FINISHING OUR TROLLEY TOUR THROUGH THE HISTORY OF LA FARGE!

(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 4^th.  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 4^TH OF JULY!!

IF NOT IN PERSON, AT LEAST IN SPIRIT!!

Building A New School In La Farge

I attended a meeting at the school several weeks back where a pair of design schemes was presented to the La Farge Schools facilities committee to ponder.  After the two plans, which featured various new additions to the present school buildings in a variety of forms, were presented and discussed, more information was presented to those gathered about the costs for such construction.  The total projected cost of ten-plus million dollars for the construction of the new school buildings sent more than one pair of eyebrows arching towards the ceiling of the high school library.

            At a later school board meeting there was discussion about the demolition of the 1901 schoolhouse building to facilitate some of the plans for construction of other buildings.  Tearing down the old school landmark has triggered some opposition from preservationists and others who want to save the historic building.

            The whole exercise currently being undertaken by the local school district is one originated to look at future building needs for the school.  What will the district need for buildings in order to function ten or twenty years from now?  Looking down the road into the future can be a pretty tricky business for small school districts like La Farge in this day of open enrollment, voucher programs and declining state aids.  It is a difficult task made even more strenuous due to these times of shrinking enrollments, local tax levy limits and other constraints on public schools in Wisconsin. 

Perhaps some history of previous attempts to construct new school buildings in La Farge might aid this process a little.  After all, it is much easier to look backward than to try to peer very far into the future.  So let’s travel back to some other times when folks were considering whether to build some new school buildings in this little town along the Kickapoo.

In 1894, the newly minted hamlet of La Farge (the place known as DeJean’s Corners had only had the “La Farge” name for a year as the La Farge Post Office had been moved from Sam Green’s house north to “The Corners” in 1893) needed a new schoolhouse.  The old log schoolhouse constructed in 1880 by Thomas DeJean and located a block from the original corners (at the present site of the post office) was bursting at the seams.  As more and more families moved to the La Farge area during that last decade of the 19^th Century, the need for a new school was evident.  By 1894, the leaders of La Farge were ready to build a new school and grand plans were envisioned for the construction of the best schoolhouse in the Kickapoo Valley.  To help make that happen, La Farge reached out to its neighbors to the north at Seelyburg to see if they would want to join in the venture.

Seelyburg also had an old log schoolhouse (located at the mouth of Plum Run where it joins the Kickapoo River) that had seen its better days.  It was also overflowing with students at that time.  However, as the leaders of Seelyburg were approached about the idea of a new combined school by their downriver neighbors, there was some trepidation towards the move.  Several Seelyburg businesses including Brown’s Photography Studio and Millard’s General Store had recently relocated to La Farge.  Other families who had lived in Seelyburg had left their homes there and moved to higher ground in La Farge (mainly fleeing the near constant flooding that was starting to occur in Seelyburg at that time).  So Seelyburg residents were a little leery about partnering with La Farge on this new schoolhouse venture.

Another problem with the merger of the two schools was the location of the new school.  The leaders of La Farge were demanding that the new building, a two-story structure that would be a fully graded school (housing students in grades 1 through 8), should be located near their hamlet’s growing Main Street.  La Farge argued that their location was superior for drawing the most students and that there was plenty of good land available for a site on which to build the new school.  Seelyburg had few building sites to compare to La Farge, unless it was on the hills north of the old mill town.  These land parcels, though, would be far from centrally located and thus, of not much serious consideration.  Seelyburg residents, already chafing at the thought of losing their school to the newer community to the south, balked at the thought of having the new school located so far away in La Farge.  It appeared as though the idea of the joint school venture was not going to happen.

At some point in these negotiations, the Vernon County School Superintendent entered the discussion and helped broker a compromise for the joining of the two districts.  It was probably pointed out that neither district had a sufficient amount of students to warrant a larger fully graded school, but that the two district’s combined enrollment would foster such a move.  The tax base for the two combined districts would also make the construction of a new schoolhouse more financially feasible.

