The Great Kickapoo river Flood of 1978 - Pt. IV

When the story of the La Farge dam controversy was broadcast on the CBS Evening News on Friday, October 13, 1978, a new chapter in the dam story seemed to unfold.  Introduced as “The Great Kickapoo Loggerhead” by news-anchor Roger Mudd, the video story as told by CBS newsman Bob Faw was compelling and emotional.  Seeing Ward Rose, Lonnie Muller and Bernice Schroeder relate details of the heartbreaking process of the dam project for many Kickapoogians affected most people who watched it.

            One of those affected was another CBS newsman, Charles Osgood.  Osgood, who hosted a radio show on CBS called “The Osgood File” wrote a poem about the dam project on the Kickapoo and read it over the air on his radio show later in October.  It is a long piece, as Osgood’s poems tend to be, but I want to include his ending here.  He wrote:

It’s been 43 years since the U.S.A.

Began to help Kickapoo out that way.

They spent nineteen million dollars and they built their road

And a great new bridge, as we already showed.

And they let all that farmland go to seed,

Where today there’s that acreage and sundry weed.

Still, the folks there in Kickapoo have the gall

To complain, showing little gratitude at all.

Congress got impatient and cut off the dough.

Building was stopped about three years ago.

The valley is frustrated, the people mad.

They’d settle now for what they one time had.

Uncle Sam’s embarrassed and his face is red.

And this week somebody in the White House said,

“Tell you what we’ll do in this Administration:

We’ll assign a task force in the situation.”

Nice of those folks in the capital city

To come right out like that and appoint a committee.

And who knows what that committee will find?

Whether to quit while they’re still behind,

Or to finish the dam for several million more

That they started out planning in the days of yore.

Well, we should tell you that which everyone in Kickapoo knows:

They still have the floods.  Oh, they have lots of those.

Plenty of flood damage – my, oh, my!

Fifty million dollars just this past July.

“I’m angry,” says a citizen, “indeed, I am!”

Now you know why they invented the expression: DAMN!

Soon after the CBS News coverage of the dam project by Bob Faw and Charles Osgood, President Jimmy Carter made the official announcement of the first public meeting of the joint federal-state task force to study options for flood control and economic development for the Kickapoo Valley.  Perhaps the features in the nationally broadcast CBS pieces had hurried the process along, perhaps not.

Bob Faw finished his video report on the La Farge dam project by saying, “a flood control project that controls absolutely nothing”.  Would the latest task-force study provide some answers for the dam at La Farge to control something?

Actually, many people in the community of La Farge were sick and tired of all the studies done on the Kickapoo Valley.  President Carter’s call for a new study elicited groans from many in the community, regardless of their position on the dam project.  Kickapoogians were weary of studies.  The problem of flooding in the Kickapoo Valley had been studied to death over a period that stretched back to the 1930’s.

President Carter’s Task Force on Kickapoo River Flood Damage Reduction held its first public meeting On November 16, 1978.  The meeting was held at the high school gymnasium in Gays Mills with nearly 200 people in attendance.  Colonel Ted Bishop of the Corps of Engineers acted as moderator for the meeting which featured representatives from various federal and state agencies.  In addition, Senator Gaylord Nelson also attended the meeting.

            In his prepared remarks, Senator Nelson told the gathering that the dam project at La Farge was dead.  “A dam is out of the question,” Nelson said.  “The project that is currently authorized fails to meet the administration’s economic and ecological tests.  The task force must develop a comprehensive, valley-wide plan that provides a higher degree of flood protection for many more residents.”  Senator Nelson added, “The task force’s review is the valley’s best chance.  The battle over the dam is finished.  We must move forward if anything is to be accomplished.”

            Colonel Bishop told the gathering that the Task Force was formed to find ways to relieve flood damage in the Kickapoo Valley without using structures such as dams or levees.  During the proceedings, Bishop continually asked people who were speaking to not discuss the dam project at La Farge as a possible option.  However, Col. Bishop’s admonitions had little affect on those who testified.

