I was going to be giving a history talk in Baraboo on January
11th at the Badger Ammo Plant Museum. (Because of bad weather and wintry roads, my talk was postponed. Hopefully it will be rescheduled in the spring of 2018. I will be talking about the La Farge dam
project history with an audience interested in comparisons of the Kickapoo
Valley project with the current conversion of the old ammo plant grounds at
Merrimac over to public lands. The
Badger History Group, an organization that is preserving the history of the
former U.S. Army ordnance facility, is sponsoring my talk.
As I
prepare my presentation, I have been thinking about the connections between the
Badger Ammo Plant and the community of La Farge. Over the years, lots of people from the La
Farge area worked at Badger Ordnance and the effects of those paychecks and
jobs were significant.
The Badger
Army Ammunition Plant was built during World War II and became the largest
munitions factory in the world at that time.
Besides the factory that was located on nearly 10,000 acres of prairie
south of Baraboo at a place called Merrimac, the operation also included a
village where workers and their families could live. “Badger Village” included a school,
recreation center, child-care facility, cafeterias, and a transportation
system. The village housed up to 8,000
workers and their families during the war.
By 1948, all munitions production had stopped at the plant and the Badger
Ordnance Plant was deactivated.
In 1951,
when the war in Korea spread to include American troops, Badger Ordnance was reactivated
and the Olin Corporation took over the operation of the plant. During the Korean Conflict, the Badger plant
produced ball powder, rocket propellants, smokeless powder, acid and oleum that
were used in a variety of weapons. Olin
continued to create munitions at Badger on a limited basis after the war in
Korea ended, finally going on stand-by status for the plant in 1957.
When the United
States became involved in the war in Vietnam in the 1960s, Badger Ordinance was
once again put into full production.
Beginning in 1966, Olin operated Badger at full capacity again and
continued producing munitions at the Wisconsin facility through the middle of
1975. In 1997, the U.S. Defense
Department declared that Badger Ordnance was “in excess of its needs” and plans
were made to return the facility to state and local control.
At the
heights of production during the various war years, Badger Ordnance employed as
many as 12,000 people. The need for
employees at the Badger plant reached out to all of the communities of southern
Wisconsin, including those in the Kickapoo Valley. Many workers and their families relocated to
Badger during the various war years of peak production. Here is what I wrote in Volume I of my
history of La Farge when the Badger munitions plant began during World War II,
The construction of the government
powder plant at Merrimac, south of Baraboo, in 1942 and 1943 had an immediate
impact on employment for La Farge men and women. Bob Kennedy was one of the first from the
village to work at the munitions plant, called Badger Ordnance. His brother-in-law, Merton Calhoon soon
joined him when he resigned his positions at the bank and as village clerk in
La Farge and started work at Badger in April of 1943. Merton moved his family to Pardeeville to be
closer to his new job at the powder plant.
Others car-pooled to work at the new plant. By the spring of 1944, there were seventeen
from La Farge working at Badger Ordnance and Harry Lounsbury; village board
member sought a bus to stop at La Farge to carry the workers. A bus wasn’t available at that time, but the
La Farge workers at the munitions plant were given extra gasoline rations to
make the drive, while others caught the bus to Badger at Hillsboro. Eventually the bus line to Badger Ordinance
was extended to La Farge to carry the workers to and from work. A village with temporary housing was set up
across from the Merrimac munitions plant and some from La Farge moved
there. The “Badger Village” started its
own school and Clarence Krumm, former school principal in La Farge, was the
first principal at the new school. Many
women from La Farge worked at the Merrimac plant, some working away from home
for the first time. (From page 136)
I remember
one lady from La Farge telling me that her first good-paying job was at the Badger
Ammo plant during WWII. After the war
was over and her job at Badger was eliminated, she was determined to find
another job. She did not want to return
to her home to become a “housewife” – a term she used with derision.
Later in
Volume I, I wrote this about the connection between La Farge and Badger
Ordnance during the Korean War,
Another impact that the Korean conflict had
on the village was the revival of operations at the Badger Ordnance powder
plant in Baraboo. Once again thousands
of people were needed to work at the munitions plant and many would come from
the La Farge area. Daily bus service was
begun from the village to the war plant, carrying workers from La Farge and the
surrounding area. The good paying jobs
at Badger
Ordnance further increased the bustling economy of the village. (From page
154 – there is also a photo of the Badger Ordnance Works in 1942)
When Badger
Ordnance was cranked back up to full production during the Vietnam War, many
from La Farge once again worked at the munitions plant. A daily bus line once again ran from La Farge
to Merrimac to carry workers back and forth, stopping in Hillsboro and Union
Center along the way. In 1969, I
occasionally rode on that bus as I worked at Badger that summer. Bob Kennedy, who was back working at Badger
Ordnance for a third time – this time as a production line foreman, got me the
job. Although I was still planning to
return to LaCrosse that fall to finish up my college education, the ammo plant
needed workers badly that summer. Bob told
me to not mention about returning to college in my Badger Ammo job interview –
that way I would get a job. It never
came up and I was soon working on the “Air Dry Line” at Badger Ordnance along
with David Mick, another college student from La Farge who had started work
there a couple of weeks before me.
We worked a
“swing shift” that summer – one week we would work days, then the next week it
was the 2nd shift, followed by the graveyard shift the week after
that. Since the bus lines did not
operate for the night shifts, we had to drive a lot of the time. I think back now that some of my classmates
from LHS – Rudy Hamilton, Ben Rastall, and Danny Thayer to name a few – had
served in Vietnam before I even started working at Badger Ordnance.
The summer of 1969 was also when the
Army Corps of Engineers, in an entirely non-war related enterprise, began
purchasing property north of La Farge for the dam & lake project.
