CATCHING THE TROLLEY TO LA FARGE’S HISTORY

(This is the second part of a narration that was used on the trolley rides

 through La Farge as part of this year’s 4^th of July Celebration.  As we begin this second part of the town’s story for the tour, the trolley car is approaching the corner of Main and Mill Streets, heading south.)

            Looking across the back lot to our right, we can see the old cheese warehouse and the old railroad freight house.  The train depot was just to the south of these buildings, but that building was torn down and hauled away shortly after the last run of the Kickapoo Stump Dodger in August of 1939.

As we pause at this busy intersection of La Farge, we have one of the oldest businesses in town just to our right.  Nuzum’s has been operating in this town for over one hundred years.  Originally, it was located here to be near the railroad and back in the day, there was a branch rail line running into the big shed so that railroad cars full of lumber could be offloaded in the storage building.  Nuzum’s also had a big coal shed in the back lot when the railroad was running.  Across the street is the old cheese factory building, which up until the 1980’s was still processing cheese on location using milk from area farms.  Both the cheese factory building and the Nuzum buildings were finished in 1916, constructed as World War I was being waged far away from the Kickapoo Valley.

The cheese factory is now part of the Organic Valley presence in town and because the building once sat empty is why those first organic farmers came here in 1989.  They formed a co-op to market their organic farm products, calling it CROPP, and packaged products here for retail sales elsewhere.  Stop at the OV retail store located there for great buys on their products.  As we move down Mill Street, notice that most of the houses in this lower part of La Farge are now gone.  After the terrible flood of 2008, over twenty houses were purchased using FEMA and DNR funds.  Most of the houses were torn down and the people living in them had to relocate out of the floodplain of the Kickapoo River.  Some of the people stayed in La Farge, but many relocated elsewhere.

As we look at the old railroad bed to our right, we are coming upon the newest addition to our village’s extensive park system.  “The Kickapoo Stump Dodger Trail”, with historic signs and mowed walkways, will lead visitors along the river here.  Eventually there will be a new fishing pond here with a handicapped-accessible pier and places for family picnics.  This weekend, the brand new “Disc Golf Course” is being inaugurated and play will continue here throughout the day.

As we turn left and drive out Pearl Street here, we should remember the people who used to live here – family names of old – DeJean, Norris, Potter, Sokolik and other more recent ones – Rush, Campton, Walker and Clements – they all used to call it home.

As we stop here at State Highway 131, remember that this is place is the very beginning of the town, as Thomas DeJean had his original sawmill over there at the mouth of Bear Creek.  Thomas and his son Anson later converted it to a gristmill and it ran for several decades.  The DeJean family was the first family here in La Farge (arriving in the 1850’s), but back in the 19^th century, it was known as “The Corners”.  After Thomas Dejean died in 1877, this place came to be called “DeJean’s Corners” in his honor.

As we turn left onto Snow Street, the village’s root beer stand used to be on this corner.  It was open each summer for nearly half a century and many fond memories of root beer floats and “Brown Cows” still linger here.  Before that time, the Hotel Ward, La Farge’s largest hotel once occupied this corner until burning down in the late 1930’s.

This medical clinic building was constructed in 1962 after over $40,000 had been raised for the project through donations and fund-raising in the community.  The building was known as a Sears Foundation building and specifically designed for medical facilities in small rural communities.  Roger Gabrielson supervised its construction.  Dr. Connie Lee was the first physician to have a practice in the building.  Later, a wing was added for a dentist’s office and the medical clinic was further expanded in the 1990’s due to the increased number of patients being seen by Dr. Deline.  Dr. Rose Wels, the town’s dentist, has her practice in this front wing of the building and new tenants are planning to move into the space that was the medical clinic.

The old Burt apartment building, which used to be down the street on the left, where the new house has been moved in, was another casualty of the 2008 flood.  The apartment building, which was once the parsonage located next to the Methodist Church, sat in floodwaters for several days and when the electrical power was turned back on, the water-soaked and damaged wiring caused a fire that destroyed the building, and three more families were looking for a new place to stay.

To our left is the village motel, built in the 1970’s by then village president Dick Gabrielson and originally called the Lakeland Motel – designed to provide rooms for all those tourists visiting Lake La Farge.  To our right was once the home of the former “Enterprise” newspaper – La Farge’s town newspaper for 75 years, operated for much of that time by the Widstrand family.