            Many people from La Farge spoke at the meeting.  Bernice Schroeder, speaking as a representative of KLOUT, spoke in favor of completing the authorized project and completing the dam at La Farge.  Schroeder said it was “a broken promise” to the former landowners if the dam was not completed.  She thought that if the dam was not completed then the lands should be returned to the former owners.

            Also speaking from La Farge for completion of the dam project were Roger Andrew, Bernard and Jeanne Smith, Palmer Munson, Olive Nelson and Esther Ziebell.  Palmer Munson, speaking as town chairman of the Town of Stark, spoke of the tax hardships for the people living in the township due to the government buying so much land for the dam project.  Munson also advocated for the completion of the dam, as did people from other places in the Kickapoo Valley.

Jim Coxe from Wauzeka called for the completion of a dry dam at La Farge, saying that such a structure would benefit everyone in the Kickapoo Valley during floods.  Carl Oppreicht of the Gays Mills Flood Avoidance Committee spoke in favor of construction of small retention dams along tributaries running into the Kickapoo River as well as completion of a dry dam at La Farge.

Vernon County Board member George Nettum admonished the members of the Task Force for the failure to complete the dam at La Farge.  He called the dam project the “biggest fiasco ever” and encouraged the Task Force members to include the completion of the dam at La Farge in future plans.

The Task Force recommendations did call for an expanded flood insurance program for villages in the Kickapoo Valley, crop insurance for farmers along the river, a valley-wide warning and preparedness plan, evacuation/relocation plans for Soldiers Grove, flood proofing and a levee system for Gays Mills and a federal/local effort to clear the river and tributaries of snags and debris.

However, the preliminary recommendations released by the Presidential Task Force in December included nothing about the completion of the dam at La Farge.  As Senator Nelson had said repeatedly throughout 1978, the dam project at La Farge was dead.    

And so it went.  For the next decade a variety of efforts were made to do something with the partially completed dam at La Farge.  Many politicians at the state and federal level tried to move the dam project in some way towards some sort of conclusion.  But it never happened.  “A flood control project that controls absolutely nothing.”

*                                  *                                  *                                  *

            To finish, let me write that a completed Corps of Engineers’ flood control dam north of La Farge that should have been completed in the mid-1970’s would have greatly lessoned the devastation of the flood of 1978, then the massive destruction from the flood of 2008, and now the misery of the flood of 2017.  That is what the dam was designed to do. 

The finished dam would not have curtailed any flood waters on Otter or Bear Creeks nor saved anybody’s washed-out driveway along those streams. The completed dam would not have saved Ontario from the ravages of the recent flood in July of 2017.  But we should also remember that five retention dams for the Ontario area were to be built as part of the project at La Farge.  If built, those retention dams would have lessoned the impact of the recent floodwaters on Ontario.

In the end, by not completing the dam or any of the ancillary parts of the federal project like the retention dams, the Kickapoo Valley was left to its own devises to cope with devastating floods.

BRIDGES & BUSES - 1975

Lately I have been working on volume II of my La Farge history.  I have been reviewing my research of the events that happened during the mid-1970s in this little Kickapoo River town.  It was a crazy time, as the controversy over the La Farge dam project seemed to control everything happening in the village.  One of those strange occurrences in the fall of 1975 put La Farge back in the media bulls-eye once again.  The local protest played out over a couple of weeks and was initiated by the appearance of Senator William Proxmire in the village.

Senator Proxmire spoke to a standing room only crowd at the new La Farge firehouse that Saturday morning, September 5, 1975.  Proxmire announced that he was withdrawing his support of the dam project after being a staunch proponent of the project for years.  The announcement stunned nearly everyone in attendance (including my wife, Carolyn and me) and the discussion after the senator left, was what do we do now?  The pro-dam contingent, a vast majority in the village, wondered what was the next step to take?

