1968 - PART II

As mentioned previously, nothing had a greater impact on America in 1968 than the escalating war in Vietnam.  When the North Vietnamese launched what became known as the Tet Offensive in late January of that year, everything changed for the American military forces already in the Southeast Asian country.  

            In an issue of the La Farge Enterprise from December of 1967, Rudy Hamilton, LHS Class of 1965, had written home from Vietnam thanking everyone for writing him letters and to keep them coming.  After the Tet Offensive began a month later, it was learned that Rudy was in Khe Sanh, where some of the heaviest fighting was occurring.   In early February, Larry Booher, with many connections to La Farge, was listed as wounded in the fighting in Vietnam.  Todd Muller, Gary Climer and Danny Thayer all sent messages home about also being in the thick of the fighting.

            In the March 14^th issue of the Enterprise, publisher/editor Arnie Widstrand, a World War II veteran, wrote an anti-war editorial, specifically aimed at the way that the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson was handling the war effort.  A week later, word was received that Dean Dalberg, aged 19, had been killed in Vietnam.  Dalberg grew up on a farm on South Bear Creek and was a 1966 graduate from Kickapoo High School.  He was the first soldier from Richland County to die in the Vietnam War.

            La Farge received more shocking news that year when Dr. Connie Lee, La Farge’s only doctor, announced that she was leaving La Farge and the last day of her practice would be August 3^rd. Village leaders scrambled to replace Dr. Lee and Bernice Schroeder was named to head up a doctor procurement committee.  Later, it was learned that the La Farge Medical Clinic Corporation was broke and people were asked to pay off their pledges for the clinic as soon as possible. 

            Good things were happening at the school in La Farge in 1968.  The high school’s enrollment was 145 students for the 1967-68 school year.  The school also was undergoing several changes in programs during the year.  Albert Oaklief continued to be a dynamic superintendent for La Farge Schools.  Mr. Oaklief volunteered to coach grade-school basketball on Saturday mornings as he had done for years.  He also was moving the school towards new programs and in March hosted a meeting for those interested in becoming Para-educators at the school.  After months of negotiations with federal and state officials, Mr. Oaklief announced in late November that the school at La Farge would soon have the first Talking Typewriter in the state of Wisconsin.  The new state-of-the-art machine would offer a variety of programs to improve student’s reading skills.     

            At La Farge High School, several awards were handed out in February when Peggy Gabrielson was named the winner of the DAR Award and Peggy Steinmetz received the LHS Homemaker Award.  On the basketball court, the LHS boys were knocked out of the Kickapoo Valley Conference title chase with a loss to eventual champion Barneveld.  (Yes, I know that Barneveld is a long way from the Kickapoo Valley, but that’s the way it was back then.  The conference, on its last legs, consisted of Seneca, Wauzeka, Ithaca, Barneveld, Hollandale and La Farge.)  The Wildcats finished with a 7-3 mark in KVC play, good for second place and John Smith and Dick Campbell led the team in scoring.  In wrestling, Frank Meseberg’s 12-4 mark led the Wildcat team.  The LHS Wrestling team’s highlight was a 29-28 victory over archrival Kickapoo during the season.

            After the winter sports season concluded, LHS students Lahna Kellogg and Jane Wenzel wrote a history of La Farge’s participation in the Kickapoo Valley Conference, listing the top LHS championship teams over the years.  La Farge Wildcat teams would be moving to the Scenic Central Conference after the 1967-68 school year.  In March, the LHS Forensics Team won the KVC Championship, defeating teams from Seneca and Wauzeka.  Later, six from the LHS forensics team would qualify for state competition.

            The French Fair was held at LHS on April 5^thwith proceeds from the event used to pay for students taking a trip to Washington D.C.  Later in the month, twenty-seven LHS students in the French Club and FHS made the trip to the nation’s capital.

            The LHS Junior Prom with a theme of “Summer Rain” was held in late April.  Sarah Widstrand and Phil Gudgeon were named royalty for the prom.  After the dance, the parents of Junior Class students hosted a post-prom party in the school lunchroom.

            LHS Senior Simon Widstrand was named a National Merit Scholar in April, one of only 400 students so honored in the country. Accompanying the prestigious honor for Simon was a 4-year scholarship to the University of Wisconsin in Madison. 

