WATER THROUGH THE DAM!

KICKAPOO RIVER FLOOD OF 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            

            

Water Over The Dam - Part II

The great Kickapoo River flood of 2018 began on the evening of Monday, August 27^th, when torrential rains inundated an area from Coon Valley to Hillsboro.  Rainfall totals for that evening exceeded a foot in the Cashton, Ontario and Wilton areas.  In La Farge over five inches fell.  During that first night, the northern Kickapoo Valley communities were hit with record setting flood heights.  Most of the downtown Ontario business district was under 5 to 10 feet of water before daybreak.

            By 4 am on Tuesday, August 28^th, word had been received in La Farge of the record setting water that was approaching from upriver.  An army of workers and volunteers began to move what could be saved from the businesses along west Main Street nearest the river.  By daylight the river was out of its banks, crossing the old Highway 131 at Seelyburg and plowing its way toward the village with alarming speed and power. By mid-morning, the Kickapoo River stretched from the bridge west of Nuzum’s all the way to the gas pumps at the Zzip Stop.  And the water kept rising.

            That afternoon over five inches of rain fell in less than three hours in the La Farge area.  The downpour set off a massive flood on area creeks and streams. As the rising waters of Bear and Otter Creeks came careening into La Farge that afternoon, it encountered the already record flood heights of the swollen Kickapoo and had nowhere to go. The water kept rising and by nightfall, the flood crest had breached the drive-thru of the post office – a never before seen height.  Water from a backed up Bear Creek was running west down Snow Street and into the river near the motel.  On the other end of the village, the waters of Bear Creek nearly reached the parking lot of the new EMT Building.

            Rescuing people from their houses was a top priority after the afternoon deluge.  DNR wardens brought a boat to the village and went door to door rescuing people and their pets from their flooded houses and getting them to high ground.  (Check out the rescue video posted on the WKBT – Channel 8 in LaCrosse website of those DNR wardens rescuing people in La Farge that day.  It is mesmerizing to watch – the definition of heroism in many respects.)  

            It took nearly all of Wednesday, August 29^thfor the flood waters to leave Main Street in La Farge.  Highway 131 was closed in both directions from the village. To the north, the road had washouts at Bridges 10, 9, 7 and three different locations at Bridge 2 on the northern end of Ferris Flat.  To the south, the river’s floodwaters covered the highway below Tunnelville at Lawton’s and would eventually wash out part of the road there.  Highway 82 through La Farge finally opened for traffic on that evening.

            The flood’s height for La Farge measured at the official measuring station at the bridge next to Nuzum’s was 19.42 feet.  That height eclipsed the previous high water mark in La Farge (set by the 2008 flood) by nearly three and a half feet! By the way, that measuring station was always operating during the flood even though the station did quit sending out information via satellite.  When Lyle Dorscheid, the local gauge reader and the National Weather Service crew checked the gauging station after the floodwater finally went down, they verified that it had always been recording the river’s depth.  What the station could not record was the torrents of water entering the river via Otter and Bear Creeks south of the gauge.

            The power was out in La Farge for most of three days as the village’s generating station on south Silver Street was overcome with the high floodwaters.  The electric power ceased to be at noon on that Tuesday and did not return until mid-afternoon on Thursday, August 30^th.  Down river, the Kickapoo inundated Viola, Readstown, Soldiers Grove, Gays Mills and Steuben as its waters raced to join the Wisconsin River.  Almost every village set high water marks, just as La Farge had, with some areas noting water levels nearly five feet higher than any ever recorded previously.

            The record floodwater levels meant lots of damages to several businesses in La Farge.  They included Nuzum’s, the Organic Valley retail store in the old cheese factory, the La Farge Truck Center and Car Wash, Don Potter Realty, the Zzip Stop, Ewetopia, the Premier Co-op, The La Farge Dental Clinic and the La Farge Motel. Water even seeped into the north end of the new clinic on north Mill Street that had been constructed at an elevation level three feet above the previous highest flood.