That next step occurred on the following Monday evening at a special school board meeting held in the La Farge gym.  One hundred and thirty people were in attendance at the meeting and a petition was read bearing 140 names asking that the school board take appropriate action if the board members felt that area bridges were unsafe for travel by school buses.  A discussion at the meeting brought up that most area bridges recently had weight limits posted on them, some with limits as low as ten tons.  All of the bridges on Highway 131 north of La Farge located in the dam project land had 10-ton limits except for one.  School board president Roger Gabrielson estimated that a full school bus would weigh close to or exceed the 10-ton weight limit.  Gabrielson contended that nine state highway bridges located in the La Farge School District were unsafe for the district’s seven buses.

In a 3-2 vote, the school board decided to close La Farge Schools beginning on the following Thursday due to the weight restricted bridges.  Board members Mac Marshall Jr., David Clift and Marvin Munson voted for the measure, while Gabrielson and Richard Allen voted against it.  Both Gabrielson and Allen voted against the measure because they wanted the school to close the very next day, on Tuesday.

Discussion at the special school board meeting also focused on the fact that there was no money budgeted for repairs or replacements for any of the bridges on Highway 131 north of La Farge.  Those bridges were supposed to be removed when the lake from the dam project was created, but with Senator Proxmire’s withdrawal of support for completion of the dam project, it seemed the bridges would have to remain in use.  Since Governor Patrick Lucey earlier had said that no state funds would be used on the bridge and highway relocations for the La Farge dam project, it could be years before the bridges would be upgraded or replaced.

School board president Gabrielson told the board and attendees that the school would be in contact with the state DOT the next morning about the bridge concerns and the school closing.

Further local protest was in place the next morning as the La Farge school buses crossed the crumbling Highway 82 bridge over the Kickapoo River in La Farge.  On that Tuesday, a dozen protestors, many carrying signs denouncing the conditions of the bridge as well as state and federal politicians, paced warily along the sides of the bridge.  The number of protestors grew during the week and nearly three dozen people picketed on the bridge west of Nuzum’s by week’s end.  A reporter for the LaCrosse Tribune covering the demonstrations took a photograph of Orval Howard standing in one of the holes in the side of the road on the state highway bridge.  In the photo that appeared in the next days’ newspaper, Howard sank over three feet into the hole before his feet found some hanging angle iron beneath the road.  Soon after, the county highway crews placed orange construction barrels over the holes and stretched snow fence along each side of the bridge to keep demonstrators and others away from the holes.

By the end of the week, others who were walking across the bridge over the Kickapoo River in La Farge included school children riding on the buses to and from school.

After the leaders of the La Farge Schools contacted the state DOT about the bridges and scheduled school closing, intense negotiations resulted in a compromise to avoid closing La Farge’s schools.  Representatives from the DOT met with school officials on the afternoon following the special school board meeting.  An inspection was done of the bridge at Nuzum’s (where picketing had begun that morning) and options were discussed.  The next day, the DOT sent a letter to the school with assurances that all the state bridges were safe for school buses to cross.  School bus routes were then altered to avoid crossing the bridges north of La Farge as much as possible, although the new routes took more buses across the Highway 82 Bridge in La Farge.  It was decided by the school leaders that the buses would stop at the bridge approaches and the children would be unloaded.  Then the empty bus with red warning lights flashing would lead the walking students across the bridge.  Once across, the students would return to the bus and the route would continue.  This drastic move of having students walk across the bridges in and around La Farge was continued for several school days reaching into the next week.

During that time, more state bridge inspectors came to La Farge and inspected all nine bridges cited by the school in their report to the Wisconsin DOT.  With new weight restrictions and speed limits placed on the bridges, the La Farge school buses once again began hauling students across the spans instead of having them walk.  The press coverage of the La Farge bridge protest and the students walking across the bridges was massive.  Besides the La Farge area newspapers and radio as well as the LaCrosse newspaper, radio and TV stations, the bridges story merited coverage in the Madison and Milwaukee newspapers, radio and TV stations.  Several Chicago newspapers and one of the Windy City’s TV stations also covered the story of the La Farge bridges and walking students.