The new post office here on our left is where the old fire station was at one time.  Before that it was Mac Marshall’s hotel, which burned down in the 1940’s during World War II.  Before the hotel was built, The Corners’ first school was here and Anson DeJean was the first teacher in that log schoolhouse. 

The hotel annex next door remained after the fire to Mac’s Hotel and that building was the site of the town’s post office for forty years.  The old brick-veneer building, one of La Farge’s first of that type, started to fall down a couple of years back.  Eventually it was torn down to make more parking for the Z-zip Stop, La Farge’s only gas station.  The brick building across the street that now houses some apartments was the first brick store building in La Farge – the bricks made out of clay taken from the banks of Bear Creek.

That’s the old Mars Theater across the street, built in 1947 by the Callaway family.  After the theater closed down, it was a bar for several decades beginning in the early 1970’s.  Now it is one of several second-hand stores in town.

On the left at the Indigo Thrift second-hand store is the former home to Muriel’s Variety Store and before that Jennie Adams’ variety store.  Across the street, where we used to have the Cash Store and the drug store, we now have a realty office and Sisters’ Place restaurant.

The hardware store building on the corner is the oldest in town, built be the DeJeans in 1875 and used as a general store.  Some type of business has been operating in that building for 140 years.  The lawyer’s office on the left was built in the 1890’s as a farmer’s co-op store.  Dred Bean, one of the original residents of The Corners, supplied most of the money for the construction of the store building.  When the railroad came into town in 1898, the Chase Brothers bought the building, modernized it and ran a mercantile store there for decades.  Later it was a grocery store, furniture store, second hand store, and feed mill.  When CROPP/Organic Valley expanded operations in La Farge in the 1990’s, they had offices on both floors of this building, as well as any other available vacant space for offices on Main Street.

As we drive down State Street, the old river road heading down to Viola, look to our left and we can see a couple of buildings constructed by Sam Green.  After Sam let the “La Farge” name and his post office move north to DeJean’s Corners in the early 1890’s, he followed and opened a store in the nearest building.  He eventually moved his general store north to Seelyburg and this building became the cobbler’s shop and shoe store in town for decades. 

Phil Stittleburg’s lawyer’s office located in this second store building built by Sam Green, now has been in the law business here at this site since 1899 and qualifies as La Farge’s oldest office site with a continuous business.  Previously, Alva Drew and Ralph Freeze had their law practices in this building.

Across the street, the turreted building was originally a general store built by Henry Millard.  His father, Oscar Millard, had the original general store in Ontario and Henry had come down the river to open a general store in booming Seelyburg.  He relocated to La Farge after the great Kickapoo River flood of 1899 badly damaged his Seelyburg store.  This store was also the site of the La Farge Post Office for nearly half a century.  Dr. George Chambers, La Farge’s dentist for many years, had his office upstairs in this building for many years and also became the postmaster when Henry Millard moved from town. 

This corner building on the right was an original Millard store building first located in Ontario.  In the early 1900’s, Millard had the Ontario store deconstructed, the building sections hauled down the old river road by teams of horses and then reconstructed here in La Farge.  Millard rented out the first floor to people for a variety of businesses.  The second floor became the meeting hall for La Farge’s chapter of the Knights of Pythias – the KP’s and their auxiliary women’s organization.  Eventually the KP’s took over the whole building and used it for meetings, events such as wild game feeds and pancake suppers and even as a place to shoot pool and play cards.  Recently, the building has been used for a second-hand store and as the headquarters for a motorcycle club.

Next time, we will finish this trolley tour through the history of our little town on the Kickapoo River.

A TROLLEY RIDE THROUGH TIME!

            This year as part of La Farge’s celebration for Independence Day, and in conjunction with the All-School Reunion, there were trolley rides offered on the afternoon of the 4^th of July.  I was on board to provide a little commentary on the history of the sites as we traveled through town – talking about the past, present and not too distant future.  For those of you who  couldn't hop on the trolley, here’s a little purview of the tour.

            Please remember as you read this; the story is being delivered in a trolley car full of folks on July 4^th, 2015.

            As we pull out of the school parking lot, notice the kids playing ball over at Calhoon Park.  It’s seventy-six years and counting for La Farge’s historic ballpark, which was recently featured on LaCrosse’s Channel 8 TV.  Built as a WPA project in the late 1930’s, the iconic ballpark has been home to ball games for kids of all ages for three-quarters of a century.  Don’t forget there’s an Alumni Softball game at five this afternoon and then the Icons vs. Legends game tonight at Calhoon Park.

