WATER THROUGH THE DAM!

KICKAPOO RIVER FLOOD OF 2008

            Volume II of my history of La Farge begins with information about the great Kickapoo River Flood of 2008.  The introduction of the book deals with how that particular flood somewhat delayed the publishing of Volume II and why that flooding event kept me occupied with other tasks besides writing.  Chapter 1 of the book is all about the flood itself and how the community reacted to it. As we have been doing with these recent columns, we also will look at how La Farge dealt with the aftermath of that great flood.  Let’s begin by looking at what I wrote about the flood of 2008 in Chapter 1 – titled A Flood For The Ages.

            The water started to cross Highway 82 at the low spot in the road near the river, just to the west of Nuzum’s and the Organic Valley cheese factory building. Roger Andrew’s flat to the north had filled with water during the early Sunday morning hours and was now spilling the excess water across State Highway 82.  Around the corner and going north on Mill Street, the water was starting to seep across that street towards Schroer’s sawmill.  Heavy rains from the day before in the Kickapoo Valley had accumulated to over a half a foot of precipitation or more in some places and those waters were rushing to the river.  It was Sunday, June 8, 2008 and the village of La Farge was beginning to feel the effects of what would become the greatest recorded flood in the history of the Kickapoo River.

            To the north, the flat empty land that had once been Seelyburg was covered with several feet of swiftly rising water.  The river had come out of its banks during the night and now the old lumber town’s Main Street was under water from Chapel Hill in the south all the way to the Star Cemetery hill north of the river.  Around the hill to the north, the covered bridge on the Kickapoo Valley Reserve strained against the floodwaters battering at its foundation and rising nearly to its roof.

            On County Highway P where Weister Creek enters the Kickapoo, the river was a quarter of a mile wide at Bridge 14 that morning.  Traveling north to Rockton, the talk in that hamlet was about the FedEx truck that stalled out in the rising waters near Cutoff Road on County P heading east towards Valley.  The previous evening, curious on-lookers and flood gazers had watched the floodwaters ascend on the side of the truck.  When darkness fell, the truck was still there surrounded in water that was door-handle high.  Then early on this morning, the first gazers noticed that the truck was gone and supposed that the terrible current had washed it away.  Only later did they realize that the truck was still there in the early morning light, only invisible as it was completely covered by the floodwaters.

            Word came upriver from Ontario that the village was in a state of shambles from the terrible floodwaters.  Reports started down the valley that the crest of the flood was the highest ever seen in the village, surpassing the high water marks of the 1935 and 1978 floods. “Prepare for the Worst” was the alarm echoed along the Kickapoo on that June morning.

            Back in La Farge the warnings were being heeded.  At Nuzum’s Lumber Yard, workers carried a variety of items upstairs in the old shed, as had been done so many times before during big floods. Across the street at the old cheese factory building, Organic Valley workers placed products up on shelves in the retail store and warehouse.  Earl Nelson and his crew moved trucks off the lots at the La Farge Truck Center and drove them to high ground.  The ambulances and fire trucks were moved from their garages located south of Main Street to the school parking lots on the high ground on the north side of the village.  An Emergency Command Center was set up at the schoolhouse and the Red Cross arrived to prepare a place for displaced people to stay in the school gymnasium.  The National Weather Service issued flood warnings along the Kickapoo, setting off preparations by Vernon County Emergency Management to help those people in the path of the flood.

            As the water continued to rise during the afternoon, many people were removed from their homes south of Main Street and taken to the shelter at the school where food and sleeping cots were available.  Most of the people living in houses south of Main Street had been busy all day getting what they had out of the way of the floodwaters.  Once again the floodwaters of the Kickapoo were cutting the familiar diagonal slash across the village as it had done before in the other great floods.  Heavy rains hit in the afternoon hours dumping nearly three inches of water on saturated ground.  Rain totals for the two days now reached eight inches, or a foot, depending on where you lived in the Kickapoo Valley.  All of the creeks soon roared out of their banks in the countryside around the village.  Water rushing off the hillsides washed a pickup parked along Jug Creek Road, located north of La Farge, into the nearby ditch.  Bear Creek’s raging waters closed County Highway D east of La Farge and washed two cars off the road there.