La Farge Epitaph editor Lonnie Muller concluded his “WHAT NOW ???” editorial in the September 10^th issue by writing, “I support the board 100% even though I figured a Tuesday closing was even better.  The day has come when La Farge can quit taking a back seat to everything in the state.  It’s damn time our side of the story got out to Lucey and his conniving bunch of pigheads in Madison.  We are sick and tired of being the pawns in the chess game of life.  We just checkmated you Lucey and from now on you are playing a losing game with the people of the Kickapoo Valley, if not the entire state.  You figured that you could put us down forever, but it just didn’t work out that way did it?  I think that now, more than ever, the La Farge people are starting to really work together.  I was damn disgusted Saturday when Proxmire made his speech pulling his support from the project, but by Tuesday evening when I write this, I can say that I’m damn proud of these people in this community who are going to fight this together to the finish.  I think a new chapter just started for La Farge, and probably a pretty good one at that.”

In the following week’s Epitaph (9-17-1975), reporter Pete Beckstrand wrote an interesting article on the DOT bridge inspections.  The recent state inspections had found that all of the bridges in the Kickapoo Valley were structurally safe.  However, much of the article provided contrary evidence of the sorry state of most of the bridges around La Farge.  Beckstrand noted that many of the state highway bridges in the La Farge area were “used” bridges – having been originally built at other sites.  He wrote that Bridge 18 (the Bacon Bridge just north of Seelyburg and the dam project site) was originally a span over the Wisconsin River at Spring Green.  After the bad Kickapoo River flood of 1951 damaged the Bacon Bridge, the state highway department hauled an old Spring Green span out of storage and put it across the Kickapoo River as a replacement.  Beckstrand also detailed that there were a total of 92 bridges in Wisconsin that had weight restrictions and 15 of them were located in the northern Kickapoo Valley.  In the article, he quoted Lee Schneider, chief engineer of the DOT’s LaCrosse office, as saying in a phone interview that the La Farge area bridges were in need of “massive maintenance and repair”, and there was no state money budgeted to pay for it.

Within a week after the state bridge inspections, Bridges 16, 17, and 18 on Highway 131 north of La Farge were posted with speed limits and 10-ton weight limits.  The Highway 82 Bridge across Otter Creek west of La Farge was made one-way for traffic.  The Highway 82 Bridge over the Kickapoo River at Nuzum’s was already one-way due to the placement of barrels and snow fence along both sides.

Beckstrand also reported in the article that a La Farge school bus loaded with mostly small children was weighed on the scale at Nuzum’s.  The bus weighed 16,900 pounds and the Episcope reporter wondered if a bus loaded with high school age students might exceed the 10-ton limit placed on most area bridges.

KVA History Project - Part 2

So, let us finally continue with our look at the KVA local history project, which ran from 1977 through 1979.

            Perhaps no one knew of the importance of the oral history interviews for the KVA project better than Dale Muller of La Farge.  Dale had spent most of his life listening to peoples’ stories, remembering those stories and then passing them on to others.  As a young boy, Dale had been drawn to listen to his elders as they told of “the good old days”.  He remembered those stories of that earlier time and in 1972 when his son, Lonnie, began a new weekly newspaper in La Farge, he started writing about some of those memories in a weekly column called “John Bear Spreader Notes”.

            Dale used the pseudonym “Johnson Gunfrunk” when he penned the local history columns in the weekly issues of the Epitaph.  Some of the stories he told were priceless and I will share a very early one that he wrote in the second edition of the Epitaph – January 19, 1972.

            Dale was writing about the Dutch elm disease wiping out the American elm trees in the Kickapoo Valley.  He was not a big fan of that type of tree because it was a poor source of heat when it was burned for firewood and because of its penchant for warping and splitting.  Dale shared a local history story in that column that went like this, “Richard Cornell, local gunsmith, once made a full length stock for a .22 rifle out of elm.  It warped so bad that it bent the barrel.  He had the only gun on Bear Creek that would shoot around corners.  Dick became quite an expert at shooting squirrels on the other side of trees with it.”

            In 1976, when the village organized to celebrate the nation’s Bi-Centennial, Dale became a vital part of the committee that was formed in La Farge.  As part of La Farge’s look back for the American Bi-Centennial, Dale began to interview older people in the village.  Using a tape recorder for the interviews, he was able to save the precious local history stories for posterity.  As a matter of fact, when the Bi-Centennial activities were concluded with the 4^th of July Celebration in La Farge, Dale continued on with the oral history interviews and archived the tapes in the village’s library.