The location of the new school building still seemed a major sticking point until Dred Bean offered a compromise.  The founding father of The Corners offered to sell to the proposed new combined school district a parcel of land in the north pasture on his farm, just across the road from Bean’s Grove (now La Farge’s Village Park).  This proposed site was centrally located between the two communities and also was located along the main road that connected both.  The location satisfied most of the people of Seelyburg, since the new school was going to be very near the south side of their hamlet.  La Farge could accept the location proposed by Bean, even though it was nearly a half-mile from its busy main intersection.  The ambitious southern hamlet expected their town to expand north to the school in a short time anyway, so it would be in La Farge soon enough.

So, the new Joint School District #15 of La Farge was created and a two-story wooden schoolhouse was built in Dred Bean’s north pasture, opening in November of 1895 for students of La Farge, Seelyburg and the surrounding areas.  The new schoolhouse was built with the intention of being the best and word of the new school at La Farge quickly spread throughout the area.  The new school was a two-story wooden structure with double sized classrooms on both floors.  Equipment and desks from both of the former schools was moved to the new one, while the newest supplies were added to make the new schoolhouse the best in the Kickapoo Valley.

In 1896, the county superintendent of schools said, “The La Farge schoolhouse is the finest in the county outside of Viroqua and I doubt if any village in the state has a nicer school house.”  The new school was soon the pride of the little town on the Kickapoo.  It also became a boon for the growing town as students were drawn to the new school and its enhanced educational opportunities.  Being a “fully graded school” meant that students could now complete the 8^th grade at La Farge.  The curriculum for the eight grades was taught in a seven-month school year stretching from September through April.  Graduates of the new La Farge School could then move on to high school studies at other places that offered that curriculum (Viroqua, Hillsboro and Richland Center were the nearest).  La Farge’s 8^th grade graduates were also qualified to teach at rural schools, an especially appealing opportunity for young women of that time.

  It appeared that La Farge was educationally prepared for a long future of growth with their new schoolhouse.  Or were they?

Bean's Grove

I spent some time in La Farge’s Village Park over the past couple of weeks.  Despite the oppressive heat spell, the park is still a pleasant outdoors setting with its abundant shade and seemingly constant breezes.  For those venturing out from their air conditioning during the summer’s sweltering heat wave, the wooded park on the hill might be the coolest place in La Farge.  And that is as it has always been.

            When Dredsel Bean returned from his time in America’s Civil War, he bought property located just to the south of the bustling lumber boom town of Seelyburg and on the northwest corner of where two old trails crossed.  He built his house and blacksmith shop near the place known as “The Corners” and started clearing much of the rest of his land for farming.  But on the hill on the northern edge of his property, he kept a stand of mature maple, oak and elm trees as his wood lot and sugar bush.  Eventually because of the cool summer breezes, which wafted through the forested glade, people began to gather on the wooded hill when the weather warmed up.

            After the maple sugar season ended in early spring, Dred Bean would let a crew of town’s folk trim the undergrowth to better promote gatherings in his grove of trees during the warmer months of each year.  By the 1870’s, Bean was hosting reunions of his Civil War comrades on a yearly basis in his grove.  Picnics, church gatherings and other reunions and gatherings became common during these early years in Bean’s Grove and by the 1880’s the 4^th of July Celebration was played out either in Dred Bean’s front yard or in his grove on the hill.  By the time that La Farge was incorporated as a village at the turn of the century, Bean’s Grove was hosting nearly all of the village’s important outdoor events.  The Civil War veteran reunions, usually held in the month of September, drew thousands to the events held in Bean’s Grove.  Dred Bean never charged a penny to anyone who used his grove during all of those years.  His only requirement was that people keep the place clean and help mow the weeds back.  Bean also frowned on the evils of liquor, so his grove was always “dry” regardless of the status of saloons in town.  By that early tradition, alcoholic beverages have never been sold in his grove.

            When Dred Bean passed away in 1913, the village leaders made inquiries to acquire Bean’s Grove as a village park.  The family offered to sell the grove to the village.  This move caused some considerable consternation among some folks in La Farge since Dred had never charged anyone for the use of his woods.  Finally in the spring of 1916, the good people of La Farge voted overwhelming in a special referendum to instruct the village board to purchase the woods on the hill.  La Farge’s new village park located in Bean’s Grove was officially dedicated that year at the 4^th of July festivities.  This year the grove hosted its 97^th 4^th of July Celebration as the village’s park.