            During the evening the floodwaters in La Farge continued to rise at an alarming rate.  County Sheriff’s cars manned a blockade on the west end of the bridge over the river to keep traffic from entering the raging waters.  In town the waters had reached into the Heartland Cenex Co-op station parking lot, nearly up to the Post Office.  A vigil of emergency personnel maintained an overnight post on Main Street at the east end of the floodwaters.  Shane Nottestad, owner of the Zzip Stop convenience store/gas station, spent the night with other helpers steering floating logs, washed out of Schroer’s lumber yards several blocks to the northwest, away from the gas pumps of his business.  Lights shining out of the roiling waters showed one of the trucks at the La Farge Truck Center, parked on a display riser nearly four feet above the street level. Left there because it was hoped it would be above the floodwaters, the truck now seemed to be perched on the surface of a lake as the waters lapped at its tires.  Finally the water rose so high that the emergency electric generator, being operated two blocks south of Main Street, had to be shut down, plunging the village into further darkness.

            When light first came on that following Monday, June 9, the Kickapoo River at La Farge still stretched from the bridge on the west end of town to the Zzip Stop corner five blocks away.  The floodwaters had risen to record levels in the village during the previous night and had stayed that way for longer than ever before.  The only good sign that the bleary-eyed gazers saw on that morning was that the waters, slowly but surely, were starting to abate. Sometime in the early morning hours of darkness the crest had been reached and the river’s mighty flood had started to recede back towards its banks.  The recession of the river’s crest was a slow process that took most of the day.

            By Tuesday, the cleanup from the flood was in full force in the village. Volunteers poured into the village to help those returning to their flooded homes.  The flood had been the greatest ever recorded, with the National Weather Service gauging station at La Farge measuring a high water mark of 15.78 feet.  That level was nearly a foot higher than the previous highest level recorded in La Farge during the 1978 flood.  The effect of those record high floodwaters on the houses and businesses of La Farge was readily apparent.  There was so much water backed up in the offices of Nuzum’s that holes had to be drilled in the floor to get the water to drain out.  Across the street at the old cheese factory, the coolers and freezers of Organic Valley’s retail store and warehouse were badly damaged by the floodwaters.  It would take months to get that Main Street operation back to normal.  Further up Main Street at the La Farge Truck Center fire hoses washed away at the mud left by the floodwaters.  Piles of trash and debris started to accumulate on the curbs around the village.

            Homeowners who had rarely if ever had floodwaters before in their homes, now returned to see the devastation caused by the flood.  High water marks left on the walls were nearly two feet high on the first floor in some houses.  Nearly every house in the village south of Main Street had suffered some type of flood or water damage.  Mold grew on the floors and walls where the floodwaters had once been.  Many of the homes had suffered major damages and the extent was confirmed by touring village and FEMA officials.  After the inspections later in the week, eight houses that were most heavily damaged by the floodwaters were declared unfit to live in and condemned.  Eventually, more than fifteen houses in La Farge, damaged by the floodwaters, would be purchased from their owners with FEMA funds and demolished.

            Another casualty of the flood was the Burt’s apartment building located across Snow Street and to the south of the motel.  In the early hours of Wednesday morning, June 11^th, the La Farge firemen rushed to the building, which was totally ablaze.  It could not be saved and burned to the ground along with the contents of the three apartments.  The flood had inundated the apartment building, which was once the former La Farge Methodist Church parsonage.  The moisture from the floodwaters had damaged the wiring in the apartment complex.  When the power was turned back on, the wiring failed and caused electrical problems that led to the fire.

            The Burt’s apartment building was the first of nearly two-dozen residences that would cease to be on La Farge’s south side because of the 2008 flood.  Using FEMA and later DNR funds, many houses on south Mill Street, south State Street, Snow Street and Pearl Street were purchased from their owners and razed. The great Kickapoo River Flood of 2008 and a later, but smaller flood in 2010 sent people who owned homes near the river to higher ground.

