(This is the second part of a narration that was used on the trolley
rides
through La Farge as part of this
year’s 4th of July Celebration.
As we begin this second part of the town’s story for the tour, the
trolley car is approaching the corner of Main and Mill Streets, heading south.)
Looking
across the back lot to our right, we can see the old cheese warehouse and the
old railroad freight house. The train
depot was just to the south of these buildings, but that building was torn down
and hauled away shortly after the last run of the Kickapoo Stump Dodger in
August of 1939.
As we pause at this busy
intersection of La Farge, we have one of the oldest businesses in town just to
our right. Nuzum’s has been operating in
this town for over one hundred years.
Originally, it was located here to be near the railroad and back in the
day, there was a branch rail line running into the big shed so that railroad
cars full of lumber could be offloaded in the storage building. Nuzum’s also had a big coal shed in the back
lot when the railroad was running.
Across the street is the old cheese factory building, which up until the
1980’s was still processing cheese on location using milk from area farms. Both the cheese factory building and the
Nuzum buildings were finished in 1916, constructed as World War I was being
waged far away from the Kickapoo Valley.
The cheese factory is now part of
the Organic Valley presence in town and because the building once sat empty is
why those first organic farmers came here in 1989. They formed a co-op to market their organic
farm products, calling it CROPP, and packaged products here for retail sales
elsewhere. Stop at the OV retail store located
there for great buys on their products.
As we move down Mill Street, notice that most of the houses in this
lower part of La Farge are now gone.
After the terrible flood of 2008, over twenty houses were purchased using
FEMA and DNR funds. Most of the houses
were torn down and the people living in them had to relocate out of the
floodplain of the Kickapoo River. Some
of the people stayed in La Farge, but many relocated elsewhere.
As we look at the old railroad bed
to our right, we are coming upon the newest addition to our village’s extensive
park system. “The Kickapoo Stump Dodger
Trail”, with historic signs and mowed walkways, will lead visitors along the
river here. Eventually there will be a
new fishing pond here with a handicapped-accessible pier and places for family
picnics. This weekend, the brand new
“Disc Golf Course” is being inaugurated and play will continue here throughout
the day.
As we turn left and drive out Pearl
Street here, we should remember the people who used to live here – family names
of old – DeJean, Norris, Potter, Sokolik and other more recent ones – Rush,
Campton, Walker and Clements – they all used to call it home.
As we stop here at State Highway
131, remember that this is place is the very beginning of the town, as Thomas
DeJean had his original sawmill over there at the mouth of Bear Creek. Thomas and his son Anson later converted it
to a gristmill and it ran for several decades.
The DeJean family was the first family here in La Farge (arriving in the
1850’s), but back in the 19th century, it was known as “The
Corners”. After Thomas Dejean died in
1877, this place came to be called “DeJean’s Corners” in his honor.
As we turn left onto Snow Street,
the village’s root beer stand used to be on this corner. It was open each summer for nearly half a
century and many fond memories of root beer floats and “Brown Cows” still
linger here. Before that time, the Hotel
Ward, La Farge’s largest hotel once occupied this corner until burning down in
the late 1930’s.
This medical clinic building was
constructed in 1962 after over $40,000 had been raised for the project through
donations and fund-raising in the community.
The building was known as a Sears Foundation building and specifically designed
for medical facilities in small rural communities. Roger Gabrielson supervised its construction. Dr. Connie Lee was the first physician to
have a practice in the building. Later,
a wing was added for a dentist’s office and the medical clinic was further
expanded in the 1990’s due to the increased number of patients being seen by
Dr. Deline. Dr. Rose Wels, the town’s
dentist, has her practice in this front wing of the building and new tenants
are planning to move into the space that was the medical clinic.
The old Burt apartment building,
which used to be down the street on the left, where the new house has been
moved in, was another casualty of the 2008 flood. The apartment building, which was once the
parsonage located next to the Methodist Church, sat in floodwaters for several
days and when the electrical power was turned back on, the water-soaked and damaged
wiring caused a fire that destroyed the building, and three more families were
looking for a new place to stay.