            As we turn on to Mill Street and head north, view the childcare center and other buildings along this road.  I used to refer to these buildings as “Glennville”, because Glenn Alderman – a man who served La Farge as village president, constructed them back in the day.

            This large industrial building on the left was built in the 1970’s to house the Kickapoo Stoveworks factory.  Paul Bader’s BBR wood-burning stove, one of the best ever built, was constructed here by the thousands  (Paul told me that he wanted to build four of those stoves and ended up making 14,000”).  Organic Valley (OV) now uses the building as a warehouse.

            This area to our left as we turn off the highway used to be called Morgantown.  When there was a railroad in La Farge, the railroad workers lived in small houses here.  The Morgan family always had men working for the old “Kickapoo Stump Dodger”, as the train was called and many of them lived here.  That house, once the home of Jap Morgan, is the only original railroad worker’s shanty that’s left.

            We are heading down Seelyburg Road now and back into La Farge’s beginnings.  Chapel Hill Cemetery on our left is located where the first church in town was – a log chapel that housed the Methodist congregation.  Eventually, the Methodists built a new church a block off Main Street in La Farge and the old log chapel was sold to some Norwegian Lutherans, who moved it from here.  As we descend the hill, we are heading into old Seelyburg, the lumbering river town that has a history stretching back to before the Civil War.  This old river town that is no more is featured in the book, Ghost Towns of Wisconsin.

            The house on our right is the oldest in La Farge.  Originally constructed in 1865, it was the first wood-frame house built in the community.  Ed and Alice Nixon first lived here.  Alice was the daughter of Dempster and Juliette Seely.  Dempster Seely built a sawmill here and a town grew up around it. 

Back in the 19^th century this road was lined with businesses and houses.  Chauncey Lawton was an original founder of this place, which he called Star.  He had a store and law office here on the right, just before we cross the Kickapoo River.  If you look to your left, you can see some of the foundation of the original Seely house.  During the 1935 Kickapoo River flood, there was a dramatic rescue of a family from the second floor of this house.  That amazing story made headlines around the nation and began the federal government attempts to control the floods of the Kickapoo.

            On our right is the Star Cemetery, another of Seelyburg’s burying places.  It was also the site of an Adventist Church, which operated a grade school here until after World War I.

            As we turn here at the former Gale Huston mink ranch (now owned by his nephew Earl Nelson), notice Norris Ridge ahead of us.  This is where the federal government’s Corps of Engineers built the La Farge Dam to create Lake La Farge back in the early 1970’s.  The building with the red roof was to be the Corps maintenance building for the crew working at the dam.  The building with the green roof is the town hall for the Town of Stark.  It was constructed in 2012-13 to replace the old town buildings located on La Farge’s Main Street, that were damaged by the 2008 Kickapoo River flood.

            Notice the sign that identifies this place as once being the home of the Huston’s.  Those signs (This year, there are brand new signs made especially for the day) are put out every 4^th of July, when the Kickapoo Valley Reserve opens old Highway 131 so vehicles can drive along it from here to Rockton and know who used to live along the old river road.  The old river road now serves as a main trail for the Reserve, which is off limits to cars except on special occasions like today.  The road will be open the rest of the afternoon until 4 o’clock.

            As we again cross the river, we are reminded of a prior 4^th of July Celebration when La Farge’s famous “The Human Cork” performed his floating skills here.  That’s right, Bill Claybrook, La Farge High School Class of 1914 and known as “Non-Sinkable William”, gained national fame for his floating prowess.

            Looking up on the hill to our left, we see a new house built last year by Greg Lawton, a descendant of the founder of this forgotten little river town and the 5^th generation of Lawton’s to live here in Star or Seelyburg.  Beyond look at the green roof of the Organic Valley headquarters in the distance.  OV is the largest marketer of organic products in the world and had total sales of $992 million in 2014.  Organic Valley employs 400 people here in La Farge at the present time to help make all those sales happen.

            When Seelyburg was thriving back in the day before the floods washed it away, Dr. Amos Carpenter had his office and apothecary here. Dr. Carpenter was known for using Indian potions and medicines in his practice and each fall, the Winnebago (now Ho-Chunk) would stop and sell their natural medicines to Dr. Amos.