            After the flood a new apartment building was built on Highland Street using federal grant money as a way of replacing some of the lost housing in the village.  A new Emergency Services Building opened in 2010 on the village’s east side to house the fire department and ambulance squad vehicles.  The building also serves as a village hall for meetings and elections. The Town of Stark relocated away from their flooded buildings on Main Street and moved to a new town hall building constructed on the dam site at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve.  About that unfinished water control structure north of La Farge, once again people were amazed and saddened at how much water can flow through an unfinished dam.

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If you would like a copy of Volume II of my La Farge history, send a $25 check (that includes shipping and mailing costs) to me at P.O. Box 202, La Farge, WI 54639.  Locally my books are for sale at the La Farge Episcope office, the bank in La Farge and at the gift shop at the KVR Visitor Center.    

            

            

Water Over The Dam - Part I

Where do we begin to describe the great flood of 2018?

            There are iconic scenes that will stick with us, recorded forever (hopefully) in today’s technology by anyone and everyone with a phone in their pocket or purse.  

            There is the video of the Red Angus bull standing in the middle of the bridge in Coon Valley with that “I’m here now and it’s a lot better than where I was before and nobody is moving me” look in its eyes. (What ever happened to that magnificent animal?  That question seems to be floating around a week after the waters subsided.)

            Then there is the photo of the highway sign in Ontario that alerts viewers that Highway 131 going to La Farge is a right turn. When the photo was first posted online, some people did not see the picnic table covered with flood trash sitting on top of the sign – indicating the record setting level of water in Ontario. A week after that record setting floodwater, Hwy 131 remains closed between there and Rockton as several bridge areas of the highway received significant damage from the floodwaters. Maybe that photo was trying to say that it would be no picnic trying to travel the road south to La Farge.

            For Viola, perhaps the enduring memory will be that waterline on the brick walls of the Iron Horse Saloon building on the village’s main Commerical Street.  The water line, with the water soaked red bricks below delineates the heights of the Kickapoo’s record crest in that town.  An after effect of the great flood for Viola is another cancelled “Horse & Colt Show” – the second time in three years.  (The 2016 Horse & Colt Show also had to be cancelled because of flooding – which was the first time in nearly 80 years of having to cancel the annual fall festival.)  That celebration is a homecoming for many and will be sorely missed.

            In La Farge, perhaps the scene captured of the yellow storage building located next to Nuzum’s floating in the middle of Highway 82 between the lumberyard and Organic Valley’s cheese factory building is the one to remember.  As the record setting floodwaters receded the building was moved into a spot in front of the car wash.  That building dates back to the railroad days in La Farge (The last train left town in 1939.) when railroad cars could be unloaded of their cargo into the storage building.  Now the concrete foundation piers where the shed sat are a historic reminder of the old railroad days in the Kickapoo Valley.

            The great Kickapoo River flood of 1935 was the beginning of the end (or perhaps the end of the end) for the Kickapoo railroad line. Despite efforts by village leaders in La Farge and other Kickapoo Valley communities to get some flood control measures through federal programs, the railroad was soon a thing of the past. That flood of 1935 was the standard for measuring flood events until the great flood of 1978, which was surpassed by the great flood of 2008, nearly topped by the great flood of 2017, and now has been eclipsed by the Great Kickapoo River Flood of 2018. 

            

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

            That old saying from over a century ago about flooding in the Kickapoo Valley was included in the prelude to Volume I of my La Farge history.  Already rumors are circulating about businesses in Ontario, Viola and Readstown that will not reopen because of the great flood of 2018.  People who lived in flood-ravaged homes along the river in towns from Wilton to Wauzeka don’t want to return to their former residences. How many people who lived in La Farge in 2008 and were affected by the flood left the village?  What will it be like this year?  Some people cannot return to their homes because the damage is so great.  Everyone is beaten down by the terrible floodwaters.  Morale is low for many.  This is the third straight year for bad flooding on the Kickapoo.  When will it ever stop?

            The recent 2016-18 flooding on the Kickapoo is eerily similar to the flooding of a decade past.  In 2007, 2008 and 2010, the Kickapoo Valley experienced bad flood events with the flooding of June 2018 being an all-time record setter until the most recent flood.  At the time, people of the Valley were wondering what was going on.  Was this climate change at its worst?