            The LHS band, under the direction of Marlin Pendleton took a first in Class B concert competition at the music festival held in LaCrosse in April.  Later, LHS musicians Dean Steinmetz with a cornet solo and the trombone trio of Phil Gudgeon, Jim Looker and Monte Muller won gold medal firsts at the State Music Festival held in Eau Claire. 

            The La Farge track team repeated as KVC champs at the meet held at Kickapoo High School in May of 1968.  The LHS baseball team did not play in the spring season, also for the second year in a row, instead playing their games during the WIAA’s new summer season.

            The end of the school year was highlighted by the graduation of the 32 members of the LHS Class of 1968.  Simon Widstrand was valedictorian of the class and Sherri Nemec was salutatorian.

            As was usual then, the last day of school was held on Memorial Day so students could participate in the parade.  The parade went from the schoolhouse down to Main Street and then west to the IGA grocery store.  School buses waited there to transfer everyone out to the Bear Creek Cemetery for the VFW & Auxiliary Memorial Day services.  The services included a roll call of veterans buried in the cemetery and the placing of flags on wooden crosses bearing their names. The LHS band played for the service, which concluded with the playing of “Taps”. 

            Some developments with the La Farge Dam & Lake Project would soon have a lasting impact on the school district as well as the rest of the community.  In July, the Army Corps of Engineers sought bids for a title firm to handle the purchases of property for the La Farge project.  A month later, a title company from Wichita, Kansas was chosen for the job. Later the Corps sent out letters to landowners in the project area with a notification of a meeting about the land acquisition process.  That meeting was held in November with over 300 people in attendance in the LHS gymnasium. At the meeting, the Corps officials explained the process for the land acquisitions and said that negotiations for the first land purchases (those properties at the dam site located just north of La Farge) would begin before the end of the year.  Many people left the meeting that night with worried expressions on their faces. 

            A few weeks later, one of the first properties affected by the Corps’ dam project purchases, the Gale Huston mink ranch, suffered a devastating financial blow when a utility building burned down on the farm and 7,000 mink pelts were lost in the fire.

            As 1968 came to a close in La Farge, Santa Claus visited the village on Saturday, December 21^st to hand out bags of candy and nuts to youngsters eagerly waiting in the village parking lot.  The La Farge Post Office was open the next day, a Sunday, to handle late Christmas mailings.  As usual, the old year was rung out with style in the little village on the Kickapoo River and happy shouts heralded in the New Year of 1969.   

AGAIN, THE PEOPLE REMEMBER!

Every once in a while, something happens in this little burg on the Kickapoo that makes a person proud.  Yes, we Kickapoogians have our faults, which can often cause us to be cast in a less than pleasant light.  Then, lo and behold, the local folks will band together for a particular cause, carry it through with appropriate gusto and élan to such a degree, that it makes everyone puff up with pride.   So, let’s take a look at something that has transpired in the last few months regarding the lands of the Kickapoo Valley Reserve.

            Yup, We have trouble right here in River City and it starts with a capital “C” as in a controversy once again concerning the “government land”.  That damn “dam land” has risen up another time to capture the headlines of the local press.  Most of us denizens of the upper Kickapoo Valley had thought that the issues associated with the land taken by the federal government for the La Farge Dam & Lake Project were put to rest some fifteen years ago when the land was legally transferred over by the Feds to state control.  Since then, the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, which was created from that “government land” (This was a local name bestowed on the dam project lands during that time starting in the 1970’s when the dam project was in legislative and bureaucratic limbo for nearly thirty years as the powers to be tried to figure out what to do with the nearly 9,000 acres.  That name for the property is not heard nearly as often in these parts as it used to be.), has grown into one of the most popular public lands in southern Wisconsin.  Tens of thousands of people use the Reserve every year to hunt, hike, bike, fish, camp, canoe, ski, bird watch, and cool out.  Thousands of school children from all over western Wisconsin come to the Reserve each year to hike its trails, learn about the wonders of nature and become aware of the history of the land.

            So what could possibly interrupt this idyllic transformation for these Kickapoo Valley lands from a bad situation into a good one?

            Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker introduced his proposed state budget to a joint session of the state legislature on Tuesday evening, February 3^rd.  It was a snowy evening in Madison and there was also a Badger men’s basketball game at the Kohl Center that same evening that I was attending.  The combination of the snowy and slippery streets, the crowd coming in for the UW basketball game and the Governor’s budget address made for a traveling gridlock for people driving into the Downtown Madison area.  By tipoff time for the Badger game, more than half of the seats were still empty – an extremely rare occurrence.

            Eventually the snow stopped and the streets were plowed and salted.  Bo Ryan’s Badgers played superbly in dispatching an over matched Indiana team by a score of 92-78. By halftime of the game, the Kohl Center was packed as usual.  Everything returned to normal except for that pesky budget presented that evening by Governor Walker.

            By the time that we had returned home from Madison that evening, my e-mail started to fill with messages about a particular provision in the Governor’s budget.  That policy provision (always a bad deal when included in a budget bill, but Walker isn’t the first Governor to do it) called for a change in the administration of the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, moving it from the Department of Tourism over to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR).  The Governor’s proposal for the Reserve caught everyone by surprise.  Neither the staff nor the management board of the Reserve had been consulted.  The Ho-Chunk Nation, which jointly manages part of the Reserve, knew nothing about the proposed change.  Even the DNR, the state agency designated to administer the Reserve in the Governor’s proposal, was unaware of the proposed change.   

What was apparent with the proposal was that it had been included in the budget by Governor Walker without proper communication to those most directly affected by the change.  Soon a strategy was developed to voice opposition to the proposal.  To provide some historical perspective to the story of the lands involved in the Governor’s proposal, I wrote a letter-to-the- editor and sent it off to a few area newspapers.  I titled the letter, “Walker’s Proposal a Slap In The Face to the People of the Kickapoo Valley”.

  In the letter, I wrote,

“The recent proposal in Governor Scott Walker’s budget to transfer administrative control of the Kickapoo Valley Reserve to the state DNR caught nearly everyone by surprise.  The move by the governor was obviously done with little thought to the complex and troubled history of these lands.

            In the early 1990’s, a move was made to return the nearly 8,600 acres of land purchased by the federal government for the failed La Farge Dam Project to the State of Wisconsin.  Governor Tommy Thompson, State Senator Brian Rude and Assemblyman DuWayne Johnsrud (all Republicans) worked to involve the people of the Kickapoo Valley in that process.  A committee of local citizens met with Al Anderson from UW-Extension to see what could be done with the huge section of land located north of La Farge.  Meetings were held throughout the Kickapoo Valley to hear from the people.  Overwhelmingly, the people demanded that the property NOT be controlled by the DNR.

Eventually the Kickapoo Valley Reserve was created by state statute and the property was administered by the Department of Tourism.  It has since developed into one of the most popular public lands in southern Wisconsin.  It draws tens of thousands of horseback riders, hunters, hikers, campers, winter sports enthusiasts and others to the northern Kickapoo Valley every year.  Thousands of students and adults participate in the Reserve’s education programs and special events each year.  This excellent public use of the lands has developed as the people of the Kickapoo Valley had hoped.

            Yet, Governor Walker now wants to turn the administration of the Reserve lands over to the DNR – an agency that he also guts of nearly 70 job positions in his same budget message.  Due to the governor’s enforced under staffing the DNR cannot manage the lands that it now oversees.  How will the DNR administer the proposed new lands of the Reserve – one of the largest areas of public land in southern Wisconsin?  Chaos and mismanagement can be foreseen.  More importantly, why did the governor go against the wishes of the citizens of the Kickapoo Valley with this “Slap in the Face” move?  Perhaps he was too busy being out of state courting his billionaire campaign backers for his presidential bid?  He obviously wasn’t studying the history of the Kickapoo Valley.

            This shortsighted blunder by the governor can be stopped by the legislature.  If you would like to see that happen, contact Assemblyman Lee Nerison and State Senator Jennifer Shilling to get them behind the opposition to Governor Walker’s insult to the Kickapoo Valley.  Act now before it is too late!

            My rhetoric was a little fiery and over-the-top perhaps, but I intended it to rally some outrage over what the governor was proposing.  It may have worked.