To our left is the village motel,
built in the 1970’s by then village president Dick Gabrielson and originally
called the Lakeland Motel – designed to provide rooms for all those tourists
visiting Lake La Farge. To our right was
once the home of the former “Enterprise” newspaper – La Farge’s town newspaper
for 75 years, operated for much of that time by the Widstrand family.
The new post office here on our
left is where the old fire station was at one time. Before that it was Mac Marshall’s hotel,
which burned down in the 1940’s during World War II. Before the hotel was built, The Corners’
first school was here and Anson DeJean was the first teacher in that log
schoolhouse.
The hotel annex next door remained
after the fire to Mac’s Hotel and that building was the site of the town’s post
office for forty years. The old brick-veneer
building, one of La Farge’s first of that type, started to fall down a couple
of years back. Eventually it was torn
down to make more parking for the Z-zip Stop, La Farge’s only gas station. The brick building across the street that now
houses some apartments was the first brick store building in La Farge – the
bricks made out of clay taken from the banks of Bear Creek.
That’s the old Mars Theater across
the street, built in 1947 by the Callaway family. After the theater closed down, it was a bar
for several decades beginning in the early 1970’s. Now it is one of several second-hand stores in
town.
On the left at the Indigo Thrift
second-hand store is the former home to Muriel’s Variety Store and before that
Jennie Adams’ variety store. Across the
street, where we used to have the Cash Store and the drug store, we now have a
realty office and Sisters’ Place restaurant.
The hardware store building on the
corner is the oldest in town, built be the DeJeans in 1875 and used as a
general store. Some type of business has
been operating in that building for 140 years.
The lawyer’s office on the left was built in the 1890’s as a farmer’s
co-op store. Dred Bean, one of the
original residents of The Corners, supplied most of the money for the
construction of the store building. When
the railroad came into town in 1898, the Chase Brothers bought the building,
modernized it and ran a mercantile store there for decades. Later it was a grocery store, furniture
store, second hand store, and feed mill.
When CROPP/Organic Valley expanded operations in La Farge in the 1990’s,
they had offices on both floors of this building, as well as any other
available vacant space for offices on Main Street.
As we drive down State Street, the
old river road heading down to Viola, look to our left and we can see a couple
of buildings constructed by Sam Green.
After Sam let the “La Farge” name and his post office move north to
DeJean’s Corners in the early 1890’s, he followed and opened a store in the
nearest building. He eventually moved
his general store north to Seelyburg and this building became the cobbler’s
shop and shoe store in town for decades.
Phil Stittleburg’s lawyer’s office
located in this second store building built by Sam Green, now has been in the
law business here at this site since 1899 and qualifies as La Farge’s oldest
office site with a continuous business.
Previously, Alva Drew and Ralph Freeze had their law practices in this
building.
Across the street, the turreted
building was originally a general store built by Henry Millard. His father, Oscar Millard, had the original
general store in Ontario and Henry had come down the river to open a general store
in booming Seelyburg. He relocated to La
Farge after the great Kickapoo River flood of 1899 badly damaged his Seelyburg
store. This store was also the site of
the La Farge Post Office for nearly half a century. Dr. George Chambers, La Farge’s dentist for
many years, had his office upstairs in this building for many years and also
became the postmaster when Henry Millard moved from town.
This corner building on the right
was an original Millard store building first located in Ontario. In the early 1900’s, Millard had the Ontario store
deconstructed, the building sections hauled down the old river road by teams of
horses and then reconstructed here in La Farge.
Millard rented out the first floor to people for a variety of
businesses. The second floor became the
meeting hall for La Farge’s chapter of the Knights of Pythias – the KP’s and
their auxiliary women’s organization.
Eventually the KP’s took over the whole building and used it for
meetings, events such as wild game feeds and pancake suppers and even as a
place to shoot pool and play cards.
Recently, the building has been used for a second-hand store and as the
headquarters for a motorcycle club.
Next time, we will finish this
trolley tour through the history of our little town on the Kickapoo River.
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