            Because of its heavy use for gatherings of all kinds, bandstands and shelters were added to the park over the years.  Structures to host food stands, particularly for the 4^th of July, were constructed.  After World War II, the La Farge VFW members built a new cement dance bowery in the grove.  My recollections of the Village Park began soon after that.

            The Free Methodist Church moved their Sunday service to the Village Park on July 1 of this year, calling it “Church In The Park” and invited the community to attend.  The service was followed by a potluck dinner and drew an overflow crowd to the Village Park bowery.  I was sitting way in the back and could not hear Pastor Mark Phillips very well, so my mind started to wander back to my first remembrances of Dred Bean’s Grove.  (I felt kind of bad for not paying attention to Pastor Mark’s message, but then remembered how he sometimes didn’t pay the best attention to some of my history lectures back in the days when he was a student at LHS.  So maybe, what goes around; comes around?)

            My early memories of the Village Park revolve around the 4^th of July Celebrations and the Steinmetz family reunions, always held there the Sunday before Labor Day.  Those family reunions were immense gatherings at the time in the early 1950’s as my grandfather Emery Steinmetz and his siblings and cousins were all still alive.  All of “The Cousins”, which is what my Dad’s generation was called, would return with their families to the grove each year for socializing and a big family potluck picnic – the highlight of the reunion.  Oddly, I remember that there were large outhouses along the east edge of the park back then.  The outdoor privies were dark; foul-smelling places and the men’s featured a long metal trough urinal, which intrigued me to no end.  Romping around the park with my seldom-seen cousins in endless games of tag is a fond memory.  With so many trees to hide behind, Hide & Seek was another favorite game in the grove during those family reunions of over fifty years ago.

            My favorite memory of the Village Park is of those first 4^th of July celebrations when I was a kid.  Growing up in the village, I was always up to the park to check out preparations for the holiday, as the “grounds” were being prepared.  One year I helped Dick Trappe, who worked for the village, put up red, white & blue bunting for the celebration.  We wrapped it around trees and draped it on the bandstands and food stands.  A large American flag was hung on a wire above the bowery for people to dance under.  By the time we were finished on that Independence Day eve, the green arbor of the grove was adorned with red, white & blue everywhere.

            Another time, I helped Leo Smith, who was the village clerk at the time, to stake out where all of the carnival stands would be located along the park’s midway.  In those days the carnival midway ran from the top of the park, down both sides of the road that led to the bowery and on down nearly to the road that looped back to the entrance.  Leo had the stakes marked with the name and size of the carny stands.  As we pounded the stakes in the ground, my imagination leapt ahead to the thrill of playing the carnival games.  By late in the afternoon, the first carnival trucks drove up to the park and the tents of the carnival started to blossom along the midway.

            Somebody had to watch the park grounds overnight to keep mischief-makers from causing trouble.  Often the village would hire Cody Kidd to do that night watch of the grounds.  When dawn broke the next morning on the 4th, I was usually up early and begging my folks to let me head up to the park.  Once I reached the midway, my nickels and dimes just flew out of my pockets as I tried the carny games of chance.  I was always trying to win that nice large teddy bear, but it seemed the Chinese finger tortures and the “Made in Japan” statuary was all that I could come up with.  (One time I won a large garish clown statue, which I proudly presented to my Gramma Campbell as a present.  She smiled and accepted the fat clown of a gift, but I’m not sure she was too impressed with the thing.  It eventually found a home in the back of an out-of-way knickknack shelf on the back porch – far out of anyone’s sight.)  I was often dead broke by the time I traipsed back down the hill to go downtown and watch the parade and it was only 9:30 in the morning!  What was a boy to do?

            The parade always led everybody back up to the park right before noon and the picnicking would begin in earnest.  Before my Granddad and Gramma Campbell, Pearl and Isa, moved to town from up on Salem Ridge, our Independence Day picnic would center around wherever they set out their blanket in the grove.  Uncle Mike and Aunt Alice Lawrence and their kids were usually there as well and many others would drop by.  The gatherings for the 4^th of July picnics were rather fluid as old friends and former neighbors wandered around striking up conversations and reconnecting with folks not seen in awhile.  The food was always the best and someone always made some lemon pies – an old tradition on the 4^th.

