La Farge's Commercial Club

A meeting of professional men was held at the Masonic Temple on Friday evening, September 3, for the purpose of organizing a Commercial Club.

            Thus began an article in the September 9, 1937 issue of the La Farge Enterprise newspaper about the establishment of an organization of village businessmen.  The article went on to tell what the new club was going to be all about: The purpose of the organization is to bring together the business and professional men of La Farge for the purpose of bringing about uniform business practices, better harmony and to aid in the development of this Community.  It is hoped that through the efforts of the Community Club that La Farge will be selected as the Headquarters for the Kickapoo River Flood Control Survey, and later headquarters for this project.

            At a later meeting held on September 7^th of that year, the new Commercial Club elected Ralph Freeze, an attorney in the village as its first President.  Other officers elected in that 1937 organizational meeting were Secretary – Gene Calhoun, who ran a funeral home in the village and Treasurer – Mac Marshall, who owned a Main Street hotel.  The four Directors elected to fill out the Executive Committee of the club were Bernard Brokaw, William Adams, who ran a hardware store in La Farge, Harry Lounsbury, who ran the village’s drug store and Emory Thayer, the manager of Nuzum’s Lumber. 

            At the time that the new Commercial Club was formed, La Farge and the entire Kickapoo Valley were undergoing some dynamic times. As was mentioned earlier regarding the flood control survey, Congress had approved a federal study of the Kickapoo Valley in August of 1937.  The study would be held over the next few years and La Farge’s business community wanted the village to be the center of that project.  Besides the federal flood control study, an impending event of another nature loomed in the immediate future – the abandonment of the Kickapoo Valley’s railroad.

            In August of 1937 a protest meeting was held in La Farge regarding the proposed abandonment of the Valley’s railroad.  At that meeting, the Kickapoo Valley Defense Association (KVDA) was formed with La Farge Village President Arch Davidson serving as president of the new organization.  Davidson had been a leader in the Valley to get the flood control study (In January of 1937, Davidson and Ralph Nuzum, who owned the lumberyard in town, had spearheaded a petition drive to be sent to Congress in favor of the flood control study. The petitions sent to Congress had been gathered by the Kickapoo Flood Control Association, another organization that Davidson served as president.), and now he would lead the fight to save the railroad.

            One of the first things that the new Commercial Club did was to sponsor a Harvest Festival & Fair to be held in La Farge in mid-October of 1937.  The new festival, which featured a parade and a variety of activities was a success and was held under the sponsorship of the new businessmen’s club for several more years. In 1939, all of the businesses in La Farge closed from noon to 6 pm on the day of the festival.

            Later in 1939, members of the La Farge Commercial Club went to Hillsboro to celebrate the opening of the new state highway between the two communities.  The last section of the new Highway 82 had been completed that fall.  With the Kickapoo Valley’s railroad gone by this time, the development of state highways to La Farge was a main concern for village leaders.  With the completion of Hwy 82, La Farge had the first state road to the village. While at the meeting in Hillsboro, the community leaders from both towns also celebrated the re-opening of the Hillsboro Brewery and sampled some of the “Hillsboro Pale” that was again being made.

            The opening of the new state highway between La Farge and Hillsboro was the result of strong lobbying by village leaders, led by Davidson.  When the railroad abandonment became a certainty earlier in the year, the KVDA switched its emphasis to getting new and improved state roads to the Kickapoo Valley.  Because the railroad had been used extensively by many Kickapoo Valley businesses, especially for the receiving of goods to sell, a new and reliable highway system was needed as a replacement.  Davidson and other La Farge businessmen continued to have the state improve and gravel Highway 82 to Viroqua and to have the state designate the old “River Road” (then County Hwy M) as a state highway.