            In addition, twenty-one La Farge residences had floodwater damage.  All of the houses on Snow Street, eleven in all, suffered extensive flood damage. Many of those houses had been elevated since previous floods, but still had water damage due to the record flood crest. Six houses on south State Street, several that had never had floodwater previously, were flooded this time.  Some of the houses can be repaired and made livable again, but many cannot be fixed.

            By Friday, August 31^st, the water had finally receded from Plum Run Road (old Hwy 131) at Seelyburg.  Massive clean up continued in the village.  The Zzip Stop was selling gas by that day after having the gas pumps cleaned and inspected.  Dumpsters were everywhere in the floodway of the village, stretching the length of Snow Street and beyond.  The water had been so high in the motel that all of the rooms had to be gutted.  Dumpsters piled high with flood debris stood beside the motel, Zzip Stop, Ewetopia and other Main Street businesses.  Rental houses on Main Street were damaged too badly to allow the tenants to return.

            The sidewalk outside of the Kickapoo Haven served as a meal site while the power was out during the beginning of the cleanup. Meals were served at noon and in the early evening every day through that Friday, August 31^st.   Volunteers, flood victims and those who needed a meal were fed with food donated and made by the Rockton Bar, the La Farge Food Pantry, both La Farge restaurants – Brosi’s and Phil & Deb’s, Bergum’s Grocery, and the Zzip Stop.  The La Farge Fire Department personnel was on call for the entire week helping with rescues, pumping out basements and doing what ever needed to be done to help the people of the community.

            Flood relief supplies were available at both churches in La Farge and the United Methodist Church was soon filled with clothes, food, and other necessities for those that had been flooded out.  The La Farge UM church is scheduled to be open as a flood relief center until the end of the first week of October.   The La Farge Food Pantry, under the leadership of Pastor Mark Phillips, was providing housing and money for those displaced by the flood.  A week after the last floodwaters had subsided, Pastor Mark was still busy finding places for people to live and providing relief in many other ways. Several families displaced by the flood moved into campers parked in the La Farge Village Park.

            By the weekend, the weather had settled down and the river was back in its banks.  Then early Sunday morning, September 2^nd, it started raining again.  It rained again on Sunday and several times on Monday, Labor Day.  Another nearly six inches of rain fell in three days and the Kickapoo rose rapidly again. By Tuesday, September 4^th, the floodwaters of the Kickapoo River had covered old Hwy 131 at Seelyburg again.  By that evening the river’s water was over Hwy 82 at Nuzum’s and over Mill Street again near the new clinic.  Most of the floodwater had receded by the next day, September 6^th, but Plum Run Road at Seelyburg remained under water for another day.  South Mill Street, south Silver Street and Pearl Street on the far southern end of the village were closed for nearly two weeks straight due to high water.

            So where does La Farge go after such a catastrophic flood?  How many people and businesses will leave?  What lays ahead for this Kickapoo River town?  What will be the reaction to this historic flood?

"KICKAPOOGIA - A STATE OF MIND"

Many moons ago we checked into a motel in the Eagle River area for a little summer vacation stay in Wisconsin’s “Up North”.  When the owner/clerk saw our address as La Farge, he inquired what we were doing in the north woods.  He said that it didn’t get any prettier than the Kickapoo Valley.  He and his wife were from LaCrosse (they helped run the family owned hostelry in the summers) and said they tried to get to the Kickapoo Valley whenever possible.  I told them I was going fishing on some of the lakes in the Conover area to try to catch some walleyes, which you cannot do in the Kickapoo Valley – and he agreed.

            But what he said, probably first got me to thinking about the natural beauty of where we live here in the Valley of the Kickapoo. That “Up North” conversation probably occurred sometime in the late 1970s or early ‘80s and what the motel operator was saying was already playing out in front of us, but we probably didn’t even see it.

            Many people were visiting the Kickapoo Valley in the early 1970s, some drawn to the area because of the controversy over the La Farge dam project.  Many of the visitors canoed the river and camped along its shores.  Some of those people fell in love with the gorgeous valley and decided to stay.