            By the time dinner was done, I usually had begged or otherwise acquired a handful of change to lead another charge on the carny games.  If Chief Whitehorse was there, and he usually was, I would watch him handle his snakes and sell rattlesnake soap.  The longer the day went on, the cheaper the soap would get as Chief Whitehorse didn’t want to haul it all back to Madison.  I could listen to the Chief’s wonderful lingo all afternoon and sometimes did.  (Did you know that rattlesnake soap contained no animal fats as all other soaps did?  Learned that from the Chief and I knew he wouldn’t tell a lie!))   One year I was patient and ended up buying a whole armful of soap for fifty cents, which I was made to reluctantly share with family.  (Might have been my Mother’s attempt to square things with family after my earlier begging for money foray.)  For the next several weeks, I washed up more frequently than a small boy was want to and smelled of the Chief’s special and wonderful rattlesnake soap.

            Oh my – memories of Bean’s Grove – the coolest place in La Farge.  

The Ottevale Railroad

I was interested in reading the recent story about the reincarnation of the Ottervale Store taken on by the Alderson’s living up Husker Hollow way. There was a nice little article on the history of the store that was put together by Patsy and Kevin Alderson included in that issue of La Farge’s local newspaper. Reading the articles and looking at the many photos of the moving of the store building stirred memories of the story of the ill-fated railroad line from La Farge to Ottervale. As with many a tale told on the Kickapoo, it started with the best of intentions.

It was the winter of 1901-02 and by January the snow was piled so high as to scrape the telegraph wires running along side the Kickapoo Railroad line. In those days, when the snow was piled that high, folks stayed indoors more and gathered to talk at the stores on La Farge’s bustling Main Street. Sitting around the pot-bellied stoves at Chase Brothers Mercantile, Millard’s Store and Post Office or Pott’s Hardware Store, the local wags would pontificate on the latest news and gossip.

A story of interest all that fall and running into the winter was the decision by the Kickapoo Railroad officials to not extend the line north beyond La Farge. Original plans had called for the railroad line to continue north towards Rockton and Ontario, then on up the Valley and over the hill at Briggsville to Tomah. There it would connect with the main east-west rail line running to La Crosse. Good intentions indeed, but the Kickapoo railroad line was always short of funds and did not have the money to pursue expansion beyond La Farge, so the plan for extending the railroad line north to Tomah was scuttled. Although that decision left La Farge in the envious and financially lucrative position of being the northern terminus of the railroad line, some in the community saw a need for more connections to the outside world. Soon the idea of a branch line to bustling Ottervale was being bandied about.

With tongue firmly in cheek, the La Farge Enterprise newspaper came out strongly for the Ottervale branch line in its January 31, 1902 edition. An article on the front page of that issue, Railroad To Ottervale, outlined the positive benefits of the plan:

What is the matter with having a railroad from La Farge to Ottervale? For our part we can’t see anything of importance to hinder, and what little obstacles there may be in the way are not of enough account to prevent the carrying out of such an important project as this. The benefits to be received from such a road are too many and great to be enumerated here, but we will mention a few which we think will set at rest any doubts in the mind of the reader as to the advisability of the plan.

· 1^st It would make La Farge the junction of two of the most important railroads in Vernon County.

· 2^nd If Ottervale should ever happen to grow to be a large city like Milwaukee or Chicago it would be a great advantage to this town to have direct railroad connections.

· 3^rd If a gold mine should ever happen to be discovered over at Ottervale our citizens could go over there to dig and come back on the evening special and in this manner we could get rich without depopulating the village any.

· 4^th It would be of great advantage to La Farge to be the junction of two important railroads and might induce some large manufacturing establishments to locate here and help build up the town.

· 5^th If the railroad was successful we could build other roads out to West Lima, Muncie, Rockton and other points and make La Farge a great railroad center.

· 6^th The Enterprise could be carried to Ottervale by mail without taking it a whole week for it to get there as it does now.

We trust that there are none of our readers who do not yet see clearly the advantages of this road and we will go on to explain why we think the road can be built just as well as not. There is nothing as we can see lacking to build the road with except the money, but there is no use in getting discouraged for the lack of that when everything else necessary for railroad building can be found right in the village. A good set of officials can be picked out here and we would suggest the following persons as being, according to our best judgment, in every way capable and competent to serve as a good set of railroad officials:

Jonathan Gift President

M.O. Morris V. President

Dr. Butt Sect.

