La Farge Dam Project - An Environmental Movement Incubator

There was a time in the not too distant past when La Farge, that little town in western Wisconsin located on the Kickapoo River, was the epicenter of a national debate on environmental awareness.  For a long time, most of the residents of the community did not realize that they were “front and center” in the discussion of whether a federal flood control project was an enhancement or a degradation to the environment that it was altering.  By the time that the environmental dilemma had played out its course and the dam project on the Kickapoo was stopped, many of the residents of the greater La Farge community were disillusioned with the whole process.  Some reacted with bitterness to the loss of the lake project and struck back in whatever way they could with various forms of protest.  (There will be more on that protest movement later.)

Placing the federal La Farge dam & lake project at the center of the nation’s emerging environmental debate of the early 1970’s should probably be credited to Wisconsin Governor Patrick Lucey.  When he was elected governor of the state in November 1970, Lucey immediately began to look for ways to stop the federal flood control project at La Farge.  In doing so, Lucey was reacting to the concerns about the La Farge project that were raised by the state’s emerging environmental contingent, which was based on the campus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison.  Citing poor water quality in the proposed lake, degradation of the natural environment of the Kickapoo Valley and the loss of rare and endangered plant species, environmentalists based in Madison petitioned Governor-elect Lucey in late 1970 to put a stop to the La Farge project.  Accomplishing that feat was easier said than done.

In looking back at that time in the early 1970’s when the debate on the La Farge dam & lake project often demanded headlines in most daily newspapers in Wisconsin, it is interesting and very important to remember that a federal flood control project like the one at La Farge had never been halted previous to this time.  Indeed, when one views the events in the dam project debate that play out during that time, it is still hard to surmise that the project would ever be stopped in the matter that it was.

Governor Lucey’s administrative team really had no idea how to accomplish the stoppage of a federal project like the one at La Farge – mainly because of the ominous reality that it had never been done before.  They tried to use as a model an earlier attempt to halt a federal dam project in Georgia that had been led by Governor Jimmy Carter as a possible way to attack the La Farge project.  (Ironically, later in this dam story, it would be President Jimmy Carter who would pound in one of the last nails in the coffin of the federal project at La Farge.)  But it is important to remember that the state’s attempt to stop that federal flood control project in Georgia had failed and the dam was built to completion and water backed up behind it.  So using the Georgia attempt as a model had its problems.

Eventually, Governor Lucey called upon the Corps of Engineers to conduct an “Intensive Review” of the La Farge project.  The review would focus on alternatives to the proposed dam and lake on the Kickapoo River.   

And so it was that the La Farge Dam and Lake Project became an incubator of sorts for an emerging national environmental movement.  The “environmentalists” who opposed the project at La Farge would use it as a “petri dish” to create and germinate methods and ways to oppose such federal projects and to protect natural resources.  The Corps of Engineers project was intended to dam up the Kickapoo River at a location just north of La Farge and create a lake that would cover the northern part of the river valley from there to Ontario.

The Kickapoo River project had originated with the dam to be used strictly as a flood control structure, backing up water behind it during times of flooding.  This strategy was developed by a federal study emanating from the great Kickapoo River flood of 1935.  The concept of a flood control plan for the Kickapoo that included a dam structure north of La Farge (originally to be built just north of Rockton) and protective levees for the villages of Soldiers Grove and Gays Mills further down stream was developed by 1940.  However, any actual construction on the project was put on hold for over two decades.  Severe flooding on the river system in the 1950’s brought the federal project back to life.  Later in the mid-1960’s the project was expanded to include a significantly larger dam on the river that would create a 1,800-acre lake with potentially vast recreational and economic benefits for the region.  As part of the expansion, thirteen different recreational areas would be developed around the lake that would range from a drive-in overlook area near the dam structure that created the lake to a fully developed 300-site campground.

When Governor Lucey called for the “Intensive Review” of the project at La Farge to look at alternatives to the dam and lake, he was reviewing a project that had been scrutinized in one form or another for nearly a third of a century.  The Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies had explored options to deal with flooding problems on the Kickapoo River extensively over those years.  But the project had not been looked at through the new lens of reality being focused by the emerging national environmental movement.