            Within a week the letter had been printed in newspapers from Baraboo to LaCrosse.  Soon it was posted on various Face Book pages and the message spread throughout social media.  I was hearing from both old friends and people that I had never met about how to help save the Reserve.  Phone calls and e-mails poured in.

  On Thursday evening, February 19^th, the Management board of the Reserve met with Rep. Lee Nerison and Sen. Jennifer Shilling to see what could be done.  It was standing room only that night at the Reserve’s Visitor Center as 150 people crowded in to see what they could do to oppose the governor’s proposal.  Both of the elected officials in attendance pledged their opposition to Governor Walker’s proposal and instructed everyone to contact the members of the Legislative Joint Committee on Finance and tell them to pull the proposal from the budget. 

The rallying cry was heard and the people responded.  By late March, the members of the Joint Finance Committee were starting to indicate that the proposal would be pulled from the budget.  Senator Shilling’s office staff said that they had heard from more people about the Kickapoo Valley Reserve proposal than any other issue ever.  At a Joint Finance Committee hearing held in Reedsburg on March 26, Co-Chairman Rep. John Nygren spoke to a group attending from the Kickapoo Valley and hinted that the governor’s proposal about the Reserve was coming out of the budget.

On Wednesday, April 22^nd, the Joint Finance Committee, by a vote of 16-0, removed Governor Walker’s proposal to change the administration of the Reserve to the DNR from the budget.  Once again, the people had remembered the special lands of the northern Kickapoo Valley.

They had spoken and they had been heard - So Far, So Good. 

INTENSIVE DAM REVIEW

We continue to look at a time in the early 1970’s when the community of La Farge was grappling with the emerging realities of whether a dam to be built north of town on the Kickapoo River was going to create Lake La Farge.  This isn’t the point in the story about the end of that federal project, but it just might be the beginning of the end.

            I was recently taking a hike around the Visitor Center of the Kickapoo Valley Reserve with a group of students from Malcolm Shabazz City High School in Madison.  We were sitting in the pine trees above the Kickapoo and looking out across the valley at the water intake tower of that still unfinished dam.  One of the students asked why the dam wasn’t completed and I gave my standard “short-story” answer that it was stopped because of political, financial and environmental reasons.

            In this entry, we look back at a time when those three dynamics – politics, finances and environmental concerns – were first introduced and delineated to the people of the Kickapoo Valley.

Governor Patrick Lucey’s  “Intensive Review” of the La Farge Dam & Lake Project was held on Tuesday, April 27, 1971 in a packed conference room at the state capital building in Madison.  The Governor did not attend the conference, citing previous commitments.  Colonel Charles McGinnis, district engineer from the Corps of Engineers St. Paul office, was named chairman of the meeting by Governor Lucey and moderated the review session.

            Another engineer from the Corps’ St Paul office, Richard Colton, explained at the outset of the review session that the Corps had looked at fourteen different alternative proposals to the “big dam” option chosen for the Kickapoo River at La Farge.  The Corps had studied some of the alternatives in the initial planning phase of the Kickapoo River project, while other proposals that had more recently been brought forward had also been analyzed in the previous few months.  Colton stated that for maximum flood protection at the most efficient cost, the present planned construction of a dam at La Farge remained the best option.  It was evident from his comments on the alternative proposals that Colton was addressing the opposition to the project.

            Colonel McGinnis also took time to explain the method used by the Corps to estimate the cost of the La Farge project.  He said that the interest rate used to calculate the feasibility of the project was frozen under Congressional rules at a 3.125% rate that had been adopted in 1968.  If the Chief of Army Engineers had to put the La Farge project on his deferred list, which could happen if the project was delayed any further, the interest rate would be unfrozen and the project would have to be refigured.  With a higher interest rate that was in place in 1971, the project would not be feasible due to not meeting the benefit/cost ratio used on such federal projects.

            McGinnis went on to say that with the 3.125% interest rate used by the federal government to borrow money for the dam project, the benefit/cost ratio was 1.3 ($1.30 in value returned after the project was completed for every dollar spent to build it).  However, if 1971 interest rates were used for the project due to any kind of a delay, then the benefit/cost ratio would be cut to 0.8, which would make the federal project economically unjustified.  This explanation by Colonel McGinnis clearly showed that any delay could possibly stop the dam project at La Farge.