            At one of the Driftless Dialogue talks held at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve several years ago, a speaker from UW-Madison (we think it was Stanley Temple) discussed the causes and effects of the flooding in the Kickapoo Valley between 2007 and 2010.  The main thing that we took away from the talk was that the Kickapoo Valley could expect more of these flood events because of the changes occurring in weather patterns caused by climate change.  The unique and hilly topography of the Kickapoo Valley also was a factor in the intensity of the flooding.  At the time, I wasn’t sure if this theory about continued flood events in the Kickapoo Valley would prevail, but perhaps it is playing out right in front of us once again. 

            We will have to have more on this flooding on the Kickapoo next time.

The Great Kickapoo River Flood of 1978 - Part II

The Flood of 1978 started to recede in La Farge on Sunday, July 2^nd.  As the floodwater’s crest on the Kickapoo River moved downriver, the communities south of La Farge also felt the wrath of the flood.  Boats were the only mode of transportation on Viola’s Main Street, just as it had been for the floods of 1935 and 1951.  A partial dike system in Soldiers Grove failed during the crest of the flood there, devastating the downtown business district.  A new bank building in Soldiers Grove was nearly ripped in half, exposing the interior and the vault walls.  Almost every business and home in Gays Mills was inundated with floodwaters when the Kickapoo’s crest reached there.  Further downstream the villages of Steuben and Wauzeka also suffered heavy damages before the flood finally abated on Independence Day.  Every field of corn, tobacco, grain, and hay located on farms along the river from Wilton to Wauzeka were lost to the floodwaters.

In La Farge, the houses that had floodwater in them (some for the first time ever) included Gerald Anderson, Stanley Potter, Elmer Storer, Catherine Norris, Eva Clements, John Sokolik, Bob Sokolik, Ron Gabrielson (renting the JaDoul house), Reynold Waddell, Jim Campton, Gib Stevens, Harry Lounsbury, Ethel Burt, Maxine Kennedy, Bob Erickson, Lucille Yarolimek, Vera Campton, Bob Jacobson and Les Gillett.

Business places in La Farge that were inundated with floodwater included the La Farge Cheese Factory, Nuzum’s, Gary’s Texaco Station, Caucutt-Olson Plumbing, La Farge Epitaph newspaper, Jeffer’s Truck Sales, Kickapoo Antiques, Major’s Appliances and Nelson’s Garage.  Also suffering damage from the flood were the Town of Stark hall and shed, the La Farge village jail, and the new village hall and firehouse.

When Village President Ted Erickson met with state and federal officials a week after the flood, a list of 38 homes and 23 businesses in La Farge damaged by floodwaters had been compiled.  The total cost of the flood damage in La Farge approached $200,000.  That figure did not include agricultural losses located within the village, as several fields of tobacco and corn crops were lost to the flood.   

The school’s bus garage, located on Main Street in the old Fulmer’s Garage building suffered heavy damage from the flood.  The school buses had been moved out of the garage as the floodwaters rose and were kept in the parking lot at the United Methodist Church for nearly a week after the flood as repairs were made to the school bus garage floor.  Later, the school district also had more costly damages at the schoolhouse when a water main, weakened by the heavy rains, broke causing the elementary wing to be completely flooded.  

Floodwaters kept area roads and highways closed for days.  Water covered the old portion of Highway 131 at Seelyburg for nearly two days and caused major damage to the road.  (Whitey Barclay lost 27 pigs to the floodwaters at his Seelyburg farm.)  Highway 131 south of La Farge was closed for two days and almost one hundred yards of the highway were washed out below the new bridge at Lawton’s.  In addition, the sewer plant at La Farge was inoperable for more than 24 hours at the height of the flood and raw sewage was dumped directly into the river’s waters.  Many people boiled village water for drinking during the flood, but a DNR check on the village’s water supply on July 5^th indicated there was no contamination.