            In La Farge, the newcomers of that time were known as “Hippies” although most were not necessarily of that “hip generation”. Yes, some of the men had longer hair and beards and the women sported long skirts and a bra was not an absolute necessity as an undergarment.  Some of the newcomers had an inclination towards relaxation with marijuana use (“Wacky Weed”, as the locals liked to call it), but most seemed to fit into the local scene pretty well.  Downstream, in the Gays Mills area, the newcomers of that time became known as the “Back – To – The – Landers”, because of their propensity to try farming on a small scale.  Regardless, all of the newcomers came to the Kickapoo Valley, liked what they saw and decided to stay.

            The stoppage of the dam project at La Farge in the mid-‘70s continued to draw national headlines and that continued to draw people to the Valley to see what all of the fuss was about.  Again, many of those visitors liked what they saw in the Valley of the Kickapoo.  People from the urban areas of Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago started to view the beautiful Kickapoo Valley as a place for a second home – a spot in the country for extended vacations.  When you add in the spectacular increase in the populations of Whitetail Deer and wild turkeys in the Valley at the same time, small acreage spots for a hunting camp became sought after in the Kickapoo Valley as well.

            If you were born and raised in the Kickapoo Valley, there is a propensity to take the beauty of the Valley for granted.  You get used to the surroundings and start to overlook the majesty of the awesome hills and valleys.  When the people who lived north of La Farge were leaving their homes and farms because of the dam project, they were forced to make a decision on whether to stay in the Valley or move away.  For some, who wanted to stay in farming, the decision would be based on finding another farm to keep milking cows.  Many of those farmers stayed in the area, but others left and sought their agricultural fortunes in other locales.

            Harvey and Bernice Schroeder sold their mink ranch to the federal government as part of the dam project buy out in the early 1970s. They were retiring from farming, but they were not sure where they wanted to live.  They traveled around America to other places, in particular checking out some locations where the Corps of Engineers had water control projects similar to the one at La Farge.  They visited many beautiful places, but in the end returned to the Valley and built a new house located just north of La Farge that would be overlooking “Beautiful Lake La Farge”.  Bernice has always said that they could not leave the beautiful hills of the Kickapoo Valley.  (Perhaps that is why Bernice’s daughter, Kathy, has returned to the Valley to build a house on one of those hills.)

            Even after the dam project was stopped and the lake was no longer a possibility, people from away continued to buy property in the rural areas of the Valley.  Whether for a hunting camp or a second vacation home, the people still wanted to be in those hills as much as they could.    

              When CROPP bought the cheese factory in La Farge in 1989, a whole other group of new people came to the Valley.  As the “Croppies” took over La Farge, many bought homes and farms in the area.  Their organic ideals of farming struck a chord with locals, who liked the old-fashioned sensibilities of that type of farming.  Because the topography of the Valley almost demands smaller farms, the “Organic Way” of farming soon thrived.  The old “Two-Story Farms” of the Kickapoo Valley were viable again and the beauty of the Valley was a bonus for the new organic farmers.

            Sometime in the late 1990s a local realtor took a long distance call from a faraway place.  The caller was looking for a house on a small farm.  The search was a little more specific though because the caller wanted a place located in THE “Organic Valley”.  (Who says brand names don’t make a difference!)  When the realtor explained to the caller that there wasn’t an actual “Organic Valley”, a sense of disappointment could be felt over the phone by the realtor.  But the realtor, being a good salesperson, promptly started selling the virtues of the beautiful Kickapoo Valley, and eventually the sale of some Valley property was secured. 

            Today, the beauty of the Kickapoo Valley is wrapped within the overall tourist draw of the Driftless Area.  This unglaciated region of the Midwest is unique in many respects and the beautiful Kickapoo Valley is the poster child of the area.  Since the Kickapoo River is the only river that has its entire watershed included in the Driftless Area, the Valley has historic and geologic reasons for its unmatched beauty and majesty.  Since the Kickapoo Valley has this awesome beauty, then its inhabitants must be pretty special, too? 

            Right?  

            Well??

