Kickapoo Floodplain History

It seems so simple.  If you live in a house that occasionally has floodwaters running through it, you have two options.  You can move from that house with its flood prone location or you can move the house away from the floodwaters.  In either option, you are relocating away from the floodwaters.  It seems like a clear-cut solution to the problem, but here in the Kickapoo Valley it has not always been so simple to achieve.

            “The last rescue proved to be one of the most dangerous.  The family of Cora Henry was stranded in their home, the original Dempster Seely house, on the northern end of the village in Seelyburg.  The house stood several hundred feet out in the still raging floodwater.  Dave Elliot, who had been rescuing people for nearly twelve hours, decided to get to the Henry house.  Four times he flung his boat into the raging torrent, but was washed downstream before getting to the house.  Finally he launched his boat far up shore from the house and negotiated the torrents to land at the front porch of the Henry house.  Mrs. Henry and her four children were quickly loaded into the boat for the long haul back to shore.  A tired Elliot started to row through the swirling muddy waters.  It was a terrific pull and when he was still many yards from the shore, Elliot was unable to row farther and called for help.  Five youths on shore, Royal Donovan, Si Paul, Cedric Neefe, Francis Moon, and Furley Hodge, some of the same young lads who had begun the original rescue the night before, plunged into the water and pulled the loaded boat to safety.  Miraculously, none of La Farge’s residents were seriously injured or killed in the mammoth flood.”

            This harrowing account from the 1935 Kickapoo River flood, which I excerpted from Chapter 5 of Volume I of my history of La Farge book, describes the terror and danger inherent in the great floods of the Kickapoo.  Again, it seems so simple; move the people and the houses away from the path of the river’s floodwaters. Relocate out of the flood’s path.  Easier said than done in the Kickapoo Valley.

            To understand why “relocation” was such an unpopular concept for much of the history of flood control efforts in the Valley, perhaps we need to go back to the beginning as to why people settled so close to the Kickapoo River in the first place.  Why does someone build a house in a river’s floodway?

            Many of the first people to settle in the area around La Farge were drawn to the region because of the potential of waterpower provided by the Kickapoo River.  In the narratives of the original land surveys done in 1846 and conducted by the federal government surveying team, it was noted the potential for waterpower by damming up the Kickapoo River near La Farge.  In describing waterpower potential, the surveyor’s narrative mentions in particular a site in section 20 (what would become Seelyburg) and another in section 28 (in the area where Bear and Otter Creeks join the Kickapoo) that would be excellent places for dams and mills.

            Thomas and Anson DeJean and Dempster Seely would soon follow and construct the dams and mills at those places on the Kickapoo.  They also built houses right next to the river, close by their mill sites.  As the lumbering boom followed in the northern Kickapoo Valley, many of those who worked at the mills also built houses along the river.  Soon villages bloomed along the banks of the Kickapoo from Ontario to Steuben.  And those villages, being constructed in the later half of the 19^th century, flourished during those early years of existence.  Were they hit with catastrophic floods in those early years, like they would be in the following 20^th century? 

Evidence would suggest these early settlements were not in peril from the Kickapoo’s mighty floods, so common after 1900.  Those early settlers were not stupid people, who would establish their entire towns in harms way.  Prudent men would not build houses in areas where the safety of their family might be in jeopardy because of rushing floodwater, would they?  What happened to a river where it was once safe to build communities along its banks?

The very nature of the watershed that supported the river changed drastically in those early years of settlement along the Kickapoo.  The change in the watershed caused the river to undergo drastic changes as well.  It is not to say that the river did not flood during those early years of settlement, because all rivers have floods and the Kickapoo was not an exception.  But those early floods must have been tolerable for the people who lived near the Kickapoo River, because the riverside settlements continued to grow and prosper.  It was the river that changed; by the end of the nineteenth century, the Kickapoo River became a flooding machine.

ABSTRACTS & DEEDS

Lots 1,2,3 & 10,11,12; Block 4; Bailey’s Plat; Village of La Farge

            It is a piece of land in the Kickapoo Valley.