Interesting stories and happenings abounded in La Farge as people had varied reactions to the great flood.  What happened to Roger Andrew’s tractor was one such story.  Roger had cattle on pasture along the east side of the Kickapoo River.  As the floodwaters filled the pasture, the beef cattle soon clustered on a disappearing high spot.  Roger drove his John Deere tractor over to the stockyards east of Calhoon Park and started to drive through the floodwaters towards his herd of cattle, hoping to guide them back toward higher land near the old railroad bed.  However, the tractor dropped into an unseen ditch and stalled out.  Eventually, Roger had to be rescued by a crew in a boat and his tractor slowly disappeared under the rising floodwaters.  Ironically, the cattle ended up swimming across the swollen river and found high ground on the west side of the pasture.

That could have been the end of the story of Roger Andrew’s tractor except that a crowd assembled in the Lions Shelter at Calhoon Park had witnessed the attempted rescue.  Many people came to La Farge that day thinking that the opening day of the 4^th of July Celebration would happen.  Softball players and fans sat in the beer tent at the shelter (even though no beer was sold there) that day and watched as the tractor disappeared from view.  Soon a gambling pool was created as to when the tractor would reappear from the floodwaters.  Some time on the following day, Sunday, July 2^nd, the tractor reappeared and a local softball player was a little wealthier with his lucky pick in the pool.

Members of the La Farge Fire Department had a hectic couple of days because of the flood.  Many members of the department had been called out after midnight on Friday night, June 30, when a downed power line knocked out power to the village for four hours.  Members of the fire department helped to provide alternate generator power to people using sump pumps to keep water out of their houses or businesses on that first night.  Later that night, firemen went to the Rockton area to help look for canoeists camped along the river there.  As the flood waters descended on La Farge the next morning, all of the fire trucks had to be moved out of the firehouse on south Silver Street.  Because the floodwaters made Highway 82 impassable to the west, two fire trucks from Viroqua came to the west end of the Highway 82 Bridge in La Farge.  The Viroqua trucks and crew would respond to any fire calls on that side of the river.

However, that evening, July 1^st, tornadoes were spotted in the Viroqua area and the fire trucks and crew had to return to their hometown.  The La Farge firemen had to get a truck to the other side of the river.  Driving north with one of the fire trucks, La Farge Fireman Cecil Rolfe, looked for a way across the flooding river to get to the other side.  As he drove down 24 Valley Road, the roadbed, undermined by the heavy rains, gave way and the fire truck fell into a huge hole.  A wrecker had to be called to pull the damaged fire truck back to the village.  Many La Farge firemen remained on duty all of that evening after never having slept the preceding night.

The school gymnasium was used as a temporary shelter that Saturday night for some of the people displaced by the floodwaters.  Although finding cots for people to sleep on proved a problem, most people were happy to be high and dry on an air mattress with some warm blankets.  Other people who were chased out of their homes by the flood stayed in the KP Hall that night.  Many other people stayed with nearby family and friends.

Maxine Kennedy told me later that the Saturday of the flood in 1978 was the busiest day she ever had in her Main Street restaurant.  Part of the reason was that the A&W Root Beer Stand, that normally would have been open to serve food on that Saturday in July, was closed.  The popular root beer stand, owned by David and Kay Mick, had been struck by lightning during a weekend thunderstorm in mid-June.  The resulting fire caused considerable damage to the drive-in, so it wasn’t open to help feed the masses for the 4^th of July Celebration.

When the Red Cross workers arrived in La Farge late that afternoon on July 1^st, they immediately began handing out meal vouchers to be used at Kennedy’s Restaurant for people displaced by the flood and for the volunteers, firemen and other workers who were helping with the relief effort.  With the food stands not open at the 4^th of July grounds, all those visitors also stopped at Maxine’s for a sandwich as well.  Maxine had to close the restaurant early that Saturday night because she ran out of food.

The 4^th of July Celebration in La Farge actually did get going on Sunday, July 2^nd.  Some events, like the tractor pull had to be cancelled (it took several days to find that swept-away eliminator in Norwalk) while others, like the Men’s Softball Tournament were changed to only include twelve teams.  (Mt. Tabor Bar won the men’s tournament, while the team from Valley won the women’s.)  A new event, the Mini-Marathon Race, was run on an altered course through the village, avoiding the muddy streets where the floodwaters had been.