            When the Kickapoo Valley Association (KVA) began its local history project in 1977-78, Dale was a natural to serve on an “Advisory Group” for the project.  In the last issue of the “Kickapoo Pearls” (September – 1979), this testimony was made about the Advisory Group:

            “The Advisory Group to the Kickapoo Valley Association History Project has been a vital part of our efforts.  The members of the advisory group were selected by the KVA and the Crawford, Monroe and Vernon County Historical Societies to represent their various perspectives and concerns as historical information was gathered.  Other members were selected at large by the Advisory Group.  Their role has been to provide advice, direction, assistance, contacts and experience and knowledge to the staff of the project.  The members of the Advisory Group have served on a voluntary basis since early January of 1978.

            ‘Staff and Advisory Group have met regularly every six weeks over these past 20 months to jointly map out direction and goals.  Working in this type of situation was a new experience for most all of us and one that we’ll not soon forget.”

            Others on the Advisory Group included Kate Walter, Leita Twining Slayton, Kathy Calhoun, Helen Tuchalski, Jeanne & Bernard Smith, Connie Stephens, Steve Picus, Arlene Obert, and Dawald Craig.

            Dale Muller was also instrumental in helping with the initial phase of the KVA History Project, which was the preparation of a history of Seelyburg.  Dale had spent much of his youth in the Seelyburg area and helped to coordinate a research project on the old lumbering town on the Kickapoo River.  Working with other local history advocates Jeanne & Bernard Smith of La Farge and Connie & Lawrence Stephens of Viroqua, Dale joined Dale Treleven from the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Oral History Program to get the history of Seelyburg project started.

            In the summer of 1977, the KVA used a Summer Youth Work Program grant to hire Janet Marshall, a recent graduate of La Farge High School, to research and write about the former community of Seelyburg.  Janet conducted oral history interviews with several people and then wrote an excellent history about the old lumbering town.  Janet Marshall’s work set a fine example for the local history project that was to follow.

            With the advice and direction from the members of the Advisory Group, the KVA soon assembled a staff to collect the local and folk history, take that information from the interviews and put it into essay form and add photographs and graphics for the editions of the Kickapoo Pearls.  Tom Hovde, who lived near Ontario, became the leader of the KVA’s project and assisted at almost all levels besides administering all of the programs.

            Working from offices on La Farge’s Main Street, Hovde assembled a staff of researchers and writers that included Dail Murray, Lon Reuter, Judy Wilmes, Dan Eumurian, Lynne O’Brien, Mike Wright and Dana Strobel.  That group soon started conducting oral and folk history interviews with people up and down the Kickapoo Valley, recording their stories and memories while collecting and copying historical photographs to supplement the project.  According to a written account of the local history project that was published in the last issue of the Kickapoo Pearls, another local woman was a key ingredient to its success.

            From Volume IV, “Jean (Daines) Muller of La Farge was the main cog around which things got done.  Jean’s title was secretary/typist but her ability to keep files, typing, tapes, and everything else in order while working with ten people was a key to any accomplishments we’ve had.  Jean got married while she was working for us but it only slowed her down a little while.”

            Shawn Donovan of La Farge was the project’s bookkeeper, making sure that all CETA grant guidelines were followed and that the payroll came out on time.

            In addition to the written products of the KVA research, other mediums were used to present information on the history of the Kickapoo Valley.  Mike Wright led an effort to develop radio programs called the Crooked River Series, which aired the first Sunday evening of every month on WGBM-FM from Viroqua.  The one-hour programs included discussions on The Great Depression in the Kickapoo Valley, Settlement of the Kickapoo Valley, the Kickapoo Valley Railroad and other topics.  Several programs featured area musicians playing in “Old Time Kickapoo Music” segments.