Dr. Gaines Treas.

G.E. Tate Train Master

J.H. Potts Engineer

H.C. Plimpton Fireman

R.P. Dalton Brakesman

D. H. Bean, Mike Ward, and Sam Hook could furnish the money. To show that we are in earnest and are willing to do our part we will agree to furnish the hot air for the airbrakes. If there is anything else necessary for building a railroad just let us know and we will find some way to get it. We hope that all those who wish to take stock in the road will get together soon and get the work started as soon as possible so that we can have it completed before all the snow melts away.

That mention of snow in the last line of the article was probably a key to the idea of the fictitious branch railroad running up Otter Creek. In an earlier issue of the Enterprise that winter, the correspondent from Ottervale had mentioned that the snowdrifts were packed so hard on the road leading to La Farge that you could drive a train over them. At around the same time, there was some grumbling about the deep piles of snow on La Farge’s Main Street, which made it hard to maneuver around with horse & sleigh or on foot. Somebody mentioned that they should haul the huge piles of snow out of town, so why not use them for a firm bed for the proposed new line running to Ottervale? The idea was hatched to lay the track of the proposed line across the firmly packed snow and within a week of the original article, a notation was made in the local newspaper that “stock for the Ottervale railroad was going as fast as pancakes & honey” and that William Riley would run the new railroad eating house.

Two weeks later in the February 21 issue of the Enterprise another article appeared titled Our Railroad. The article read:

“We found the following article with no signature attached in front of our office door one day the first of the week. As we first read it over a suspicion crossed our mind that the writer was trying to make fun of “our” railroad, but upon sober reflection we deemed it incredible that anyone could be so trifling and frivolous with the serious things of this life and so we concluded that the writer must have ment (sic) it all for the best but was probably not as well posted on railroad building as we are. Following is the epistle:

Mr. Editor: The Enterprise seems very enthusiastic over the R.R. to Ottervale, as the stock is nearly all sold and the balance will be well watered and the new road will be christened the U.C.& L.C.R.R. The grade stakes will be set as soon as the first train passes over the line. The tickets will be good on all divisions of the drop in and catch on line. The conductor will take up all passes by anyone not holding the same and the lucky person who holds a pass will be entitled to ride on foot or horseback from any place in the whole wide world clear up to Ottervale.”

The railroad to Ottervale wasn’t the only fanciful proposal circulating as winter turned to spring in the Kickapoo Valley in 1902. In the March 14 issue of the Enterprise, the following piece of local news appeared, “This is the time of the year when railroad building takes its usual boom. On of the latest railroad projects is to run an electric line from Union Center to La Farge, taking in the towns of Rockton, Valley, Hillsboro and Dilly. Hillsboro has long been wanting a railroad but the present scheme of running an electric line clear through to here originated with some of the men over at Valley who would also like a road for their town. It is said that all the businessmen in the towns along the line are in favor of it and they claim to be able to raise $100,000 among themselves toward carrying out the project.”

Alas, the electric line through Dilly was never to be (But at least we know where the idea for those postcards that showed a train line running down that little ghost town’s main street came from.), and alack, the line to Ottervale met the same fate. In the April 11, 1902 issue of the Enterprise a brief mention was made of the demise of the phantom line when it was noted that the Ottervale RR was abandoned due to not enough snow. Hot air will do that some times to even the best of ideas.

Although the idea of the mythical Ottervale Railroad had drifted away like the cigar smoke from whence it was hatched, the Kickapoo Railroad made plans to expand in La Farge. By later in April, the real railroad company was building side tracks to facilitate easier loading and shipping from the La Farge mills and stockyard, further positioning the village as a main transportation center in the Valley.

Later in the spring, Ottervale was dealt another blow when the U.S. Postal Department announced that the Ottervale Post Office. (probably housed in the store there) was being discontinued as of June 30. Mail would be hauled out to Otter Creek on a new rural mail route from La Farge after that date. It must have seemed as if the whole world was shrinking away from Ottervale, what with the loss of their post office and mythical train line. But good news arrived that November when Alex Hill, the owner of the La Farge Telephone Company revealed plans to string telephone lines out Otter Creek and up to Salem Ridge. By the following spring, Ottervale was connected to the outside world with the latest telephone communication devices. You win some and you lose some.