            This is the site of the last store in Seelyburg, owned by Sam Hook.  The popular storeowner died when his store burned down in 1917.  He was found floating in the spring-fed cistern in the store’s basement and that cement vault still lies over there in the weeds.  Everybody who lived in Seelyburg back then claimed that Sam was murdered most foully.  Alas, poor Sam could not call for help on that fateful night in 1917 because he was a deaf mute.

            That is new State Highway 131 to our left.  This road was put in to go around Lake La Farge and replace the old state highway, which we were just on.  When the dam project was stopped in 1975, the community, as a way to protest, held a mock funeral here in town for Senator William Proxmire.  An effigy dummy of the senator, riding in a manure spreader pulled by two jackasses, took the funeral parade up to the dam site where the dummy was thrown down toward the river.  Reverend Red Alderson intoned, “Ashes to ashes; dust to dust.  Lord, give us a senator that we can trust.”  La Farge once again made national headlines. 

            Looking up at the school building, the old two-story 1901 school building is at the center of a current struggle by the people of the school district as to what to do with the ancient structure.  Do we tear it down, since it has outlived its usefulness as a school building, or do we convert, retrofit or restore it for other uses for the community?  That is the question.

            The story of how La Farge got its name is an interesting one.  Because of the names derivation, many people like to make a connection with the early French fur trappers, who plied the Kickapoo trading for furs with the Winnebago.  That would be a good story, and another is that the name was chosen because there is a place to ford the Kickapoo River here.  The French la farge fits with the proximity with the river.  Another great story, but alas, the name La Farge was simply picked out of a book supplied by the U.S. Post Office.  A young girl, blindfolded for the process, ran her finger down the page and stopped at La Farge.  This took place at Sam Green’s place, a mile south of town.  That was the first La Farge post office; now it’s the Green Apple Inn B&B and the owner serves organic breakfasts.  What a connection between the past, present and future of this town.

            As we approach the new VMH medical clinic on our left, it’s important to remember that this is the site of the last sawmill in La Farge.  Schroer’s Hardwood Lumber ceased sawing operations here in July of 2013 marking the first time in the 150-year history of the town that La Farge did not have an operating sawmill.  The new clinic will have three doctors and a pharmacy as well as two birthing rooms.  Dr. Jim Deline has been delivering Amish babies for decades and his renowned research on Amish health issues will continue in the new clinic.  The new clinic is hosting an Open House for the public until three this afternoon. 

La Grippe

Last week it was reported that this winter’s version of the influenza had claimed its first life in Wisconsin – a twelve-year old girl from Milwaukee.  That is truly tragic news to hear.  Wisconsin seems to be one of the states in the country that has the influenza breaking out in epidemic proportion and the Kickapoo Valley has not been spared from that outbreak.  The medical clinic in La Farge has been jammed for several weeks with people seeking relief and remedies from the dreaded influenza.  In olden days, they called the disease “La Grippe”.

            One of the downsides of researching through the history of La Farge has been to chronicle the effects of disease, disaster and destruction of various sorts in the community.  Great floods of the Kickapoo River stand like signposts when navigating through the history of this little river town.  Those disasters of Mother Nature provide dividing points in telling the story of this town.  (Think how the village has changed since the great flood of 2008 as the most recent example of this.)

            As one leafs through the pages of old newspapers that help to tell the story of La Farge, the mentions of the winter sicknesses like influenza are all too common.  At its very beginning, the village endured the ravages of the illness.  In the January 20, 1899 issue of the La Farge Enterprise, it is noted that, “everyone has la grippe”.  The use of that term, “la grippe” is interesting in itself.  Its use is probably derived from the earlier lumber camps that were located in the northern part of the Kickapoo Valley.  The derivation of the word is French-Canadian, which again would possibly tie it to the men who were populating those early lumber camps.

            The men in those lumber camps were housed in barracks of a kind that could foster the spread of a disease like influenza or la grippe.  Virtually stacked on top of each other for sleeping arrangements and usually eating from a common serving vessel, the spread of disease and illness was almost guaranteed.  The sound of the morning cough of the men in the camp was legendary and was a signal for other, more healthier sorts to stay away.

            In the first decade of the village of La Farge (1899-1909) mention is made nearly every year of an outbreak of la grippe or some other influenza type illness.  “La Grippe is back in town” led the local observation of the March 11, 1909 issue of the Enterprise.  Of course in those days there were no flu shots to help mitigate the ravages of the flu.  (Although I can personally attest that the 2014-15 version of that flu inoculation did not mitigate the effects of a certain strain of this season’s influenza.  My constant cough of several weeks has become a factor of recognition, as in, “Oh there’s that awful hacking cough, that must be Brad!)