            Frances Burton also produced a 16-mm color documentary film as part of the local history project.  Burton, whose family was from Gays Mills, was a filmmaker from Milwaukee, who moved back to the Kickapoo Valley to make the film.  She created the 15-minute film titled “Land of The Crooked River” from a script partially written by Dale Muller and narrated by Orlie Baker of Seneca.  The KVA History Project film (now a classic!) includes rare film footage from August 1939 of the last train on the Kickapoo railroad as it departed the station at Soldiers Grove.     

            In the end, the various results of the KVA’s local history project about the Kickapoo Valley were really marvels of their particular time.  The interviews, collections, essays, publications, oral tapes and film all strove to tell the story of a unique and particular place and its people.  That is something that others, including this humble scribbler, continue to this day.

Kickapoo Stove Works

Paul Bader was some sort of a creative and mechanical genius, although he would never admit to that distinction.  In discussions with him over the years about his varied projects, he would invariably say to me somewhere during the talk, “You know Brad, it’s not rocket science!”  Well, what he was working on may not have been ‘rocket science” to Paul, but it was to many of the rest of us.

            Paul came to the Kickapoo Valley entirely by chance in 1970.  He and a friend were looking to buy some land in rural Wisconsin and took a trip to Bayfield County to look over a real estate offer overlooking Lake Superior.  It was a gorgeous piece of land, but in the end a little pricey for Paul’s wallet.  On the drive back to Milwaukee, they took a little detour down the Kickapoo Valley and found it interesting.

            Paul stopped at a realty office in Richland Center, left his friend in the car, and soon was riding with the realtor through La Farge to look at a parcel of land on Green Hollow Road.  The old farm buildings were pretty well shot, but the view from the little ridge at the top was great.  And the price for the property was right!  By the time that Paul and the realtor returned to Richland Center, a deal was struck.

            Soon Paul was dabbling with an old sawmill operation on his Green Hollow property, trying to make it provide a living for he and his wife, Marcia.  “But wood and I never got along”, said Paul, so he switched his emphasis to metal and opened Green Hollow Enterprises – a metal fabrication and welding shop.  Paul was always interested in working with metal and had started making his own go-karts when he was only ten years old.

            He enjoyed using his hands working with metal and noted that a person gets a lot of satisfaction from designing something; building it, and then watching it work the way that it was intended to.  (Parts of this story are excerpted from an article written by Paul Beckstrand, writing for the La Farge Epitaph – August 6, 1975 issue.)

            Stove making came about almost by accident for Paul.  In the fall of 1974, he got four unsolicited orders to make wood stoves.  Paul designed a wood stove, which came to bear his name – the “Bader Burn Right” – BBR for short.  It was a good design and burned wood for maximum heat efficiency.  According to Paul, one of those stoves went into a new house that Orville Jenson was moving into.  Orville, then the manager of Nuzum’s in La Farge, loved his new BBR stove and told everyone he saw about this new stove being made out on Green Hollow.  Paul always contended that Orville’s testimonial created a demand to build more stoves.  In an interview a few months before his passing in 2013, Paul told me, “Shoot I built four of those stoves and then it just wouldn’t stop.  We ended building over 12,000 of those stoves and it still wasn’t enough.”   

            The “Bader Burn Right” was not envisioned as a permanent solution to the critical energy shortage of the 1970s.  “Wood heat is only an interim solution”, said Paul.  Although he did point out that, according to recent statistics (from 1975), thirty-three million homes could be heated with the waste from logging and sawmill operations.  Over forty years later, near the end of his days, Paul was still envisioning a way of using that logging and sawmill waste to heat the homes and businesses of the Kickapoo Valley.

            When the Kickapoo Stove Works began in the mid-1970s, Paul and his colleagues envisioned solar and wind power as a more permanent answer to America’s energy problems, and the group wanted to get into those areas of production also.  Paul noted, however, that moving into solar and wind power would take time since they would need to do most of their own research, as little official research was being done in those areas.

            After Paul built those first four wood stoves in 1974, the demand for the very efficient BBR called for an expanded operation so more could be produced.  In 1975, the Kickapoo Stove Works Corporation was formed to meet that need.  Five people worked on producing and selling the stoves in that first year of the Kickapoo Stove Works operation.  Paul and Marcia Bader joined with Tom Betten & his wife Eva and George Wilbur to inaugurate the little stove making company. 