            McGinnis asked all of the speakers at the review session to “separate fact from opinion” when presenting testimony to better enable the Governor and his staff to decide if the state still wanted the federal project.  Professor Robert Lord presented the most compelling information against the proposed dam project that day at the review session.

            Robert Lord was a highly respected member of the faculty at the University of Wisconsin.  He was a Professor of Agricultural Economics and Forestry at UW and was the Director of the Resource Policy Studies and Programs at the university.  From 1965 to 1967, Lord had worked as an economic advisor for the Corps of Engineers on various water resource programs.  The UW professor would base most of his testimony in opposition to the La Farge dam project on a study done by four UW water resource management graduate students.  The graduate study project, completed in August 1970, looked at the Kickapoo River project in the areas of flood control, economics, recreation and landscape.

            The Lord Report (as the graduate student’s study came to be known) attacked the La Farge dam project on all fronts.  The study contested the cost/benefit ratio analysis of the project used by the Corps.  The report also disputed the flood control aspects of the dam project as well as the recreational benefits of the lake to be created behind the dam.  Lastly, the study raised serious concerns about the environmental impact of the project, both relating to the effect of the lake on the natural environment of the Kickapoo Valley and the perceived future water quality problems in the lake itself.

            In his concluding remarks, Professor Lord called on the Governor and the Corps of Engineers to take a pause in the construction of the dam to reexamine the potential problems with the project.  He asked the Governor to set up a task force group composed of state and federal agencies to look at the perceived problems with the project.  Lord thought that the task force group should pay particular attention to the creation of a Kickapoo River State Forest, using the lands purchased for the La Farge dam project reservoir and neighboring Wildcat Mountain State Park land for the creation of a Kickapoo River Parkway and Bikeway with trails, interpretive facilities and scientific reserves.

            Professor Lord’s presentation and the information brought forward in the study done by the UW graduate students was the foundation for all of the other anti-dam advocates who spoke at the intensive review session that day.  Robert Smith, speaking on behalf of the Madison-based John Muir Chapter of the Sierra Club and Ronald Rich both relied on information gathered by Professor Lord and his students.  Both Smith and Rich described the Kickapoo River as a natural wild treasure that would be destroyed and lost by the creation of the La Farge dam’s reservoir.

            Ronald Rich added a personal note in the conclusion to his presentation as to the difficulty in opposing the La Farge project for those who lived in the Kickapoo Valley.  He said, ”I would like to add that opposing this project has been made most difficult by a radical element of the proponents who have constantly, through the past year, intimidated, harassed, and threatened anyone who dared speak against this project.  As recently as Monday, April 19, 1971, I was told personally by a project proponent that if the dam is not built he would hate to have his name on the list of people who opposed the dam.  If our voices have appeared to be few in number, this is the reason for it.”

            Next time we will look at those dam project proponents and what they had to say that day at Governor Lucey’s intensive review session.

Lost & Found - The La Farge Dam Project - Part 1

For the next two installments of my history blog, I am presenting an edited version of a presentation that I made at the Wisconsin Book Festival held in Madison during November 2012.  My book, THAT DAM HISTORY – The Story of The La Farge Dam Project, was chosen for the book festival as part of a program titled “Loss & Discovery on Wisconsin’s Waterways”.  Surprisingly to me, nearly 150 people attended the session when I made this presentation.  The theme of the book festival was “Lost & Found” and this talk will focus on a couple of aspects of the dam project that I thought fit into those categories.  This entry is from the first part of the talk, where I give some background and a brief history of sorts of the dam project at La Farge.  In the next entry, I will get into the lost and found part of the dam project. - BDS

The story of the dam project at La Farge in western Wisconsin’s Kickapoo Valley is one that stretches out over nearly three-quarters of a century.  It all began after the great Kickapoo River flood of 1935, when the communities of the valley, led by La Farge, sought help from the federal government for the nearly constant flooding problems of the Kickapoo River.  At that time, Congress was formulating a new federal water policy, which included plans on a national scale for providing help from the federal government to areas prone to flooding.  When the new water bill was passed in 1936, it included a call for a study of the Kickapoo Valley and its’ flooding to be done by the Army’s Corps of Engineers and the Department of Agriculture.  By 1940, preliminary plans were presented from that initial study for the construction of a flood-control dam north of La Farge and levees at the downriver villages of Soldiers Grove and Gays Mills. 