The announcement from Madison about the “Intensive Review” of the dam project also radically changed the perspective from La Farge about the project.  That local perspective had already undergone significant changes in the decades before Patrick Lucey was elected governor.  The concept of a flood control dam on the Kickapoo River had been around in one form or another for such a long time, that people of the Valley, and especially those in and around La Farge, grew tired of the continually changing proposals from the federal government.  Eventually after years of “starts and stops” and federal inertia on the project, folks around La Farge thought that the dam project was really never going to happen.

When the Corps of Engineers and various Wisconsin state agencies began to work together on the Kickapoo River project in the 1960’s and came up with a new and vastly expanded vision for flood protection in the Valley, many local people were staggered by the progress.  There was not only a new plan to control flooding on the Kickapoo, but a way and a schedule to make the new plan happen.  Politicians at the local, county, state and federal level were finally aligned to make the proposal work.  All of a sudden, the flood control plan that was never going to happen became a plan that was actually going to become a reality.

So when Governor Lucey called the summit meeting to look at alternatives to the dam at La Farge and possibly stop the project, the reaction from the little village on the Kickapoo was fast and furious.  But more on that next time when we look at that local “drawing of the lines” on the dam project.  Were you for the dam project or against it?  Was there a middle ground to stand on?

History's Hit Parade

            1970 – the beginning of a new decade and the end of an old one. 

1970 – a time of transition for the little Kickapoo River town of La Farge, Wisconsin. 

1970 – Change was in the air for La Farge, forces from afar were about to pull and tug at the essence of the community. 

1970 – Some people were leaving; people who had to sell their homes and farms to the federal government for the dam project.  Other people were coming to the Valley; people with new personal values and life styles. 

Crank up the jukebox of life as the times for La Farge, “They were achangin”.

The #1 hit song for the year 1970 was B.J. Thomas’ “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”.  With the soggy, wet months of May and June that we have here in the Kickapoo Valley, could we have a more appropriate song title?  But it was also a somewhat appropriate tune for La Farge in 1970 as the federal Kickapoo Valley flood control project with its projected dam to be constructed just north of the village prepared to get going.  With the dam built and holding back the flood waters of the Kickapoo River, folks in La Farge, Viola and downriver wouldn’t have to be so concerned about raindrops falling on their heads.

“Let It Be” by the Beatles was #2 on that 1970 hit parade list and that classic by the Fab Four fits right in to what was happening to the dam project at La Farge.  When Governor Patrick Lucey ordered an “Intensive Review” of the Kickapoo Valley flood control project with intentions of stopping the dam construction at La Farge, pro-dam Kickapoogians howled for the governor to let it be.  Eventually Lucey provided measured support of the La Farge dam and commended the citizens of the Valley for their support of the project.  The Village of La Farge, led by the local dam-backers organization, threw a big celebration party on a Saturday night.  Some say that night and those festivities was La Farge’s finest hour.  So it appeared that the dam project was “Signed, Sealed & Delivered” – the #9 hit of that year sung by Stevie Wonder.

But soon after the governor’s endorsement of the project came forth, the John Muir Chapter of the Sierra Club filed an injunction in federal court to stop the construction of the dam.  It appeared that we had a “Ball of Confusion”; the Temptations #8 hit song in 1970.  (I must confess here that I could not remember anything about this song.  I know that I was busy in 1970 as I graduated from college, was married to the lovely Carolyn Kinsey and started on my first teaching job that year.  But I was not totally out of the loop for that year, so how could I not have any memories of a song from one of my favorite groups.  I even went on the Internet to look up the lyrics to the song and listen to the Temptations sing it on a YouTube spot.  Nothing!  Nada recognition!  Every other song in the top twenty from that year was recognized, but I drew a blank on that one.  I did find an interesting line from the song though – “Hippies moving to the hills” – but that’s another Kickapoo Valley story from the 70’s to get into at another time.) 

The Madison-based chapter of the Sierra Club claimed that the Army Corps of Engineers had failed to adequately answer environmental concerns in the Impact Statement that had earlier been submitted.  (Looking back, one has to agree with the Sierra Club on the Corps’ first EIP on the dam project at La Farge.  The report was very brief and basically said that the Corps was going to build a dam and lots of acres were soon going to be under water, lots of water.  At the same time that the Corps’ Environmental Impact Statement was submitted, all nine pages of it, the Corps released a three hundred plus page report on the recreational and economic benefits of the dam project.  Kind of shows where the Corps’ interest was at the time.)  Eventually in due process, Judge James Doyle rejected the Sierra Club’s request and let the dam project proceed.