            Maybe the story of those “Kickapoogians” (or is it “Kickapoojians”?) who live in ultra-cool “Kickapoogia” is one for another time. Don’t forget that those uber-cool “Kickapoogia” t-shirts are for sale at the gift shop of the Kickapoo Valley Reserve Visitor Center.  Get them while they are HOT!  

            Stay cool in Kickapoogia!

XMAS WALK - 2016 - Part 2

Switching over to the south side of Main Street here at the Kickapoo River and heading east back uptown, we find the old cheese factory building.  Now owned by CROPP, the factory became a very busy place in 2013 after the fire at the Organic Valley headquarters building.  Besides the regular work of packaging organic cheese products at the site, the upstairs offices at the building were busy with relocated staff.   Temporary offices were once again utilized in the parking lot for employees without a place to work due to the fire, but by 2016 those temporary buildings were gone.

 The Organic Valley Retail Store Outlet located on the west end of the cheese factory remains a very busy store in the village.  The entrance area to the store and the grounds next door were improved during 2015.  In 2016, the cheese packaging line that used the old cheese factory building was moved to a new OV building in Cashton.  Organic Valley may be making plans to enlarge the retail store with the new vacated space.

To the south on Mill Street, M&M Construction, owned by David Mick, operates out of the garage built by the Harris brothers back in 1974-75.  To the south of the construction business stands a large Quonset hut building that used to be located at the Schroeder’s mink ranch north of La Farge, that was bought by the federal government as part of the dam project.  The building was moved to town in the 1970’s and today is a storage building for the village.

If we go all the way to the south end of Mill Street, we come to the newest park in the village, the Riverside Park.  The village developed the park using several properties of former residences in this part of town that were bought out after the 2008 flood.  The park features a walking trail along the river that follows the old railroad track bed.  The trail has interpretive signs along the way telling the history of the village.  A new pier was added to Riverside Park’s spring-fed fishing pond in 2016.  The park also features a 9-hole disc golf course on the property.

On the southeast corner of the busy intersection of Mill and Main Streets is the La Farge Car Wash, owned by Earl Nelson.  Located in the gas station that was last operated by Steve Olson, the car wash has an indoor and outdoor carwash area plus a vacuum for cleaning vehicle interiors.

To the east of the car wash is the former town hall and storage shed of the Town of Stark.  After Stark moved to their new buildings on Corps Road, Earl Nelson purchased the lots and building in 2012 to become part of his La Farge Truck Center operation.  In November 2016, Don Potter Realty moved their offices into the old Stark Town Hall.

 Across the alley are the La Farge Truck Center’s sales offices and garage.  Selling International trucks and operating one of the busiest service departments in western Wisconsin, Nelson employs twenty people in the LTC operation, which is one of the largest employers on La Farge’s Main Street.  He owns the rest of the property along Main Street up to Silver Street.  This includes the old village pump house that is next to the main garage, then the former Fred Major house and the empty corner lot where the Fulmer/Clark’s/school bus garage once stood.

On the second block south on Silver Street, the old fire house, built in 1974, is now used to store village and utility vehicles and equipment.  To the south is another utility building that houses a generator used in emergencies to produce electricity for the village and surrounding areas.  Across the street is the former ambulance garage, which was built with the help of donated work crews by the Amish.  When the ambulance squad moved to the new EMS Building in 2010, La Farge Maintenance purchased the old ambulance squad building.

The Zzip Stop convenience store and gas station sits on the southeast corner of Silver and Main Streets.  Owned by Shane Nottestad, the Zzip Stop is open seven days a week and is the busiest place on Main Street.  This business did an amazing remodel starting in the fall of 2015.  A new canopy and gas pumps announced a change for the La Farge business to a Gulf Station, the first station in Wisconsin for that company after an absence of many years.  In addition, the interior of the Zzip Stop had a complete makeover with the kitchen, seating and display areas being totally reorganized.  A beer cave was added to the beverage sales area and two new checkout stations were installed. 