            Having good roads to La Farge had always been a priority for its business community.  In 1915, La Farge businesses had donated money to have the Otter Creek Road dragged and graded.  At the same time, June of 1915, three La Farge businesses – Chase’s, DeJean’s and Householder’s – had placed a notice in the local newspaper announcing that their stores would be closing at 8 pm except for Wednesday and Saturday. Operating hours for local businesses could be a point of contention in a small town like La Farge.  Probably because the stores actually competed for people’s business when they came to town to shop, establishing a mutual time for hours of operation was difficult to achieve at times.  But later that month the community came together to promote La Farge’s 4^th of July Celebration.

            A call was made to all the automobile owners in the La Farge area, estimated to be about 75 at the time, for a Booster Club Trip to promote the 4^th of July.  Eventually 36 automobiles and around 150 people went on the booster trip that included stops in West Lima, Bloom City, Woodstock, Rock Bridge, Hub City and Yuba in the morning of that last Saturday of June in 1915.  When the booster caravan reached Hillsboro, everyone stopped for lunch before continuing on to Dilly, Valley and Rockton in the afternoon to conclude the trip.  La Farge’s 4^th of July Celebration was well attended and successful that year thanks to the efforts of the business community.

            In 1920, the La Farge businessmen united once again to sponsor the La Farge baseball team.  The “town team” was the pride of the village and always seemed to play for a championship each year.  Over the years, the sponsorship by La Farge’s businesses for the ball team was a given.

            During World War II, the La Farge Commercial Club ceased to function as the village turned its attention to various drives to support the war effort.  After the war was over, there were calls for the Commercial Club to again unite La Farge’s business community.  In 1947, the La Farge Development Association was formed and Casey Sanford was chosen as its first president.  Sanford, who owned a men’s clothing store on La Farge’s Main Street, led the new organization in helping with the village’s annual 4^thof July Celebration. The new business organization sponsored a raffle for that year’s Independence Day.  The following year, the development association co-sponsored the 4^thof July with the newly formed VFW Post.

            In 1949, a Lions Club was formed in La Farge and it seemed to take the place of the previous business organizations.  The president of that first Lions Club in La Farge was Ed Deibig, who owned the Chevy-Buick garage in town.  The new Lions Club sponsored a “Wild West Rodeo” that was held on Labor Day.  The rodeo was held at Calhoon Park, but crowds that first year were small because of rainy weather. 

             That Christmas season, the Lions Club sponsored a “Clock Stops Contest” fundraiser. People would pay to make a guess on how long a hand-wound clock would run. The clock was on display in the front window of one of the Main Street stores.  The clock ran for 92 hours before stopping and a winner was announced with much Yuletide fanfare.

            One of the main projects that the La Farge Lions Club undertook was to build new tennis courts in town.  Using proceeds from several more successful rodeos, the courts were constructed beyond the left field fence at Calhoon Park.  John Ferris, who ran a funeral parlor and furniture store in the village, was key in making the rodeos successful.  Finn Johannesen, who ran a grocery store in town and also served as the village’s president for several years, led the Lions club in getting the tennis courts completed.

            Over the years several different business organizations were formed in La Farge to provide some type of order in the commercial sector of the village.  Some times the individual businesses had to act upon their own.  

            In May of 1947, a notice appeared in the Enterprise that the four grocery stores in town – the Cash Store, Clover Farm Store, Andrews Market and Kennedy’s Grocery – would all be closed during the summer on Thursday afternoons.  The reason given for the new closing hours were due to the late Wednesday nights when the free movies were held on Main Street during the summer.  At a time when those La Farge grocery stores were sometimes open for 15 hours a day, a break was needed for the workers in the store to catch some rest.

            Different times; different needs for this little Kickapoo River town.

Water Over The Dam - Part III

La Farge, as a community located along the Kickapoo River, has a long history of recovering from floods. As we wait to see how the village reacts to the greatest Kickapoo River flood ever in 2018, perhaps a look back at some of the other post-flood times is in order.