Tragically, death from disease was often the final chronicle for some in those early years of research.  The report of a death from the influenza, or whooping cough, or croup was almost a weekly occurrence in those newspapers from that time.  In a 1905 issue of the La Farge newspaper, mention is made of a six-month old baby succumbing to membranous croup, a childhood upper respiratory illness associated with diphtheria.  Whooping cough was another deadly disease for the young during that time.  The whooping cough could become so virulent that quarantines and other isolating measures would be used to thwart the spread of the deadly disease.  Doctors in the village would post warning signs on the front doors of houses where the disease was rampant, warning others to avoid contact with the inhabitants.  The local school in La Farge was shut down for a week or two at a time on more than one occasion during this era to stem the effects of these winter illnesses.

In one year during this early decade of La Farge, the village president, acting in concert with the local doctors, cancelled a much-anticipated dance, which was to be held at the Opera House.  The members of the band that was to play for the grand winter ball were from Viola, which was apparently rife with whooping cough at the time.  So to avoid the threat of infection from the downriver community, the dance was called off.  Of course, this action did not sit well with the people of Viola, so in that town’s newspaper a scathing article was published the following week that rebuked the La Farge officials for impugning their fair town (Viola) as a center of disease and pestilence.

Of course, back in those days, there was a train chugging into town every day.  The old “Kickapoo Stump Dodger” delivered all sorts of goods and products to the businesses and farms of the community.  There were also usually some passengers on the daily train – often salesmen coming to La Farge to peddle their wares.  One can imagine of the various ills and maladies also accompanying those traveling salesmen when they came to town.  Spreading la grippe, the Kickapoo Croup and other winter illnesses would have been part of the convenience of La Farge being connected to the outside world via its rail line.

One of the saddest findings in my research dealt with the death of the teenage daughter of Henry Millard.  I believe she was only thirteen-years old when she succumbed to one of the winter influenzas of that time.  She was a very popular girl in the village.  Her Dad owned a general store and operated La Farge’s post office out of the same building and she often helped people with their purchases and picking up their mail.  She was a daughter of La Farge’s Main Street and her sudden passing shocked the community and devastated her parents.  It was said that Henry Millard and his wife never got over their lovely daughter’s passing.  Eventually, the store was sold and the Millard’s left the community that they had called home for so many years.  They left to escape the painful memories of the loss of their beautiful little girl.

Stay healthy during this winter flu season my friends.

More Travers Building History

(This blog entry is a continuation of a story started last time about a building on La Farge’s Main Street.  Built in 1899, the brick veneer building was originally called the Travers Building after its owner Art Travers.  Travers and others operated a variety of business places in the store building during the first twenty years of its existence.   We continue the story of the Travers Building with some of its more recent uses as a hotel annex and the village’s post office. – BDS)

            In its most recent history, the old brick building next to La Farge’s busy Z-Zip Stop convenience store/gas station has been the home to a real estate office, Hometown & Country Realty.  For a few years before that, it was the home of a restaurant for a while.  Both of those types of businesses were reincarnations of former enterprises carried out in the building’s first-floor retail space.

            For over forty years, from 1950 until 1991, that space was occupied by La Farge’s Post Office.  There is an entire generation or two who grew up in the community who will always remember the brick building as the post office.  For much of that time, Mac Marshall Jr. was the postmaster in La Farge, working in a building that his family owned.  There were usually one or more members of the Green family working at the La Farge Post Office in that building as well.  Lester Green was the postmaster in 1950 when the post office was moved from its former location on south State Street (across from the lawyer’s – Ralph Freeze at that time - office).  Lavern and Willard Green also had rural mail routes and for many years worked out of the post office in the brick building, that previously had been known as the Hotel Annex.