A goal was set to make 400 BBR stoves in that first year.  The stoves continued to be assembled in Paul’s shop in Green Hollow, but a store building (the old Martha’s Restaurant space) was rented on La Farge’s Main Street to help with storage and shipping of the finished stoves and to provide space for a showroom.  George Wilbur headed up the selling of the stove from that Main Street location; Marcia Bader kept books for the fledgling company, while the Betten’s helped Paul with making the stoves.  Priced at $400 per stove, the Kickapoo Stove Works BBR soon was a hot commodity as people sought alternate heating options during the oil shortage of the mid-1970s.  The little stove company could not build them fast enough and expansion was needed.

Working with the Village of La Farge and the newly created Economic Development Commission, the Kickapoo Stove Works began to initiate a plan to expand its production capabilities.  But it was a difficult time to start a new project in La Farge.  The community seemed to be in a constant turmoil over the on again/off again dam project; there was several major disputes with the state Department of Transportation over the opening of the new State Highway 131 and the closing of the old state highway; two new bridges were being built by DOT across the Kickapoo River at Seelyburg and Andrews Flat and disputes arose over both projects, and lastly, the village seemed to be in a weekly battle with the state DNR over zoning and flood plain mapping.  There was little time or energy left to talk to these “Hippies” about their wood stove production needs.

But the BBR stoves were being ordered faster than they could be made and the space on Green Hollow was overwhelmed with the orders.  Seeking help in the manufacturing end, the Kickapoo Stove Works rented space in a building in Viroqua by the fall of 1976 and had hired an additional 10 people to help with the production of the stoves.  At peak capacity in the new Viroqua assembly plant, 60 stoves could be made in a week.  With retail outlets expanded to Viroqua and then Madison, the demand for stoves still overwhelmed production capabilities.

Interestingly, an editorial written by publisher Lonnie Muller in the September 22, 1976 issue of the La Farge Epitaph, lamented over the loss of the KSW plant and jobs to Viroqua.  Lonnie listed all of the problems then currently facing La Farge and admonished the village leaders to step up and draw the stove works company back to La Farge.  The editorial seemed to have an effect because in the next week’s paper, Al Szepi responded with a letter saying that Kickapoo Industrial Development, Ltd., La Farge’s fledgling attempt at economic development, was entering into talks with KSW about locating in La Farge.  

In 1975, Paul & Marcia Bader, Tom & Eva Betten and George Wilbur formed the Kickapoo Stove Works Company (KSW).  The move was made to expand the possibilities for the production of a wood stove (The Bader Burn Right – BBR for short) designed and first built by Paul in the fall/winter of 1974/75.  Paul had originally built four of the stoves in his welding and machine shop located in Green Hollow a few miles west of La Farge.  In that energy-crisis time of the mid-1970s, his efficient wood-burning stove was soon in great demand.  For the first year of operation, the young company set a goal to manufacture 300 stoves.

            To make that many stoves the fledgling wood stove company needed to expand their operations beyond its Green Hollow beginnings.  First, KSW rented office, storage and display space on La Farge’s Main Street in the former Martha’s Restaurant building.  The young company also looked for more space in La Farge to manufacture and assemble the stoves, but none could be found.  By the fall of 1976, space had been rented in a building in Viroqua and five more workers were hired to help in assembling the new stoves.  With the added manufacturing space and increased work force, up to sixty stoves a week could be produced.   Eventually, 495 new stoves were produced in that first year of increased production in 1976-77.  But more production space was still needed to meet the demand for the popular new wood stove.

            In the fall of 1976, KSW began negotiations with the Village of La Farge and a new industrial development effort in the village.  Al Szepi, President of La Farge’s new Kickapoo Industrial Development Corporation (KID), wrote a letter to the La Farge Epitaph newspaper in September that outlined preliminary efforts to construct a new stove works manufacturing building in the village.