            The June 1899 Kickapoo River flood was the first great flood to be felt by the communities in the valley.  There had been other floods before that, but nothing like the destruction caused in that year.  At the mill in Rockton, the 1899 flood of the Kickapoo River was measured as over a foot higher than any previous flood.  The flood was devastating to the downriver town of Seelyburg as the river cut a new channel right through the middle of the community. Every house and store in the hamlet was damaged or destroyed.  Many of the people who lived in the little community along the Kickapoo moved away from Seelyburg to higher ground.  Several of the Seelyburg businesses including the Millard General Store and the Brown Photography Studio moved south to La Farge to reestablish their businesses. The exodus from Seelyburg continued after the flood as the Methodist congregation moved from Chapel Hill on the southern end of Seelyburg to a new church in La Farge in 1902.

            Interestingly, only one house in La Farge suffered damages from the 1899 flood.  A month after the flood, the village was incorporated and the new municipality including flood-ravaged Seelyburg on the north end, was established.  La Farge had damages to the railroad that had come to the town only a year earlier.  Most of the railroad’s track bed in the village was washed away and the railroad bridge south of town was washed askew and had to be straightened.  Of course, in the summer of 1899, the new village had not yet begun its expansion towards the river.  By 1907, when the next great river flood hit, the village had expanded to the west and south from the original “Corners”.  Many houses and places of business had been built south of La Farge’s bustling Main Street and would be in the way of the flood.

            The July 1907 Kickapoo River flood devastated La Farge and the other communities along its path.  In La Farge, the crest of the floodwaters reached nearly three blocks east from the river.  According to an article about the flood in the La Farge Enterprise newspaper, the floodwaters reached the base of the hill where the Central Hotel stood (Today, the post office is located where that hotel once was.  That serves as a good comparison of that 1907 flood to the recent 2018 flood.)  Major damages were suffered at many of the lumbering businesses along Mill Street, including the Arm & Pin Factory, Nuzum & Hunter Lumber, Hammer Brothers Lumber & Excelsior Mill and several other lumber mills located along the street.  Further north at Seelyburg, the La Farge Milling Company & Electric Company also suffered heavy damages.  

            The railroad depot and freight warehouse (next to Nuzum’s today) also were heavily damaged in La Farge.  At Seelyburg, the railroad’s “Wye” turnaround was washed out as well as the spur line to the mill there.  South of the depot in La Farge, most of the railroad’s spur line to the lumbering businesses was washed away or damaged in some way.  It was weeks before railroad service was restored to the community. 

             Many people living in houses south of La Farge’s Main Street had to be rescued by boats during the night when the floodwaters rose dangerously in town. Amazingly, nobody was hurt or killed during the numerous rescues in La Farge during that 1907 flood.  During the height of that flood, water was measured at five-feet deep in some houses in La Farge.

            For Seelyburg, the 1907 Kickapoo River Flood virtually marked the end of the little riverside hamlet.  After the flood, only one residence and one business remained on the once bustling main street of the mill town as everyone else moved away from the river, continuing the exodus to the higher ground to the south in the village. 

When the big floods come, the Kickapoo washes away more than ever comes back.

            After the 1907 flood, some people living in La Farge moved from their flooded houses to higher ground.  A few businesses that had been hit hard by the flood did not choose to stay in La Farge.  Some of the lumbering businesses located along Mill Street would close within a short time.  Some of that was due to the damages suffered from the flood, but another reason was the lack of available wood to use in the lumber and excelsior mills.

            It would be nearly three decades before another massive flood would hit the Kickapoo Valley.  In August 1935 the greatest Kickapoo River flood that had ever been seen devastated the valley.  The floodwaters rose rapidly in La Farge during the evening of August 5^thand people once again were rescued from their houses during that terrible night. The floodwaters rose so rapidly that some people had to be rescued by boats from the second story windows of their houses.  The La Farge telephone operator stayed up all night calling homes in the village and beyond towards Tunnelville to warn people to get out of their homes if they lived near the river.  At its height that night, the Kickapoo River floodwaters rose two feet in one hour in La Farge.  People displaced by the flood were temporarily housed in the KP Hall, the Odd Fellows Hall and the Masonic Temple.  The Red Cross was in town the next day and over the next week served nearly 300 meals to those displaced by the flood.