            It has a story to tell.

            The deed for the piece of land denotes ownership.  With the deed in hand and the piece of land registered at the land office, ownership is secured.

            The abstract of the piece of land narrates the story of the ownership of the land; it tells who has owned it over the years.  The question of who sold it to whom is answered on the narration of the land that is the abstract.

            Ownership for the piece of land could be determined only after the lands of the Kickapoo Valley were surveyed and marked into grids and squares.  That was done in 1846 by a crew of government surveyors who dragged their measuring chains rod by rod up the Valley in January of that year.  Wisconsin became a state two years later and land offices were established so that deeds for pieces of land could be entered.

            In 1853, Thomas DeJean came to this part of the Valley and probably walked on this piece of land.  He went to the nearest land office, located in Mineral Point, and laid claim to his land in the Kickapoo Valley.  For a few dollars paid down, DeJean had legal claim to his Kickapoo Valley land, but not this particular piece of land whose story we tell.   He returned two years later to the Kickapoo Valley and with his son, Anson, they began to claim a homestead from the wilderness.

            It was Anson who first made a legal claim on this piece of land, as he purchased it from the United States government in 1856.  President Franklin Pierce authorized the purchase transaction for this piece of land and the deed was entered at the land office in Mineral Point.  Anson’s piece of land laid to the west of his father’s.  Together, the DeJeans, father and adopted son, owned all the lands where Otter Creek and Bear Creek flow into the Kickapoo.  They owned the land south of the trail that ran from east to west through this part of the Valley and Anson’s lands lay on both sides of the Kickapoo River and on west along Otter Creek.

            Anson and Thomas DeJean built a sawmill and then a gristmill and bought more land for their lumbering pursuits.  In 1882, Anson DeJean sold this piece of land of whose story we tell to John Bailey. 

            The Baileys were farmers and soon had milking cows on the land and bought milk from their neighbors and made cheese on their farm for others to buy.  “Ma” Bailey ran a general store from a room next to where they made cheese.  Money was scarce then, so Ma Bailey operated a bank of sorts out of her apron for neighbors and friends to conduct business in the place that became known as DeJean’s Corners.

            In 1896, when word came that a railroad was coming to this place that was now known as La Farge, John Bailey was the first to officially plat his lands for sale.  He divided his lands and lots were sold to people anxious to own land in the railroad boomtown.

            In 1901, two brothers, John and Fred Thayer, purchased this piece of land of whose story we tell.  The Thayer brothers were businessmen and soon built a general store facing the busy Main Street of the boomtown.  Since lumbering was fueling the boom in La Farge, the Thayer brothers also became lumber retailers and built a large shed attached to the south end of their store to house those operations.  The lumber business became so lucrative and demanding of their time, that the Thayer brothers soon dropped the general store line of goods.  With their lumber business located within a few hundred yards of the railroad line and the various processing mills in La Farge, the Thayer brothers business flourished.  John Thayer eventually left the business partnership with his brother.  In 1904, Fred Thayer sold his lumber business on this piece of land to his son-in-law, Levi Millison, who had been working in the lumber business for some time.

            Floodwaters from the Kickapoo covered this piece of land in 1907.  Water ran through Levi Millison’s buildings and in that year he sold the land and business back to Fred Thayer.  By that time, Levi was heavily involved in speculations on lands in the West.  After selling the La Farge lumber business back to his father-in-law, Levi left the Kickapoo Valley and moved his family west to Montana.  The Thayer Lumber Company continued on this piece of land for another two decades. 

            Fred Thayer passed away in December 1927.  His son, Emory, ran the business on this piece of land until 1929 when the family sold out to Nuzum’s Lumber, their main lumber retail competitor in La Farge.  Emory Thayer was made the manager of Nuzum’s La Farge operation soon after.  The old Thayer Lumber buildings became additional storage space for Nuzum’s products.  Lots 10, 11, & 12, which fronted onto Snow Street, were used for outside storage of products. 