Another celebration was called for and La Farge obliged with gusto.  A groundbreaking ceremony was held at the dam site north of La Farge in August.  Over five hundred people were in attendance with a legion of politicos fawning over the new project to bring flood control to the Valley and economic salvation to La Farge.  The golden shovel sprang forth and scoops of dirt were hoisted into the air signaling the official start of the construction of the dam.  (Work on the dam had actually begun several weeks earlier after the injunction case in federal court had been settled.)

Supporters of the dam project were happy once again and perhaps felt like singing a line or two from Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” (#7 on the 1970 hit parade).  Perhaps, with the dam construction actually moving forward and the opposition to the project defeated in court, the musical lines, “Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind” fit the mood of the dam-backer crowd.        

            Yet, let’s not suppose that the folks against the project didn’t have a theme song as well in the summer of 1970.  Maybe they could use the #16 hit of the year for their anthem; sung by The Carpenters, “We’ve Only Just Begun” to describe the determination to stop the dam at La Farge.  For another year would bring other injunction attempts from the Sierra Club to stop the project.  Water quality studies would begin on the proposed waters of beautiful Lake La Farge that would prove devastating to the completion of the project.  Senator Gaylord Nelson began to voice political concern over the project’s perceived environmental problems.

            In the end, Edwin Starr’s one-hit wonder from that year of 1970 probably foreshadowed what lay ahead for the two sides of the dam project at La Farge.  Yes, Starr’s #10 hit for that year, “WAR”, might have set the tone for what lay ahead.  As the conflict between the two sides over the dam project escalated; as tensions between the two sides ended friendships that had lasted a lifetime; as the fabric of the community of La Farge was ripped apart, some lines from Starr’s anthem seem almost prophetic.

War, huh, yeah

What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing

Say it again.

            

Waiting For The Waters - 1972

In 1972, the community of La Farge was in a state of transition as work on the Corps of Engineers’ La Farge Lake and Dam Project continued through the year.  Most of the land needed for the project, located north of La Farge to the Rockton area and beyond, had been purchased by the government agency by that time.  The families who had lived on those farms and in those homes were dispersed.  Some of those people remained in the La Farge area; many did not. 

There seemed to be a constant process of farm auctions stretching up the Kickapoo Valley as the people were displaced from their former homes.  Some of the previous owners rented their own homes back from the Corps on a short-term basis while looking for another place to call home.  Once the people were gone, the Corps listed the buildings on the vacated properties for sale to the highest bidder.  The pieces of the former farmsteads could be moved or razed; it didn’t really matter to the Corps, which simply wanted the land emptied of signs of human occupation.  The Corps continued the lease of agricultural fields on the project lands that summer and many former owners rented their fields back for growing crops of corn and harvesting cuttings of hay.

In the village of La Farge, the changes were also apparent as the town prepared for the coming of the waters of Lake La Farge.  In February, the new La Farge United Methodist Church had been dedicated and consecrated on the site of the previous church.  The old church had been torn down the previous year to make way for the new place of worship.

One block south from the new church, the village’s business district underwent significant changes in 1972.  Perhaps anticipating the affects of the dam project on the town, several new businesses opened in La Farge.  David Mick began a Mutual Services insurance agency that summer with offices over his father’s grocery store on the east end of the business district.  Kickapoo Gifts, a new gift shop featuring work by local artists, opened in the former grocery store building owned by Dick Gabrielson.  Colleen Sullivan operated the shop, which had hundreds of visitors on its first weekend of business.  Don Potter opened a new realty office in town to meet the needs of the rapidly expanding recreational real estate market.  Markee Soft Water, operated by Dick Heckart, opened a business in La Farge that summer as did Bobby Kennedy with his new carpet installation and cleaning service.  In addition to new business operations, several long time La Farge businesses saw changes that year.

A new lawyer came to town that summer as Phil Stittleburg, fresh out of UW Law School, bought Ralph Freeze’s law business and moved into the offices on south State Street on June 1.  Freeze had practiced law in La Farge for forty years, having bought the practice from Alva Drew.  By fall, Ralph and his wife Isabelle had left the village to retire in Arizona.