The carnival hired for the celebration had quite a time getting to La Farge.  Most of the carnival rides were mired in floodwaters at Wonewoc, where they were set up prior to La Farge.  Eventually most of the rides and carnival stands made it to La Farge by the 4^th of July.

The 4^th of July weekend in La Farge became even more bizarre when there was a shooting over that time.  A man from Illinois was driving erratically and squealing his tires on the busy streets of the village, causing concern among local residents.  Several local people stopped the car and the man brandished a pistol, which he waved threateningly at them.  The man then sped out of town in his car with several local people in hot pursuit.  The Illinois man crashed his car into the ditch near Don Potter’s house east of La Farge.  Again the man pulled out his pistol as he departed his wrecked vehicle.  Don (Moose) Getter, using a shotgun that was in LaVerne Campbell’s car then shot the man to disarm him.  (Moose was not a village policeman at the time.)  The man from Illinois, who did not suffer a life threatening wound in the shooting was taken to Viroqua by ambulance guarded by sheriff’s deputies and later moved to the county jail.      

Kayak Kraze on the Kickapoo!

It would be mighty unusual if you drove down Main Street of La Farge on any of these late summer days without seeing a kayak.  Now I realize there has been a kayak hanging in an advertising display at the Z-Zip Stop for several weeks of these summery September days of 2015.  But not counting that red kayak hanging above the gas pumps, you still would probably see a kayak hanging on top of a vacationer’s car or plopped in the bed of a pickup.  All of those kayaks are headed for the Kickapoo River for a summer c(k)ruise.  (Pardon the alliteration in use here. I just can’t help myself when it comes to this kooky Kickapoo kayak kruise kraze.  Again, I apologize.)

            It appears to me that the kayak has really caught on this summer as the new aquatic vehicle of choice for floating on the Kickapoo.  The kayak has been seen more and more frequently here in the Kickapoo Valley in recent years, to the point that now it seems to rival the canoe as the conveyance of choice for maneuvering on the waters of the Kickapoo.

            Maneuvering might be the key to the kayak’s upsurge in usage on our “Crooked River”, the Kickapoo.  The river is notorious for sharp turns, bottom-scraping shallow water, snags of all descriptions, fallen trees to twist around and numerous sand and gravel bars to traverse over and/or around.  This makes for difficult going for even the most experienced tandem paddlers in a canoe.  Indeed many a friendship or family fondness has been shattered by the cursing and screaming of “No, No, you idiot, paddle the other way!” and “Back up you imbecile, we’re now hung up on this snag!” 

With a kayak, it’s a simple right stroke here, back some water here, bring the rear around this way and one glides past the troubles in those roiling waters of the Kickapoo.  Beaming kayakers gliding gleefully past the marooned cursing canoeists, stuck on the snarling snags.  Life is good in an easily maneuvered kayak.

Cost is also a factor here in comparing the kayak’s continuing climb in popularity for use on the Kickapoo.  A brand new beauty of a kayak can be had for a couple of hundred dollars at area purveyors of plastic aquatic conveyances.  If you want to go top-end on your kayak purchase, doubling that amount will bring you a craft with all the bells and whistles like AM/FM radio, power windows and electro-magnetic depth finder plum-bob. 

So, canoes are less maneuverable and more expensive than kayaks.  Since canoes are larger than kayaks and generally need two to paddle, that’s a given, I guess.  But let us not too soon trumpet the ultimate demise of the canoe as the conveyance of choice on the Kickapoo.  After all, you must remember that kayaks have very little if any storage capability.  Since some groups of people who canoe the Kickapoo are very interested in floating along with the current while consuming adult beverages and snarling down salty snacks, the canoe’s ability to safely store coolers and such will probably always be needed. 