Floodwaters from the Kickapoo again covered this piece of land in 1935.  This land remained a part of the Nuzum’s retail lumber operation for more than two more decades.  Eventually, Nuzum’s Lumber no longer needed the piece of land for their business.

            Lester Fulmer bought Lots 1 and 2 and the buildings located on that piece of land from Nuzum’s in 1952.  Fulmer, who was active in a variety of businesses in La Farge, used the office of the old lumber store briefly, but then sold the buildings and the two lots to the Town of Stark in 1953.  The township used the old lumber office for a town hall and the shed to store its road maintenance equipment.  In 1954, Stark bought lot 3 of this piece of land from Ralph Nuzum and purchased lots 10-12 from him in 1958 to reunite the parcels, as they had been most of the time since being platted.  The township stored sand and gravel on the lots until 1986, when they moved much of their road maintenance operation to the Corps of Engineers maintenance building at the dam site north of La Farge.  The Town of Stark continued to use the old office for a town hall and the shed for recycling and storage of the township’s road grader.  With the lots empty, the township began renting the space to the nearby truck center for vehicle parking.

            Kickapoo floodwaters again swept through the buildings on this piece of land in June 2008.  The town hall building was condemned after the flood’s damages and the township began looking for other land options for their building needs.               

It is shown on the plat maps as Lots 1,2,3 & 10,11,12 of Block 4 of Bailey’s Plat in the Village of La Farge.  Three lots fronting Main Street; three lots on Snow Street; divided by a platted alley running east and west in the middle of the piece of land.  It is owned by the Town of Stark, but will soon be sold to Earl Nelson for use with his truck center business.  His name will be placed on the deed and his name added to the narrative of the abstract for this piece of land, as its story continues to be told. 

Dam The Water

In 1908, the State of Wisconsin published a book titled, The Water Power of Wisconsin.  The book was written by Leonard S. Smith, a civil engineer and was published as part of the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey that was being conducted at the time.  The state-funded survey was used to assess where Wisconsin was at the time in regards to water power availability and use, which was an offshoot of the geology and natural history study.  The book was divided up into various chapters based on the different geographic regions of the state.  In the chapter covering southwest Wisconsin or the Driftless Area, a listing of the dams and their water power capacity on the Kickapoo River were charted.  The dam at La Farge was listed as the largest capacity power producer on the Kickapoo.  Harnessing the power of the waters of the Kickapoo River near La Farge had been a constant goal as settlement began in the northern part of the Valley.

            When white settlement first came to the northern Kickapoo Valley in the late 1840’s, the availability of the rushing waters of the river was a prime inducement for the development of dam sites for creation of water power.  Isaac Lawton built the first dam in the area of what would eventually become La Farge in 1848.  Lawton was a lumberman from the state of New York and came west to the brand new state of Wisconsin located between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River.  Lawton used the Great Lakes to get to Wisconsin and he and his large family settled in the Genesee area in Waukesha County.  He worked in and co-owned a lumber operation there for a few years before moving to the western part of the state and the Kickapoo Valley.

            Isaac Lawton found some desirable land along the Kickapoo River in what today is section 31 of the Town of Stark.  He was looking for a site to dam up the river and operate a sawmill.  After hiking down to Mineral Point to make his claim and pay his fee to the government for the land, Isaac and some of his oldest sons cleared his newly acquired land and built a cabin.  When that was done, he brought his wife and the rest of the children west from Genesee to live in their new home.  Lawton constructed a brush and log dam on the river where it turned west, installed an “up and down” saw and started milling out lumber.  He and his sons were some of the first in the Valley to raft the lumber down the Kickapoo and out to Midwestern markets.  It was said that a selling price of $7 for the raft of lumber made for a profitable venture in those early days of lumbering on the Kickapoo.