            The brick building became part of Mac Marshall’s hotel in the early 1930’s.  Mac’s Hotel was located on the corner lot, two doors east of the brick building (which was still then known as the Travers Building).  Mac’s became La Farge’s only hotel when the Curry Hotel (the old Hotel Ward located on the corner lot which is currently a parking lot for the La Farge Medical Clinic) burned down in June of 1929.  At that time there was still a strong demand for hotel rooms in La Farge.  Teachers who taught at the school in La Farge would often rent rooms in the hotels in town during the school year.  (Fred Mercer, La Farge’s agriculture teacher and coach, was staying in the Curry Hotel when it burned down in 1929.  Mercer, who still lived in Wauzeka at the time, lost all of his possessions except the clothes on his back in the fire.)  Railroad workers also stayed at the La Farge hotels, indeed it was a man named Cox, who was a conductor on the Kickapoo rail line, who first discovered the fire at the Curry Hotel.  There were ten guests at the Curry Hotel on the night that it burned down.

  Mac Marshall needed more hotel rooms, so he purchased the Travers Building to meet that need.  (One source said that Mac bought the property from C. E. Yeomans, who had purchased the Main Street building from the Travers family.)  They called the new acquisition the Hotel Annex and moved the dining room from the basement of the old hotel building over to the first floor of the Annex building. 

Mac’s Coffee Shoppe, as the dining room/restaurant was called then, was a going place in the community.  Besides offering guests in the hotel hot meals three times a day, the hotel’s dining room was also a bakery with homemade pies, doughnuts, cakes and cookies for sale.  A 1929 advertisement in the La Farge Enterprise for Mac’s restaurant also listed candy bars and box candies; tobacco, cigars and cigarettes; and ice cream, soft drinks and fresh fruits for sale.  The ad finished with “School students and Farmers especially welcomed”.

The Hotel Annex dining room was a very busy place in those days.  Mary Lee Muller shared some memories with me about the hotel’s dining room.  Her mother Anna Norris and Maggie Potter were cooks in the hotel dining room and that dining room would be filled with customers during the busy dinner and supper hours.  (Mary Lee also related an interesting story about another of the cooks at the hotel.  Alphreda Lawton cooked at Mac’s and was also a midwife who helped deliver babies in the La Farge area.  One night, Georgia Evans, who lived on the family farm up on Maple Ridge, had to hook up the horses to the family buggy and race down the hill to Seelyburg and then to La Farge to get Alphreda to come help with Georgia’s mother’s birthing.  Then it was a quick ride back to the Evans’ place where Georgia’s baby brother, Pete, was brought into the world.) 

The men who worked for the railroad always ate at the hotel, as did many men who operated businesses on Main Street.  Mary Lee could remember Tony Novy, the village’s blacksmith and Dr. Frank Gollin sitting at the same table each day for lunch.  There were no lunches served at the school at that time, so teachers and students alike would hustle down to the hotel during their noon hour (which really was a full hour back in those days) to eat their lunch.  The hotel’s cook stove was usually going before five in the morning, as the baking had to be done before breakfast was served.  Besides the hotel guests, many people coming into La Farge for work would catch breakfast in the hotel dining room.

 The apartments on the second floor of the Annex building were converted into hotel rooms.  Maxine Shird, who grew up in her folk’s hotel on Main Street, said that the rooms in the Annex were usually reserved for the railroad workers who needed a place to stay.  She said there were usually three or four railroad men staying at the hotel during the week.  When the Kickapoo Stump Dodger made its last run on August 15, 1939 and the railroad buildings and tracks were pulled out of La Farge later that fall, Mac’s Hotel lost some steady customers.

Mac’s Hotel building burned down in 1942 – it was the last hotel in the village.  The Major’s Feed Store building, which was just to the west of the hotel, was burned out at the same time by the hotel fire, but the Annex building survived.  Although the hotel business would not be revived, Mac Marshall continued to rent out the upstairs rooms in the Annex, which were later reconverted back to apartments.  The dining facilities were also rented out and a restaurant remained in the first floor space throughout the 1940’s.  In September of 1950 when that space in the Annex was converted for use as a post office, the Bluebird Café, which had been operating there, moved across the street to the Tony Novy building, located on the northwest corner of Main and Silver Streets.

At a meeting of the La Farge village board held on April 22, 2013, it was decided to order that the old Travers Building be razed and the demolition material from the building moved off the property.  Negotiations are under way for that order to be executed, but neither the building’s current owner, who is in bankruptcy proceedings, nor the lien holder on the building want to incur the responsibility and costs of the demolition.  The village has issued a “Notice And Order To Raze And Remove” and wants the building taken down within a week of the notice.  Regardless of how it happens, the end of an old building in La Farge is near.  The last of the five buildings on the old Central Hotel block will be gone.