In October 1962, Congress passed a bill authorizing the construction of the dam at La Farge and the two downstream levees.  After five years of further study by the Corps of Engineers, a larger dam at La Farge with a 1,800-acre lake and thirteen recreation sites around it had become part of the plan and money was authorized to begin purchasing the over 9,000 acres needed to complete the project.  In 1968, final plans were released for the Corps’ Kickapoo Valley flood-control project, which still included the downstream levees for Soldiers Grove and Gays Mills and the process to purchase the land needed for the project began a year later.

Opposition to the La Farge Dam Project began soon after the larger-lake plan was introduced in 1967 and intensified when Patrick Lucey was elected Wisconsin governor in 1970.  Governor Lucey called for an “Intensive Review” of the project in the spring of 1971.  The stated purpose of the review was to look for alternatives to the dam and lake at La Farge and an all day session at the State Capital was held in which both those against and for the dam & lake project spoke.  The Governor eventually agreed to support the dam project and ordered the Corps of Engineers to proceed. Despite the Governor’s decision to support the project at La Farge, the opposition to the dam project did not stop.

The Madison-based John Muir Chapter of the Sierra Club then tried to stop the La Farge dam and lake project by filing injunctions in federal court.  In the legal filing, the Sierra Club cited suspected water quality problems in the proposed Lake La Farge and the Corps’ failure to adequately provide for the environmental impact of the project to meet new federal laws as reasons to stop the project.  The Sierra Club and other individuals opposed to the project took the dam project to court on three different occasions between 1971 and 1973 and lost all three of the attempts to stop it.

In 1972, construction on the dam, located a mile north of La Farge, was begun.  By 1974, the nearly 9,000 acres for the entire lake and recreation areas had been purchased, the dam was nearing completion and plans were being made to start the process to fill the lake.  By this time, Senator Gaylord Nelson had become a vocal opponent of the lake behind the dam because of water quality issues raised by a University of Wisconsin study completed in 1974. Nelson had supported the La Farge project when he was governor of Wisconsin and again as senator before the larger lake had been proposed.  Senator Nelson called for a stop to the project and Governor Lucey, the Sierra Club and other environmental groups soon joined him.

By 1975, due to delays, the numerous studies that were conducted, and add-ons to the original project, the cost for the dam project had escalated from an original $18+ million in 1968, when the Corps had first unveiled the larger-lake project, to an estimate of over $50 million to have it completed.  This sharp escalation in costs, which was largely caused by the inflation and high interest rates of the Vietnam War era, caused Senator William Proxmire, the last supporter of the dam in Congress, to withdraw his support in October of 1975.  With Senator Proxmire’s refusal to further support the appropriation of funds for the project, the dam and lake project at La Farge was stopped.  The dam, three-quarters completed, sat by the Kickapoo River north of La Farge.  The dam’s water-control tower, rising over 100-feet above the Valley floor, became a silent sentinel to the failed project.  The nearly 9000 acres of land purchased for the project sat dormant and started to be reclaimed by Mother Nature. Those in the Valley knew it as “the government land” or “the dam land”.

For the next twenty years, politicians presented a number of different options and alternative plans for what to do with the dam and the project’s lands, but all of those plans floundered and failed.  A group of former landowners, Vernon County and others sued the federal government to either get the lands back or to finish the dam construction, but none of those efforts were successful either.  The dam never held back any flood waters and the levees never were built downriver to protect Soldiers Grove or Gays Mills.

Finally a new effort, led by Governor Tommy Thompson and State Senator Brian Rude, was brought forward.  A bipartisan political effort in Madison and Washington DC transferred “the government land” back to the State of Wisconsin in 1998 and the Kickapoo Valley Reserve became a reality on “the dam land”.  In that transfer process, 1,200 acres of the government land was placed in trust for the Ho-Chunk Nation.  The Kickapoo Reserve Management Board and Ho-Chunk Nation would co-manage the land taken for the dam project.  Today the Kickapoo Valley Reserve draws tens of thousands of visitors annually to use the land and waters for a variety of public recreation and education purposes. 