            Isaac Lawton would eventually turn the lumber rafting over to his sons and son-in-laws, as they would operate sawmills in many different locations on the Kickapoo River and its tributaries over the years.  (Indeed, we could call Isaac Lawton the “Father of Lumbering in the Kickapoo”, but that is another story to tell at another time.)  After a few years, the dam located on the Isaac Lawton place was removed.  The next dam built in the immediate La Farge area was a product of the efforts of Thomas DeJean.

            Thomas DeJean, who could be dubbed “The Father of La Farge”, came to the Kickapoo Valley in 1853 and claimed land along the river just to the north of Isaac Lawton.  By 1855, DeJean and his adopted son, Anson, were clearing their land along the Kickapoo River.  At the mouth of Bear Creek, the DeJeans established a brush and log dam for a sawmill operation on the creek in 1857.  The location of the DeJean dam was unfortunate as it was nearly impossible to float the logs on the river to the mill for sawing.  Eventually, Thomas and Anson DeJean built a gristmill upstream on Bear Creek to better utilize the waters from their dam and that gristmill business was a success for many years.  Anson DeJean stayed active in the lumbering business and he owned vast tracts of land in the area for the harvesting of trees for lumber.  He and his crews would use another dam and sawmill built upstream a couple of miles from the DeJean dam, for it would be Dempster Seely who would build the dam that would eventually become the largest in the Valley.

            In 1863, Dempster Seely, another transplanted New Yorker, purchased land from John Anderson that contained a section of the Kickapoo River with a strong flow as it dropped to the west and then south.  Anderson, originally a Scotsman from Glasgow, had come to the Kickapoo Valley in the 1840’s and worked on the first lumber crews, felling trees and rafting the lumber down the river.  He eventually grew too old for that vigorous work and retired to his farm overlooking the river, where he established an apiary and made sweet honey for sale.

            Seely, who had earlier operated successful sawmills in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, built a house and a large barn on his Kickapoo Valley property with lumber sawn at his mill.  Soon he was employing crews of men to harvest lumber for his milling operation, which utilized a circular saw.  Chauncey Lawton, a son of Isaac, operated a general store and law practice nearby and soon plotted the growing river town as Star.  Because nearly everyone worked for Dempster Seely in his expanding lumber operation (they were known as “Seely Men”), the place came to be known as Seelyburg.  Those were boom times for Dempster Seely’s business and by 1870 the mill had added planing and shingle milling capabilities.

            To provide adequate water power for all of these milling operations, Dempster Seely enlarged his dam on several occasions.  He replaced the original brush and log dam with a larger dam made with logs and plank to create more headwater for the milling operations.  Eventually, Seely and his son Charles would expand the milling business to include a gristmill, which required more water power.  The Seely’s moved the dam downriver and anchored it to a sandstone rock wall on the north side.  Here at the new dam site the flow of the river narrowed and turned to the southwest.  The new dam required a more sturdy timber and plank construction to harness the river’s water power.  This was the dam that was in place when the state survey was done and the water power book published in 1908.

            In that book on page 167 in the section, Water Powers of the Kickapoo River, the dam at La Farge was described as, “The La Farge Milling Company maintains an 8 foot dam built on natural rock foundation.  Three turbines 56, 40, and 35 inches in diameter rated at 160 horsepower are used in the day time to run a flour mill, and during the night to run a local light plant.  The owners report that they can count on only 125 horsepower.”  Other dams on the Kickapoo River were listed at Gays Mills, Soldiers Grove, Readstown, Viola, Rockton, and Ontario and north of Ontario.  With its 160 horsepower capacity, the La Farge dam exceeded all others in the Valley.

            By the time the state report on water power was written, Charles Seely was a minority owner of his father’s dam and mill operation.  When the light plant was begun in 1904, a group of investors bought Seely’s La Farge operation, closed down the lumber mill, increased the capacity of the grist mill, improved the timber dam and installed additional power turbines for the light plant.  Most of the investors in the La Farge dam and mill were from Soldiers Grove and included the Wisconsin governor at the time, James Davidson.  With the influx of investment money, the La Farge dam, mill and power plant was a state of the art operation serving a thriving modern community.