            The aftermath of the Flood of 1935 was a massive cleanup.  Disinfectant by the gallons was used to clean up the flood’s stinking residue.  The village’s health officer ordered everybody to boil any water used for drinking for fifteen minutes to avoid the ill effects of typhoid fever and other bowel infections.  Waste and garbage from the flood was burned immediately or buried. Dead animal carcasses, and there were many of them in the village, were removed in haste.

            The Red Cross brought in two-dozen large tents to La Farge for people to live in while their houses were drying out.  People in the village shared their garden vegetables with their neighbors who had lost their gardens to the floodwaters.

            Damages to businesses in the village were massive. Nuzum’s, the cheese factory, both gas stations on the corners of Main and Mill Streets, the lumber mill and pickle station on south Mill Street and the power plant at Seelyburg all had heavy damages from the floodwaters.  

            Every aspect of the railroad received heavy flood damage as the tracks from south of La Farge all the way to Seelyburg were heavily damaged.  The railroad’s depot, freight warehouse, coal shed, icehouse, engine house and nearby cheese warehouse were all heavily damaged.  The railroad bridge south of town had to be repaired again.  A freight train had stood next to the depot in La Farge during the flood and the high water mark was three feet up on the wooden boxcars.  It was nearly three weeks before the trains were able to run to La Farge once again after the flood.

            Residential damage in La Farge from the Kickapoo River Flood of 1935 was immense.  Many people’s woodsheds and out buildings were burned instead of repaired, too far gone to be fixed up.  Most of the damaged houses in the village were eventually cleaned up and repaired. Some of the houses were elevated to avoid future floods.  Many of the former occupants moved back in, but several houses were dismantled due to the excessive damages from the flood.  By September, several small single story houses had been built along north Mill Street (across from the present Calhoon Park) to help provide temporary housing for those displaced by the flood.

            After the Kickapoo River Flood of 1935, the people of La Farge and other Kickapoo Valley towns began to seek some type of relief from the river’s floods.  Led by La Farge Village President Arch Davidson, a delegation went to Washington D.C. to plead with Congress for some type of flood control help.  Thus, the story of the dam project at La Farge began. But that is another story for another time.

Lights For Calhoon Park

(This is a conclusion to a previous post about La Farge's historic ballpark, Calhoon Park.)

So, the 76^th season of baseball at Calhoon Park will probably be remembered as the year that the ballpark was featured on LaCrosse’s WKBT – Channel 8 television station.  The video segment first aired on the Channel 8 Sports’ 6 pm report on Monday, May 18.  Charlie Clifford narrated the story of La Farge’s ballpark using video shot by cameraman Greg White.  The story of La Farge’s ballpark was well told and the video soon was posted on WKBT’s webpage (www.News8000.com).  From there it was posted on various Facebook sites and the story was passed around on the Internet for all to see.  Folks from California to North Carolina contacted me about the video – all enjoyed the story.

            It’s also an interesting story as to how the television coverage came to be in the first place.  As usual, it’s Lyle Dorschied’s fault – just kidding.  Recently, Liberty Mutual Insurance named Lyle the national “Fireman of the Year”.  It was a big deal around here for Lyle and the La Farge Fire Department, which benefited from a $10,000 donation from Liberty Mutual in honor of Lyle’s award.

            Greg White, Channel 8 cameraman and local sports aficionado, was in La Farge for the announcement of Lyle’s award.  Driving on the way to lunch at Rockton, White spied the ball field next to the school and Lyle started to fill him in on some of the history of the historic baseball field.  The cameraman returned to LaCrosse, pitched the idea of a story about the ballpark at La Farge to the WKBT sports staff, and as we are want to say in this column – the rest is history.