            By November of 1976, Paul Bader announced that KSW had plans to build a new manufacturing facility to be located in one of a possible four locations - La Farge, Readstown, Viola, or Viroqua.  Intense negotiations between KSW and the new La Farge industrial development corporation and the village board followed with several meetings held in December.  By mid-January of 1977, the industrial development group led by officers Al Szepi, Phil Stittleburg and Kent Steinmetz announced that plans had been initiated to secure a federal Small Business Administration (SBA) loan to pay for construction of a new building to house the stove works manufacturing operation.  In addition, the development corporation was negotiating on the purchase of land in La Farge where the new manufacturing plant could be built.

            As those plans for a new building in La Farge were being negotiated the wood stove company moved forward with expansion on their own.  In February 1977, KSW purchased the Chase Mercantile Building from Finn Johannesen.  The large Main Street building, where KSW had been renting space previously, greatly increased the space for offices and for storage and display of completed stove units and other wood stove burning products that KSW was then offering for sale. 

Later in the month, KID President Al Szepi announced that the Kickapoo Stove Works would be moving their manufacturing works to La Farge by the summer of 1977!  Szepi added that KSW would be moving into a new $140,000 building located in La Farge that the industrial development group would be constructing.  KID had taken an option to buy land in the northern part of La Farge for the building and an SBA loan was being arranged to help pay for the project.  At the same time Szepi announced that the industrial corporation was raising $14,000 as a 10% match for the SBA loan by selling $10 shares of stock in KID and offering $1,000 debentures on the building project.  KSW would lease the manufacturing building from the development corporation and the lease payments could be applied towards eventual purchase of the building.

The industrial development group purchased four acres of property from Bill and Irma Gilman in May 1977.  The parcel of property along Mill Street was just north of the La Farge Co-op’s fertilizer storage facility and across the street from Calhoun Park, La Farge’s baseball field.  Besides raising the matching money ($14,000) for the project, the industrial development group also secured a loan of $77,000 from the La Farge State Bank in May to begin construction of the building.  In addition, an SBA loan of $49,000 was used for the project.

As the financing for the new manufacturing building was taking place, construction on the project had already begun.  Fill for the building site was trucked in during late April and actual construction began shortly after.  A cement foundation and floor was laid before a fabricated metal building was constructed on the site.  The building was completed by the end of June and featured space for construction of several different models of the BBR then being produced.  In addition, the building had loading piers on both ends for bringing in parts needed for manufacturing and sending out the finished stoves on semi-trailer trucks.

An open house was held at the new stove works manufacturing facility on July 4, 1977.  Over 200 people attended the open house that featured lemonade on the warm summer day, tours of the new plant and music by a band singing folk music.

By the end of the year, nearly 20 people were working at the manufacturing plant producing the standard BBR wood stove, the original BBR parlor furnace, the BBR home furnace, and a cabin model BBR.  The stove was still being sold as fast as it could be made from both the La Farge KSW store on Main Street and another store on Madison’s Fish Hatchery Road along the capital city’s beltline.

In addition, KSW developed a catalog that was mailed to potential customers.  The catalog featured photos and descriptions of all the different models of BBR wood stoves and other items essential in burning wood for heat.  The front cover of the KSW catalog featured a color photo of a Kickapoo River scene.  On the inside of that cover of the initial KSW catalog, George Wilbur wrote an introduction for the catalog titled “Heating With Wood”.  In the introduction, Wilbur wrote, “ Wood stoves and furnaces are the tools that give us access to the warmth-giving energy of the sun that is locked inside of every tree.  Because wood is economical, readily available and renewable, it is fast regaining its old popularity as a heating fuel.  If you now heat with gas, electricity or fuel oil, a switch to wood heat may give you enough savings in fuel cost to pay for your stove or furnace in one heating season.”   

Paul Bader’s stove was a big hit and eventually, the BBR would be sold at over 30 different locations around the state of Wisconsin and the upper Midwest.  The workforce at the KSW facilities in La Farge eventually would grow to nearly forty people with an annual payroll of three-quarters of a million dollars.  Nearly twelve thousand BBR wood stoves were produced from that new factory building on the north side of La Farge.