When the brick building next door to the Zzip Stop (the old post office building) started to fall down in April of 2013, the cascade of bricks spilled over into the convenience store’s parking lot.  Eventually, the building was condemned by the village and then purchased by Shane Nottestad, who tore the crumbling old building down and hauled it away to the landfill in Viroqua.  The empty lot was graveled over and now provides additional parking for the Zzip Stop.

La Farge’s post office is on the corner of the intersection with Bird Street.  Jon Zahm constructed the current post office building in 1991.  The village’s post office was moved from the former site in the old brick hotel annex building next door, just to the west.  Besides an expanded work and office area for handling the mail, the new post office includes a lobby with customer mailboxes, a parking area and a drive-thru mail drop-off lane.

To the south of the post office is the River Valley Motel.  Built in 1972-73 and opened by Dick and Bea Gabrielson as the Lakeland Motel, the business has ten rooms for rent and is often full during hunting and fishing seasons and other peak demand times.  Across Bird Street at the site of the old La Farge Enterprise newspaper building is the small engine repair shop owned and operated by Bob Hysel.

            Moving back up Main Street, we come to the village’s bank.  Owned by the Bosshard family, the bank is now a branch of the Peoples State Bank of Hillsboro. It has eight employees and some of those employees work at the bank in Readstown, formerly a branch of the bank in La Farge. The cement block bank building on the corner has served as a bank for the village since the 1920’s.

There is only one tavern or bar on La Farge’s Main Street now.  Phil & Deb’s Town Tap, located in the old Opera House building next to the bank, claims the distinction as the only bar in La Farge where you can wet your whistle. (Although off-sale beer and liquor purchases are still available at the Zzip Stop and Bergum’s Food Mart and beer and wine may be enjoyed with your meal at Sisters Place.)  That’s rather hard to believe of a town where twenty years earlier three drinking establishments were open on Main Street.  Twenty years before that La Farge had a “Black List” with two-dozen names.  People on that list were banned from drinking in any of La Farge’s bars and had to use their wiles to find other ways to get their whiskey and wine.  The Town Tap also operates a full service kitchen with daily lunch specials, homemade pizzas and evening dinner specials.

Next door to the Town Tap was Dawn Nemec’s Country View Embroidery Shop. It was a new business in La Farge, started in 2013 that specialized in custom embroidered clothes of all kinds and other promotional materials.  But the business was closed down in 2015 and in April 2016 the store was renovated into a beauty parlor that is operated by JoLynn Skrede.  This newest business on La Farge’s Main Street is known as Jo’s Salon.

The Sister’s Place Restaurant is the next business on this block.  The business is owned by sisters Deb Nelson and Kris Walker, who also work together at the bank, and the restaurant operates seven days a week except for the winter season when it is closed on Sundays.

To the west in the old drug store business space is HTC Realty By Design, which moved to this location in the summer of 2013.  The realty office, operated by Kathy Appleman, was formally located in the brick building next to the Zzip Stop.  But when that building began to collapse in the spring of the year, the realty offices were moved into new offices at this location.

The Kreigh Art Ceramics display room occupies the next storefront.  From a working studio in the back of the building, Kyle Kreigh is constantly creating new ceramic products for sale that are always on display in the front room.

To the east of the ceramics showroom are the offices of the Village of La Farge and La Farge Utilities.  Village Clerk Kim Walker and Utilities Secretary Virginia Bilek are usually working at the office every weekday.

On the east corner of this block is the La Farge Hardware Store owned and operated by Doug Clark.  The corner building is the oldest store in La Farge, originally constructed by Charles DeJean in 1875 for use as a general store.  Located on the busy intersection of State Street (State Highway 131 coming from Viola) and Main Street, this building has housed some type of business continuously in the village for over 135 years.  Clark has operated the well-stocked hardware store since 2004.  Down the block to the south on State Street is the old locker plant building located on the alley, now used for storage.  Further down the block the old KP Hall that sits on the corner is now a second location for Jake Sell’s sprawling resale business. 