Waiting For The Lake

When one is putting together a book that tells the story of a particular town, the details of how to organize that story can become a problem.  Perhaps the story flows naturally through the era of time being chronicled, one part of the story following the other in a logical neat order.  Or perhaps the story is disjointed, wandering off in one direction for a while before lurching suddenly back in another.  When you come to the end of the story, after all of the writing has been done, then one has to figure out where the divisions or chapter breaks will fit into that story.  An editor can start to dissect the story and look at presenting it in the form of a published book.  Where are the chapter breaks; where should the graphs and maps go; which photographs should be included with the story – these are all questions that need to be answered as the book is edited and prepared for publishing.

            As I write at volume II of my history of La Farge, I need to think about some of these editing questions as I move through the time period of 1962 to 2013.  I am tempted to just write the story from beginning to end and disregard any consideration for organization while I write.  I basically did that with my dam book, That Dam History – The Story of The La Farge Dam Project.  Once I started writing that story, I just rammed forward with the writing and paid little attention to the format of the book or how that story might look in book-form.  Interestingly, for that writing on the dam book, I wrote the story of the dam project first and then wrote the “Prelude To The Story” introductory chapter afterword.

            I have received criticism from some about how the dam book was organized and I think those people who question the format and how the book was put together have valid points.  Some have said that my “Prelude” chapter, which includes many of my opinions on the dam project in its eleven pages, should have come at the end of the story.  I thought about putting it there, at the end of the story, but decided to put it up front in the book to sort of clear the air of my opinions on the topic.  I hoped that after reading the “Prelude”, the reader would look at the rest of the dam story and see that it was hopefully written without too much prejudice or bias.  As Joe Friday used to say, “Just the facts, sir.”

            Something else that I hear from readers of the book has to do with the length of a couple of chapters in the book, particularly chapters 3 and 4.  Chapter 3 - “Parallel Paths – 1968-1975” is sixty-six pages long and Chapter 4 – “The Wilderness Years On The Government Land – 1976-1996” is forty-four pages in length.  None of the other four chapters in the dam book are longer than thirteen pages.  There is some inconsistency there, to be sure.  But as far as the story flowed, the chapters and their length seemed to be logical divisions of the telling of the tale.  Looking back, I think the chapters could have or should have been divided better, especially chapter 3, but, as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

            Now I’m working on another book, and am trying to use some foresight in telling this story of my hometown.  The story covers a fifty-year period, so there could be a simple way of dividing the book by coming up with a chapter for each of the five decades that the story covers.  The story may play out that way, but I’m already looking at the first chapter as covering the years 1962 to 1975.  Those are the years of the story framed by the first unveiling of the Corps of Engineers dam project at La Farge (1962) and the eventual stopping of the project by political forces in 1975.  As far as how the dam project affected La Farge over that time frame, there is a lot of story to tell.  It is a long and convoluted trail that has to be followed in telling that part of the story.  Not only do I have to relate the amazing run of events that played out in the telling of the dam story, but the effect of those dam project twists and turns on the village has to be told as well.  The loss of population and rural communities is one aspect of how the dam project affected La Farge.  But perhaps of equal or even greater importance is how the divisiveness of the debate over the dam project tore at the town and its leaders for decades.

In addition, there were other things going on in La Farge during that time.  There was a physical transformation of the town during that time.  The town started the process of moving away from the river and relocating on higher ground.  There was a great deal of change in the business community during that time, some of which carries through to the present.  There was also a migration of new people to the community during that decade, people who would eventually make up the foundation of the town.

All of these aspects of that time frame need to be told.  Is telling all of that part of the story too long for one chapter, especially the first?  I’m not sure; we will see how it all plays out when I take keyboard to fingers and start putting it all down on the Word document.  Regardless what I end up with in telling that part of the story, I think that I have a good chapter title for that first one.  It is the title of this blog entry.  So what do you think; does the chapter title do anything for you?