(This is the third and last part of a
narration that was used with the trolley rides scheduled to run through La
Farge on the afternoon of July 4th.
We begin this last segment of the tour at the corner of south State and
Snow Streets, heading east.)
As we turn east onto Snow Street,
notice the second house on the left.
That used to be the old schoolhouse at Seelyburg, located up on Plum Run
Road. When Seelyburg combined its school
district with La Farge’s in 1895, a new school was built midway between the two
communities at the present site of La Farge’s school. The old Seelyburg schoolhouse was then moved
to this location over one hundred years ago and made into a residence.
As we approach Main Street again,
notice this old gas station building on our right. Carson Lawrence last ran a gas station here
in the 1970’s. Before that, Lovell North
and Leo Smith had a gas station here for years.
The building was originally built as a blacksmith shop and is over one
hundred years old as well.
Across the street is Bergum’s Food
Mart, the last grocery store in town – actually, one of the last in the
Kickapoo Valley. Before this store was
built, this was the site of Donaldson Brothers Hardware, which operated as a
business at that location for nearly half a century.
To our left is another brick
building, the former home of C and S Motors that was also constructed in
1916. J.E. Neefe had this building erected
beginning in 1915, putting up the brick walls of the new garage first, then had
to wait for over six months for the steel I-beams to arrive on the train. When they were lifted into place, tying the
walls together, the roof was added last.
Neefe’s immediately began selling new autos and repairing the same
here. Others who had a garage and sold
cars here were the Jantz Brothers, Ed Deibig and lastly, C and S Motors. My Dad, Earl Steinmetz, was the “S” in
C and S and sold lots of new Chevys and Buicks from here.
Across the street is the old
grocery store and feed mill building.
Today it is the home of the “Episcope” newspaper. Donna and Lee Gudgeon were the last to run a
grocery store here, then built the new store across the street and moved over
there. The Wheeler Brothers from Viola
last ran a feed mill at this site.
We’re moving out to the east end of
La Farge now. Notice that most of the
houses along Main Street here are quite small.
When built in the early 1900’s, they were called “bungalows” and were
built as fast as they could obtain the lumber for the men working in the lumber
mills here in town. See the old Free
Methodist Church on the corner; originally dedicated in January of 1903, the
church has been lovingly converted to a residence by the Albright family.
This is the new Emergency Services
Building for La Farge and it houses the fire department, police department and
the Ambulance Squad. The village
received a large grant after the 2008 flood to move their emergency services away
from the flood plain and they were all relocated to this new location in 2010. Village board meetings, elections and many
community events are held here.
Across the street is the new Free
Methodist Church, dedicated in 2004. A
local lad, Mark Phillips leads the active congregation here in this new place
of worship. That’s the bell from the old
church that sits just to the north of the new building. Looking down towards Bear Creek to our right,
this was once the home of the brickyards in town. All that Bear Creek clay was fired in kilns
there to make the bricks to build the new houses and stores in the growing town
of La Farge.
Heading back west on Main Street,
notice Deb Moore’s barber’s pole in front of her beauty shop. On the corner, we see the old building that housed
the barbershop when I was a kid growing up here. It was where Eston Major and Everett Parr cut
hair for the men in the community. The
building was originally La Farge’s first hotel, the Belcher House, and later
was a ladies hat and millinery store for years.
This is Bean Park on the left and
the original site of the home of Dredsel Bean, a founding father of “The
Corners”. The Masonic Temple was built
in 1927 when the Rockton Chapter of Mason’s closed and merged with the one in
La Farge. The village bought this temple
in the 1980’s (another of Glenn Alderman’s ideas) and with much help from the members
of the local Lions Club the building was converted into this fine community
center.
On our left is the Lawton Memorial
Library, opened in 1990 thanks to a generous donation by Dr. Jim Lawton (an LHS
alum). This will soon be a construction site, as work on an addition that will
double the size of the present library will begin later this summer. Funds are still being raised for that
addition – stop at the information table at school if you would like to
contribute to the cause.
Remember when I said that the
Methodist congregation moved from Seelyburg to La Farge. This is where they built their new church in
1902. This newer church, dedicated in
1971, replaced that original church. But
look! There is the bell from the old
church, still ready to peal out to the village.
We’re heading up the hill now and
as we ascend, we pass this house on the left that once housed one of the first
beauty salons in La Farge – where women could have their hair done. This was Lathrop’s Salon and further up the
hill here on our right was the Maple Street Salon, operated by Joyce Steinmetz
until her retirement last year.
We are now entering Lakeview
Addition, a housing development created by some local men in response to the
Lake La Farge project. With the
wonderful 1,800-acre lake coming to La Farge, promising all sorts of
recreational opportunities for tourism, new houses would need to be built in
town. The group purchased Whitey
Barclay’s mink ranch, plotted out the property for sale and had the village add
the streets. It was already to go in
1973 and Lonnie and Gail Muller, who were operating the “Epitaph” newspaper from a building on Main Street and living in an
apartment overhead their business, built the first house in the new addition.
As we round the corner of Lakeview
Addition, we see again the Organic Valley headquarters. The addition on the right of the headquarters
building was added in 2012. In May of 2013,
a fire completely destroyed the west wing of the headquarters building – it was
the largest fire, money-wise, in the history of Vernon County. But within a year, the west wing had been
rebuilt, and the OV employees who had spread out to various sites in the area
to do their jobs during the rebuild, were back in their own offices once again.
The Village Park, dedicated in 1916
(so much happened in that year), was once known as Bean’s Grove. It was here on this forested hillside on the
northern most part of his farm that Dred Bean had his sugar camp. In the summer, he would keep the weeds cut
back so that his Civil War veteran pals could hold reunions here. It was also a favorite picnic spot for all
kinds of family and community gatherings.
Try to catch the “Music In The Park”, playing in the park’s big shelter
beginning at three this afternoon.
Now, we are back at the school and
as we look at the old two-story building, we should remember that this 1901
brick schoolhouse replaced that original two-story wooden schoolhouse built in
1895 when La Farge and Seelyburg merged their schools. That original schoolhouse, which housed
grades one through eight being taught by three teachers, burned down in 1900. If you want to know more about the school’s
history and when some of the other parts of the school were built, there are
self-guided tours in the school available all afternoon. Looking towards a bright future in 1901, the
citizens of La Farge decided to build a new school, twice as big as the one
being replaced and one that could possibly serve a brand new high school!
We are back where we started now
and our trolley tour is over. If you
would like to learn more about the village’s early history and the Lake La
Farge project, both of my books that tell some of the stories are for sale
today in the gymnasium.
HOPE YOU MADE IT TO LA FARGE FOR THE 4TH
OF JULY!!
IF NOT IN PERSON, AT LEAST IN SPIRIT!!
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