Russell Schroer bought the H & D Lumber sawmill operation in the summer of 1972.  Schroer bought the mill from Clair Russell, who stayed on with the business to buy logs for the new operation known as Schroer Hardwood Lumber Company.  Lee Hiles and Russell Davison had started the H & D lumber mill in 1953.  The Schroer family with two little girls came from Stevens Point and moved into a new mobile home placed on the west end of the Sherrill Huston trailer park next to the sawmill.

One of La Farge’s two remaining grocery stores changed hands in the summer of 1972 when Orval Howard purchased the Cash Store from Toby Funnell and Elmer Huffland.  Orval, with his wife Jan and two young sons, moved back to his hometown and the new grocery store was named Howard’s Village Market.

Lonnie Muller, needing to devote more time to his fledgling newspaper business (the Epitaph), sold his cable television system to Numsen Master Antenna Systems out of La Crosse.  The new cable owners soon upgraded the La Farge antenna system and expanded TV channel offerings to its customers.  More TV choices also meant a higher cost for cable subscribers in La Farge.  Those weren’t the only bills going up in La Farge though.  Vernon Telephone phased out the old party-line phone numbers that summer, and the new single-party system came with a higher price tag each month.  Earlier in the year, water and electricity rates increased in the village as the La Farge Utility Company petitioned for and received the approval to raise its rates. 

In August, the cheese factory business in La Farge changed hands as Warner Creek Cheese Factory owned by Jarry Glick of Hillsboro purchased the operation from Durward and Ethel Burt.  The new owners, who had run the cheese factory near Valley for thirty years added a Grade A market for La Farge area dairy farmers to access, while also keeping the cheese making operations going.  Richard Glick became the manager of the La Farge plant and plans were made to add a retail cheese store to the operation, which was up and running by the end of the year.  Richard, his wife and two little girls moved into the apartment above the cheese factory.

   By the next month, construction had begun on La Farge’s newest business – a motel.  Dick and Bea Gabrielson, with Gary Hall Realty of Viroqua as general contractor, built the new motel one half block south of Main Street just across the street and to the west of the La Farge Enterprise building.  Some delays in construction of the new motel were caused when flowing wells on the property proved difficult to cap, but by early November the new building, which featured a residence for the owners and ten motel units was nearing completion.

The motel became the second new commercial building on Main Street as Cecil Rolfe had opened his new facility for making cabinets earlier that spring.  Rolfe’s Cabinet Shop, a 24’ x 60’ cement block building, was located a block to the west of the new motel on the north side of Main Street between the Ed Muller & Sons Construction property and the welding shop.

Old buildings in La Farge came down that fall as well.  The building that had housed Casey Sanford’s Clothing Store on Main Street was torn down in October.  The 24’ x 40’store building located next to the Band Box Cafe was taken down by Pete and Robert Fish of Bloomingdale.  More demolition was happening less than a block away as the old Odd Fellows Hall, long a fixture in the village on the corner of Bird and Penn Streets was also being torn down.  The new Methodist Church, needing additional parking for their expanding congregation, purchased the old lodge building, located across the street from the new church.  Arnie Widstrand and his children took down the old 24’ x 44’ hall after an auction was held to sell off the old lodge furnishings.

But 1972 was a time for looking forward in La Farge instead of back to the past.  The dam project pointed towards the future.  In August, LaCrosse Concrete Company leased two lots from Art Nelson across Mill Street from Nuzum’s.  The company soon set up a concrete plant on the site to provide cement for the construction beginning on the dam project.  Art Nelson’s dump trucks were busy bringing in sand from Oxford, Wisconsin and crushed rock from Elroy to the La Farge cement plant site.  By November the first cement was poured at the dam site for the construction of the dam’s water intake tower.

Soon the waters of Lake La Farge would be lapping along the shores of the Kickapoo Valley as the community made plans for the future. 

THAT DAM HISTORY!

A few weeks ago, I finished reading my new book, “THAT DAM HISTORY – The Story of The La Farge Dam Project”. It’s not a bad read, even if I do have to say so myself. Although I wrote most of the book in the first six months of this year and had spent the last couple of months helping to get the book published and printed, I really hadn’t spent much time in actually reading it. Twenty-two boxes containing copies of the new book arrived from the printer on November 18^th, so since that time I have been looking it over and reading it.