After all, fifty years ago, very few would have thought that the canoe could adequately navigate the tortured torrents and stupefying snags of the muddy river.  Indeed, native Kickapoogians avoided navigating on their river at all costs.  (I’m reminded of a story that Roy Stone told me years back of when he and a friend tried to float down the Kickapoo.  Then boys in their teens, the two set out from Rockton in a flat-bottomed duck boat to catch some trout.  When I asked Roy how the fishing had been on that trip, he guffawed and said there never was any time to fish.  The two lads had to spend all their time keeping the boat from going aground and getting caught up on snags.  As they were trying to float down the river, they had to portage around several huge blockages in the river caused by fallen trees and accumulated flood trash.  By the time that the weary boys climbed out of the river at Bacon’s Bridge just above La Farge several hours later, they had HAD IT with any thoughts of floating on the Kickapoo.  Years later, Roy related this story to me as we sat and consumed adult beverages in the Rockton Bar one Saturday afternoon and watched as a couple of dozen folks were heading out to canoe the Kickapoo.)

In May 1962, two canoes containing three men and three boys floated down the Kickapoo River from Rockton to Tunnelville south of La Farge.  The group of canoeists was from Pewaukee, Wisconsin and had canoed on many different rivers and streams in the state.  “They said they especially enjoyed the scenery in this part of the state and that it was one of the most beautiful trips they had made.”  The quoted sentence is from a front-page article in the May 31, 1962 issue of the La Farge Enterprise newspaper.  That’s right; for anybody to canoe the Kickapoo was so rare that it made front-page headlines in the local paper.

Later that year, Congress passed the bill authorizing the La Farge Dam Project and soon professors and students from Madison were canoeing the Kickapoo looking for rare plant species and archeological wonders.  Everyone enjoyed those voyages so much, they returned for more.  The word got out that a canoe trip on the Kickapoo could be a pretty neat thing.  Soon canoes were being rented out at the Beauti-View Resort in Wildcat Park near Ontario and at Smith’s Landing south of La Farge.  The canoe craze on the Kickapoo had begun.

Now all the main canoe livery businesses on the northern Kickapoo rent out kayaks as well as canoes.  The Kickapoo Yacht Club based out of Rockton has rented kayaks for a few years now and most weekends has them all rented out, as do most of the rental outfits at Ontario.  As the demand for the one-person float craft increases, more kayaks will need to be purchased as the Kickapoo Kayak Kraze Kontinues!

Canoeing The Kickapoo

The month of June has been a tough one for visitors to the northern Kickapoo Valley who are looking to do some canoeing on the river.  There has been so much rain over the past two months that has saturated the ground in these parts, that any rain amount in the last few weeks has regularly sent area creeks to bank full status.  So, Weister Creek, Otter Creek, Bear Creek and the other area tributaries empty their full loads of water into the Kickapoo and soon the river is bank full or even out of its banks.  With so much rain in June, the Kickapoo has been high all month and not much good for canoeing.

            I happened to notice a group of campers at La Farge’s Village Park on a recent Saturday morning.  All of the vehicles at the campsites seemed to have two or more kayaks or canoes piled on top.  With the heavy rain of Friday evening continuing into that Saturday morning, canoeing or kayaking on the Kickapoo became a risky venture and that group stayed in camp throughout the morning.  (Later on that Saturday, in the evening, fifteen canoes were stranded in the high waters between Bridges 6 & 7 north of Rockton.  Eventually, those people needed rescue from the high waters by local emergency personnel.)

            Today, canoeing the Kickapoo has become a recreational summer staple for locals and visitors alike. But when I was growing up in La Farge a half of a century ago, it was unheard of to attempt to canoe on the Kickapoo River.   What has brought about this transformation in the recreational use of the river?  What is different about the Kickapoo today that affords thousands of recreational and sport canoeists to travel on its silt-laden waters?  Let’s go back and take a look.

            Several years back I was sitting at the Rockton Bar with Roy Stone.  Roy had dropped in for a bottle of “medicine” and I was there for lunch and to find out what was happening in the world.  There were maybe twenty young folk, clad in t-shirts, bathing suits and flip-flops getting ready to take off on an afternoon canoe adventure.  As we watched the group prepare for their afternoon of paddling the Kickapoo, Roy offered a story about an experience that he had on the river when he was a young lad.