            White and Clifford came to La Farge and filmed during a La Farge-North Crawford high school baseball game on Thursday, May 14^th.  White filmed the park from many different perspectives and Clifford interviewed several people about the park.  Clifford particularly liked the idea of generations of La Farge family members who had played at the Calhoon Park.  The video included interviews with Ben Jacobs, who played baseball that day for the Wildcats, and Maverick Nelson, a manager for the Wildcats, who was also keeping the scoreboard for the game.  Both told about how generations of their families had played at Calhoon Park.  I also ended up in the video to give some background about the history of the ballpark.

            In the last Local History Notebook, I related some of the story of how the ball field came to be built during the 1930’s.  It was not an easy project to complete, partly because of the on again/off again nature of the WPA federal funding for the project.  Through the efforts of Village President Arch Davidson and Ray Calhoon, who designed the plans for the park, it was finally finished in time for the 1939 season.  Let’s continue looking at this story of Calhoon Park, this time focusing on the efforts to add lights to the ball field.    

It was 1950 when the lights were added to Calhoon Park.  The communities of Soldiers Grove and Hillsboro  (fierce town team rivals with La Farge) already had new lights for their ballparks and La Farge didn’t want to be left behind.  In early March a public meeting was held at the village pump house to discuss the lighting project.  The Calhoon Park Association was created to facilitate a fund-raising drive to collect money for the new lights for the ballpark.  The new ballpark association then sold shares of stock or subscriptions, as they were called, to pay for the new ballpark lights.  The shares would be redeemed after a time (estimated to be from six to ten years) with a 2% profit added on to the original subscription.  It was hoped that projected admissions and rental fees for the use of the ballpark would eventually pay off the association’s stock.

            Dr. Frank Gollin, who would give the largest contribution to the initial fund drive, and the members of the La Farge VFW post, spearheaded the ballpark lighting project, which had an estimated initial cost of $8,500.  That number comprised the purchase and installation of the metal towers for the lights, the light fixtures, and wiring for the project, with the idea that much of the labor costs would be donated.  After getting approval from the village board, the project was begun and the materials for the new ballpark lights were ordered.  Many of La Farge’s business places donated to the fund and other people contributed their labor on designated workdays, usually held on the weekends, to help with the project. 

Thirty-two holes were dug for the cement bases for the eight light towers.  When the steel for the towers arrived, each tower was put together on the ground and the light fixtures attached.  Then the towers were lifted into place and secured onto the cement bases.  The last phase of the project was the wiring of the towers, with each tower having a separate switchbox.  The lights on each tower were turned on and off from the switchbox.   By the first week of June, the new lights were ready for use. 

A special game between the La Farge “City” team and the touring “House of David” team would inaugurate the new lights at the village’s ballpark.  A huge crowd packed the ballpark to see night baseball at Calhoon Park.  Additional seating had also been added to the ballpark when the lights were put in.  The new seating included sets of wooden bleachers above the concrete seating areas along both the first and third base lines, which increased the seating capacity of the ballpark to more than 1,500.

            Unfortunately, the fund drive to pay for the new lights had not proven nearly as successful as the actual construction of the project.  Spurred by donations of $1,000 from Dr. Gollin, $500 from the VFW and $400 from Arnie Widstrand and the Enterprise newspaper, the total amount of money collected shot up to $4,500 by mid-May.  But there it stopped.  Opposition had arisen during the fund-raising drive as some people objected to the private association taking over control of the public ballpark.  By June when the first bills came due, the ballpark association approached the village board for help.

