ pickup being given a tour of the lands that made up the Reserve.  James was giving the new Reserve director a personal tour of where people used to live and how many of those folks were passing on due to old age.  He was telling her the story of his family farm and the time when all the farms were bought up by the federal government.  Each of the farms and homes that were taken for the dam project had the story of the family that lived there.  It became imperative that those stories needed to be saved and the sooner the better.

            Marcy soon gathered a team of interested people to look at what could be done to save the stories.  Her bosses, the Kickapoo Reserve Management Board, supported the need for such a project, as did the schools at La Farge and Ontario.  Meetings were held to get a team formed to tackle the task of collecting the stories.  Fritz Cushing was brought on board to head up the project.  A grant was secured from the Wisconsin Humanities Council to help pay for costs for training and equipment.

            About this time, which was the spring of 1999, several students in an American History class that I was teaching at La Farge were very interested in learning more about the dam project.  All of the publicity that had accompanied the transition of the land from federal back to state and local control also had created a renewed interest in the project.  For high school-age students, who hadn’t even been born yet when the dam project was stopped in 1975, this time was bringing to life a new facet of local history for them.  They wanted to know more about the La Farge Dam Project.  I told them to talk to the people who had been affected the most by the project – the former landowners.  Two of the students, Robin Lee and Kristi Campbell, set up an interview with James Daines.

            It was arranged that Robin and Kristi would take a couple hours from their regular morning school-day schedule and meet James at his former farm on Weister Creek.  Robin had a sheet of questions to ask and Kristi toted the video recorder and tapes to record it all.  They would leave around 10 am and return to school at noon, in time for their afternoon classes.

            They never came back.  By 12:30 Principal Mert Pederson stopped into my room asking if I knew where the two students were.  I didn’t.  So we waited, another hour passed and then another.  Shortly after three o’clock and around dismissal time for the day, Robin and Kristi made it back to school. And what a tale they had to relate!

            When the students met James on Weister Creek, they started the interview at the flowing well on his family’s farm.  Robin asked the questions and took written notes, Kristi kept the video recorder going.  When asked about the process of dealing with the Corps of Engineers when it came to selling his farm, James became agitated and angry.  His emotions startled the students (later James would relate to me, “I think I scared the kids a little.”), but James calmed down and told the convoluted story of selling the farm, which had stretched out over a span of two years.  When he was finally done with his story, he offered to give the students a tour of the area to hear stories of other families that had sold out for the dam project.

            Having a little time left before they had to return to school, Robin and Kristi hopped in James’ pick-up and off they went.  Kristi was scrunched behind the front seats, videotaping the narrative from James and panning the former farms through the windshield.  Robin was furiously taking notes and asking questions as they came up.  They drove up Weister Creek Road; they drove west on County Highway D all the way to Dell; they went up 24-Valley and Wolfe Valley, then back down “D” to the old state highway, where they turned north and headed toward Rockton.  At every former farm, James would stop and tell about the people who used to live at that now vacant place.

            Robin ran out of paper on which to take notes, Kristi ran out of videotape.  Finally, nearly two hours after starting their little tour they returned to the Daines’ farm on Weister Creek.

            The next day, Robin and Kristi had quite a tale to tell their classmates in history.  The word “kidnapped” came up jokingly more than once.  Robin showed everyone the reams of notes that he had taken on the interview.  Then the class began to look at the videotape that Kristi had shot the previous day.  The students were mesmerized as James passionately told the story of losing his family’s farm.  As the tape played, Robin and Kristi would interject comments about the process of getting the story.  It took most of the rest of the week for the class to watch the entire set of videotapes.  Some of the students started making a map of the journey taken in James’ pickup and plotting out where people used to live along the route.

            With that interview, a facet of the emerging oral history project started to take shape.  High school students from La Farge should be part of the process in gathering the stories from the people affected by the dam project.

            Next time, more on “The People Remember” oral history project.

  If you would like to learn more about the La Farge Dam Project, an autographed copy of my book, That Dam History: The Story of the La Farge Dam Project can be sent to you for only $20 (which includes mailing costs).  I just received another shipment of my La Farge history book after running out again (I think this is the 5^th re-order of that book).  If you would like a copy of La Farge: The Story of A Kickapoo River Town – Vol. I send $25 to me at P.O. Box 202, La Farge, WI 54639 or contact me at bcstein@mwt.net.