Across Snow Street is the old La Farge Medical and Dental Clinic building.  The VMH Medical Clinic left this site in June of 2015 and relocated to the new clinic on Mill Street.  However, the dental practice of Dr. Rose Wels remained in the building.  Dr. Wels has practiced dentistry here in La Farge for thirty years, beginning her practice in 1986.  With the medical clinic part of the building empty, the village began to seek tenants for the space.  In the fall of 2015, Carl Peterson started a chiropractic and nutrition practice in the west end of the old clinic building.  Originally only open on a limited schedule, Peterson’s business proved to be very successful and expanded hours were begun in the spring of 2016.

Coming back north on the east side of State Street, we have the law office of Phil Stittleburg.  With his practice at the site since 1972, Stittleburg is the third lawyer to work out of the building (following John Drew and Ralph Freeze), which has housed a law office continuously since 1899.  Across the alley to the north is the old shoe store, which is now owned by Stittleburg and used for storage.  A large pine tree in the yard north of the old shoe store still serves proudly as the village’s Christmas tree.

            Continuing north, on the southwest corner of the intersection is the site of the old Mobil gas station.  The building and lot sat empty for all of 2013 after previously being the home of Countryside Motors, where used cars were once sold.  After a brief time as a welding shop and later serving as a base for a food cart in 2014-15, the old gas station lot, on a great corner where two state highways cross, now hosts junk cars and trucks.

The massive C&S Motors Garage building sits in the middle of this block.  It was the home of C&S Motors & Sports Shop.  LaVerne Campbell usually opened up his sports shop in the garage’s office space on most days, but by 2015 his failing health didn’t allow that to happen any more.  The automotive repair and service work in the garage done by Mark Campbell had ceased operating earlier in 2013.

On the southeast corner of the intersection of Maple and Main was Irv Gudgeon’s Woodworking Shop.  Housed in the old building that had originally been a blacksmith shop and then a longtime gas station, Irv built picnic tables, outhouses and doghouses in his shop.  As he had done for many previous Decembers, in 2013 Irv sold Christmas trees (grown on the Matthes Tree Farm outside of Viola) displayed in the front of his shop where the gas pumps used to be.  But age forced Irv to give up his business in 2014.  (Did anybody sell Christmas trees in La Farge this year?)

Moving far up Main Street to the east end of town, we see the new Free Methodist Church, located one block south on Cherry Street.  The church is the busiest in town with regular church services, weddings and funerals.  A large dining room with kitchen located adjacent to the church sanctuary provides a wonderful space for meals.   This beautiful new facility was dedicated in January 2004 and under the leadership of Pastor Mark Phillips the congregation has grown steadily since.  The church has taken a very active stance in the community and houses the village’s Food Pantry, with distributions made in the building each month.  The church maintains a historical connection to the old Free Methodist Church located on Main Street a block away (now the home of Traci & Doug Albright as well as the center for Doug’s electric & solar business) as the bell from that old church is preserved and displayed on the front lawn of the new church.

Across the alley from the new church is the Superlative Skateboard Park.  Located on a former residence site along Main Street, the park, which was developed through the leadership of Mark Phillips and others in the village, features several cement ramps and chutes for skateboarders to test their skills.  The skateboard park was dedicated in 2009 and was made possible through a grant from the Tony Hawk Foundation.

 The new firehouse or ESB (Emergency Services Building), which houses the fire trucks, ambulances, and village police car is located across Cherry Street, to the west of the Free Methodist Church.  It was opened in 2010 as a replacement for the old firehouse and the ambulance garage and came about through the procurement of a federal grant after the flood of 2008.  The building is dedicated to the fire and EMS volunteers, past, present and future, who make such a difference in our community of La Farge.  Village President Steve Donovan, who led the effort to raise funds and apply for grants to complete the new building and move the fire department and ambulance squad out of the floodway, made the dedication at the building’s grand opening in September 2010.  The new ESB also provides meeting space for village board meetings, elections and other municipal events.

So, for now, that concludes our stroll along Main Street in La Farge.  My legs are a little sore from the hike, as I don’t get out as much as I used to. 

CATCHING THE TROLLEY TO LA FARGE’S HISTORY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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