            Although he didn’t give an exact date, Roy’s adventure on the Kickapoo probably happened in the 1930’s.  He and a friend hatched up an idea to get a boat and go fishing on the river for some big trout.  Roy said that they knew the best fishing holes on the river were far off the highway, so drifting down the Kickapoo on a summer afternoon was the trick to reaching those big Rainbows.  Roy’s friend had a small flat-bottomed duck boat of sorts with a couple oars.  They figured it would be dandy for making the trip.  They would float down to La Farge, fishing along the way, fill up their gunnysacks with big trout and then catch a ride with someone coming back upriver their way.  Roy talked his Mom into making a lunch for the trip and the two Rockton boys were off on their fishing adventure on the Kickapoo.

            They put in below the Rockton mill and headed down river.  They immediately came to a fallen tree blocking the river and had to portage around it.  They no more got there little boat back into the water then they came to another blockage and had to do another portage.  And so it went for several hours as the boys did more carrying their boat than paddling it.  At some of the smaller obstructions, they tried to maneuver their little boat through the trash and snags.  More than once, their boat ended bottom side up in the water, dumping the passengers into the muddy waters.  Their lunches were lost and the fishing was forgotten.

By the time they reached the Star Valley flats, the two teenage boys were soaked and beaten and hadn’t achieved the halfway point in their trip.  They pulled and pushed their boat over and through numerous snags and fallen trees as they tried to float the meanders on the flat.  The banks were so steep in that section of the river, that the boys eschewed portages and virtually walked their boat down the clogged river.  Roy said it seemed like they pulled their boat for miles through water too shallow to float the little craft.  By the time they reached Bacon’s Bridge (the Reserve’s Covered Bridge today), they had all of the river that they could take and hauled their boat out.  Far from the village that was their original ending point, the boys sat glumly, beaten by the snarls of the Kickapoo.  Wet, tired, muddy, and forlorn, the two must have been a pair to behold.

Suddenly a Model – A pickup came putting down off Norris Ridge to the south and crossed the bridge.  It was a neighbor heading back up river.  He stopped and asked the boys what they had been up to.  When he heard their story of woe, he smiled and told them to get in.  The back of the Ford was full of ground feed, so the boat would have to wait for another time, so off they went, back home to Rockton.

Roy never did know how the boat was returned, nor did he care.  When I asked if they had caught any fish, he guffawed as only Roy could do and said they hardly had time to get a line in the water.  “We never caught a dang one,” is how I remember Roy telling it.  As we watched that day in Rockton as the young folk headed out to canoe the Kickapoo, he still remembered that awful afternoon on the Kickapoo from over seventy years before and wondered why anyone would want to canoe that river.

I grew up in La Farge nearly twenty years after Roy’s little adventure, but I remember no canoeing on the river of any kind.  It’s not as if we didn’t hangout on the river.  As a kid, we fished off the old dam at Seelyburg and dropped our worms by the power plant there.  We skated on Darrell Hollenbeck’s Slough next to the river in the wintertime.  I speared carp in that slough a couple of times – a Rite of Spring on the Kickapoo carried over from the old days.  My friends and I were in the Boy Scouts, so we did lots of outdoors stuff and activities, but we steered clear of canoeing on the Kickapoo River.

It wasn’t like we were adverse to the activity.  When Scout Master Harry Lounsbury took us up to Camp Decorah on the Black River, we learned canoeing skills on the lake at the camp and then took our canoes out for an afternoon trip on the river. It was great fun.  But we didn’t canoe the Kickapoo because, as Roy and his friend found out, it wouldn’t be great fun.

In Scouts we even built our own canoe! It was a project that the scout troop tackled in the garage of assistant Scout Master Arnie Widstrand.  We worked on assembling the wood strut frame and covering it with canvas as a winter project.  We admired our canoe in the spring, but didn’t take it out on the Kickapoo.  Harry loved to fish at Petenwell Flowage on the Wisconsin River over by Mauston and it seems to me that we took the canoe over there to use.  I don’t know what happened to that canoe – hope Royce Gudgeon didn’t take it out on the Kickapoo.

Kevin Alderson and his group of friends came through La Farge’s Scouting program soon after.  They also built a canoe, but I’ll have to tell of the fate of that craft in the next entry.  We’ll continue this paddle through the past about canoeing the Kickapoo next time.