Overall, the dam book looks nice and that is because of the efforts of my co-publisher, Chuck Hatfield. Chuck also helped me with the first book that I wrote on the history of La Farge. How both of these books appear is due to Chuck’s expertise, which includes experience in publishing a variety of other books over the years. For this dam book, I provided Chuck with the text of the dam story and then he put in the photographs, maps and newspaper headlines. Making all of those things fit into the text is quite a trick and Chuck is a pretty good magician at mastering the process. He also fashioned the cover, which is a full-color copy with lots of beautiful blue water (including several little sail boats) of an artist’s drawing of Lake La Farge. The drawing is one of many items in the book from information provided on the dam project from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. There are also a number of Corps maps in the book, including a full color two-page map and schematics of the dam itself located inside the back cover.

Through my research, I found many photographs related to the dam project and several of them are included in the book. Some of the photos were sent to me by others interested in my writing project, while I found other photographs, particularly of the dam itself, in area historical repositories. Since the dam project and the controversies that surrounded it were nearly always in the newspapers for seemingly decades, many headlines and articles from area and state newspapers are also used to tell the story. When the dam project at La Farge also ended up as featured stories in The New York Times newspaper and on national television with the CBS Evening News, I had to include those national media citing’s as well. All of that helps to tell the dam story, which is a good one.

The story of the dam project is such a good one in fact that the key for me in trying to tell the dam story was to stay out of the way. In my prelude to the dam book, I mention that I am intending to do that, to stay out of the way and hopefully I have let the dam story pretty much tell itself. Looking back at the story, even with an abundance of first hand knowledge of what transpired, I still find it hard to fathom that the dam project played out the way that it did. In my prelude, I try to explain the cause for the way that the dam project happened, but it almost defies logical explanation. As I said before, it is quite a dam story and I’m glad that I could share it with others.

Right in the middle of the book can be found a timeline relating to the dam project. I first made a timeline for the dam project fifteen years ago when I was teaching about the project to students in my local history classes at La Farge High School. Over the years, the timeline has been changed and edited into many different versions. Visitors to the Kickapoo Valley Reserve have had copies of the timeline available in several forms over the years. My new timeline of the dam project that is included in the book has been expanded greatly and now covers nearly eight pages – it is the great-granddaddy of dam timelines. It is a handy reference to when things were happening during the dam story.

I have dedicated my new book to Bernice Schroeder, who was so helpful in getting the story of the dam project told. Bernice has been talking to students in my various classes on the dam project for many years. During that time, Bernice has also given me a variety of materials relating to the project that she had saved over the years. When she heard that I was going to write this book on the dam project, Bernice gave me several more boxes of materials that she had collected. Being an avid supporter for completion of the dam project for decades, she had accumulated an amazing treasure of material for my research. There were copies of nearly every study done on the dam project as well as personal correspondence with elected officials at every government level. With the help of this new resource material, I was able to understand the story of the dam project much more fully. At the end of the book, I have included an essay that Bernice wrote about the dam project in 2001. It seemed important to me to include her essay in the book. As I wrote on the dedication page of the book, “Bernice’s voice will always be heard when the story of the dam project at La Farge is told.”

Included in the dam book is a poem written by Libby Brandl. At the time that she wrote the poem, which is titled “The Dam”, Libby was a student at La Farge High School and was in the “Literature & Land Class” taught by Maggie Doherty. The members of that class had spent many days at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve and several class periods with me learning about the dam project. When Libby wrote the poem about the dam for an assignment for that class in 2008, it became an instant hit for many of us connected to the dam story. I felt that the bittersweet tone and quality of Libby’s poem would fit in perfectly to my book on the dam project. Libby, who is currently a student at UW-Whitewater, graciously granted her permission to use her poem in the book. It also helps to tell the dam story.

I will end this local history notebook by sharing with you the last paragraph of my new dam book, “The story of the La Farge dam project is a fascinating one that brings together the forces of national environmental concerns, political processes and financial limitations at a particular time in the history of our country and focuses these forces on this small valley in western Wisconsin. The story of that time in the Kickapoo Valley can provide lessons from which we can all learn.”

I found it to be a dam interesting story, I hope that you enjoy it as well.

If you would like me to send you a signed copy of the dam book, please send a check in the amount of $19, which includes the cost of the book and all mailing costs, to me at P.O. Box 202, La Farge, WI 54639. You can contact me via e-mail at bcstein@mwt.net for more information on the ordering of this book or my earlier book on the history of La Farge.