            At a special board meeting, a decision was made to borrow $11,500 to pay for the lighting project as well as future maintenance and costs of the lights.  A public meeting was held in late June to discuss the issue.  If the village borrowed the money for the lights, they would then lease the ballpark to the VFW or the association for a yearly fee.  That money and revenues from gate admissions would be used to pay off the village’s note at little cost to the taxpayers.  After hearing the proposed repayment plan of the borrowing by the village, most of the people in attendance at the meeting favored the village board going ahead with the financing.  However, the board decided to take the issue to a public referendum vote when presented with a petition bearing 330 names in opposition to the village paying for the lights.  The election vote on the ballpark lighting referendum was held on July 31 and the measure failed by an overwhelming vote of 164-72.  In an article about the special election in the August 3^rd issue of the Enterprise, high taxes in the village were given as the reason for the failure of the ballpark referendum to pass. 

Undaunted by the failure to secure help from the village, the ballpark association and the VFW continued to sell the subscription shares over the next several years to raise money for the ballpark lights.  Eventually Dr. Gollin stepped in once again and contributed more money to finally pay off the bill for the ballpark lights project.  (There was a saying around La Farge after the ballpark lighting payment controversy was finally settled that went, “It may be Calhoon’s Park, but those are Doc Gollin’s lights”.)  In 1956, after the lights had finally been paid for, the Calhoon Park Association turned over the maintenance of the baseball field to the village once again.

PLAY BALL!

La Farge's Calhoon Park

Last week I received a phone call from Tim Slack. Tim is the guidance counselor at La Farge Schools and also is the coach of the Wildcat baseball team.  It seems that he had just talked to a sports reporter at WKBT-TV in La Crosse who was interested in doing a story for his sports show about La Farge’s baseball field – Calhoon Park.  He wanted to know all about the history of the ball field and since Tim has only been around La Farge for a couple of years, he didn’t have much information on the baseball field.  I said that I would help.

            I started digging into the research notes for my La Farge history and found some information on the construction of the ballpark, which took place back in the 1930’s.  I copied some material that I had included in the first volume of my La Farge history.  The construction of the park makes for an interesting story because it did not come easy.  The driving force behind getting the ballpark completed was Ray Calhoon – a legendary figure in the history of baseball in this little river town.  I also had information on Calhoon so I made a copy of that story as well.

            On Thursday afternoon, Charlie Clifford, the WKBT (Channel 8) reporter and a cameraman, Greg White, met me at the ballpark.  Roger Hooker joined us.  Roger had the original plans for the ballpark as drawn up by Ray Calhoon.  (It is said that Calhoon used Chicago’s Wrigley Field as the model for the ballpark in La Farge.  Ironically, Charlie had been at Wrigley Field the night before to watch the Cubs-Mets game.)  Roger was also the LHS baseball coach for nearly two decades so he had his share of stories to tell about the ballpark.  The cameraman filmed the baseball game going on that day between North Crawford and La Farge from every angle imaginable.  He particularly liked shooting the game from the football press box beyond the centerfield fence.  Charlie Clifford conducted several interviews with people about the ballpark. 

            So what’s the fuss all about to draw all of this media attention about La Farge’s old ballpark?  We will need to go back to the 1930’s, to a time when Works Progress Administration (WPA) federal funds were available to use on local projects.  La Farge, like many of the villages along the Kickapoo, made use of the WPA funds to hire local men to work on a variety of projects.  Arch Davidson, the village president of La Farge at that time, used the first influx of WPA money to hire crews to fix up the village’s streets.

            But another federally supported project in La Farge would have an even more lasting impact on the village.  Using money from the WPA, La Farge would construct a new baseball field that would be a marvel lasting to the present.  The new field was the dream of Ray Calhoon, a longtime player, manager and backer of baseball in La Farge, and the new ballpark was named in his honor when it was completed.

            The Kickapoo River flood of 1935 played a large role for La Farge to get the new ballpark.  The town’s old baseball field was located south of La Farge on ground right next to the river, which made it very susceptible to flooding by the Kickapoo.  That ball field, originally a pasture on the Slayback farm, was rented and maintained by the La Farge Athletic Association.  (The group would later incorporate as the La Farge Baseball Association with Ray Calhoon as a prominent member and officer.)  That group laid out a baseball diamond along the river, built wooden grandstands with seating for several hundred people, and mowed the outfield and a parking area for automobiles.  Periodic flooding from the river caused a near yearly battle by Calhoon and others to keep up the ball field.  The 1935 flood was the last straw as the field was devastated by the record high floodwaters.  The grandstands were wrecked beyond repair and the baseball diamond was completely washed away by the floodwaters.  The La Farge town baseball team, which was in the process of trying to win a county championship that summer, would never play on the old ball field next to the river again after that great flood of August 1935.  (The story of how that 1935 La Farge town baseball team went on to win the county championship without the benefit of a home field to play on is an amazing one.)

            In the summer of 1936, the town team played all their games at the baseball field located to the east of the school – what was then known as the high school field.  Perhaps that location gave Calhoon and Village President Davidson the idea for the new ballpark because in October of that year the village purchased six and one-third acres of land to the west of the schoolhouse for a new athletic field. 

Using WPA funds, work was begun immediately on the new facility.  Twelve men working with six teams of horses broke ground that fall on the new athletic complex.  Original plans called for a baseball field with covered grandstands and dugouts, a six-lane, quarter-mile cinder track for holding track & field meets, and a swimming pool to be located on the grounds.  The baseball field and track were to be constructed first with the pool coming as a later phase of the project.  The athletic complex would lie adjacent to the new high school gymnasium, also being built with the help of WPA funding, which was nearing completion in the fall of 1936.  In two months of work before the snows came, the work crews leveled the area, moving thousands of feet of dirt for the track and ball field areas.

            The plans called for the ball field to “rival even those in the big leagues”.  The dimensions for the new fields were 365’ to the left and right field foul poles and 472’ to dead centerfield.  A cement amphitheater with a wooden cover was constructed in an oval shape directly back of home plate with cement wings, which included more seating extending along each baseline towards the dugouts.  Seating capacity was to be just under one thousand at the new park, with ample parking for automobiles behind the grandstands.  Calhoon had a local artist paint a wall-sized mural of the new ball field.  The painting was displayed in the Chase Brothers store (where Calhoon worked) on La Farge’s busy Main Street intersection and it showed a ball field that would be the show place of western Wisconsin.

            1937 was a tough year for WPA projects all over the country as the newly elected Congress in Washington D.C. struggled with the various spending bills.  The La Farge ball field project stalled when federal money didn’t come through as promised and eventually the track and pool construction was shelved due to this lack of federal funding.  To keep the new ball field project going, La Farge President Davidson spearheaded an appropriation from the village to help pay for worker’s wages and materials for the new ballpark.  The use of local tax money on the project caused a furor from opponents of the new ballpark.  Once again letters appeared in the La Farge Enterprise newspaper condemning a “work welfare” project and the use of local tax dollars on the “Big Mud Hole” next to the school.  One letter writer referred to the project as “Calhoon’s Folly” and the editor of the newspaper called for a new village president.  The 1937 spring election races were heated and the local newspaper supported Lester Wood for village president to replace Arch Davidson, who was running for reelection.  In a campaign letter published in the Enterprise, Wood voiced guarded support for the new ball field project, but questioned the use of local tax dollars for the project.  With the most voters ever participating in a village election, Davidson retained his village president position by a mere handful of votes.

            In 1938, the village would have to spend additional money on the ball field project, but as that summer ended most of the stone work on the grandstands, walkways, retaining walls and dugouts was completed.  The following spring, the finishing work of grading and graveling the parking areas and putting up the fence around the ballpark was done.  On April 28, 1939, the La Farge town team played its first baseball game at Calhoon Park.  (The local lads lost that inaugural game in their new ballpark to a team from Melvina.) 

Ray Calhoon helped manage the local nine that day at the new ballpark; his dream had become a reality.