La Farge's Commercial Club

A meeting of professional men was held at the Masonic Temple on Friday evening, September 3, for the purpose of organizing a Commercial Club.

            Thus began an article in the September 9, 1937 issue of the La Farge Enterprise newspaper about the establishment of an organization of village businessmen.  The article went on to tell what the new club was going to be all about: The purpose of the organization is to bring together the business and professional men of La Farge for the purpose of bringing about uniform business practices, better harmony and to aid in the development of this Community.  It is hoped that through the efforts of the Community Club that La Farge will be selected as the Headquarters for the Kickapoo River Flood Control Survey, and later headquarters for this project.

            At a later meeting held on September 7^th of that year, the new Commercial Club elected Ralph Freeze, an attorney in the village as its first President.  Other officers elected in that 1937 organizational meeting were Secretary – Gene Calhoun, who ran a funeral home in the village and Treasurer – Mac Marshall, who owned a Main Street hotel.  The four Directors elected to fill out the Executive Committee of the club were Bernard Brokaw, William Adams, who ran a hardware store in La Farge, Harry Lounsbury, who ran the village’s drug store and Emory Thayer, the manager of Nuzum’s Lumber. 

            At the time that the new Commercial Club was formed, La Farge and the entire Kickapoo Valley were undergoing some dynamic times. As was mentioned earlier regarding the flood control survey, Congress had approved a federal study of the Kickapoo Valley in August of 1937.  The study would be held over the next few years and La Farge’s business community wanted the village to be the center of that project.  Besides the federal flood control study, an impending event of another nature loomed in the immediate future – the abandonment of the Kickapoo Valley’s railroad.

            In August of 1937 a protest meeting was held in La Farge regarding the proposed abandonment of the Valley’s railroad.  At that meeting, the Kickapoo Valley Defense Association (KVDA) was formed with La Farge Village President Arch Davidson serving as president of the new organization.  Davidson had been a leader in the Valley to get the flood control study (In January of 1937, Davidson and Ralph Nuzum, who owned the lumberyard in town, had spearheaded a petition drive to be sent to Congress in favor of the flood control study. The petitions sent to Congress had been gathered by the Kickapoo Flood Control Association, another organization that Davidson served as president.), and now he would lead the fight to save the railroad.

            One of the first things that the new Commercial Club did was to sponsor a Harvest Festival & Fair to be held in La Farge in mid-October of 1937.  The new festival, which featured a parade and a variety of activities was a success and was held under the sponsorship of the new businessmen’s club for several more years. In 1939, all of the businesses in La Farge closed from noon to 6 pm on the day of the festival.

            Later in 1939, members of the La Farge Commercial Club went to Hillsboro to celebrate the opening of the new state highway between the two communities.  The last section of the new Highway 82 had been completed that fall.  With the Kickapoo Valley’s railroad gone by this time, the development of state highways to La Farge was a main concern for village leaders.  With the completion of Hwy 82, La Farge had the first state road to the village. While at the meeting in Hillsboro, the community leaders from both towns also celebrated the re-opening of the Hillsboro Brewery and sampled some of the “Hillsboro Pale” that was again being made.

            The opening of the new state highway between La Farge and Hillsboro was the result of strong lobbying by village leaders, led by Davidson.  When the railroad abandonment became a certainty earlier in the year, the KVDA switched its emphasis to getting new and improved state roads to the Kickapoo Valley.  Because the railroad had been used extensively by many Kickapoo Valley businesses, especially for the receiving of goods to sell, a new and reliable highway system was needed as a replacement.  Davidson and other La Farge businessmen continued to have the state improve and gravel Highway 82 to Viroqua and to have the state designate the old “River Road” (then County Hwy M) as a state highway.

            Having good roads to La Farge had always been a priority for its business community.  In 1915, La Farge businesses had donated money to have the Otter Creek Road dragged and graded.  At the same time, June of 1915, three La Farge businesses – Chase’s, DeJean’s and Householder’s – had placed a notice in the local newspaper announcing that their stores would be closing at 8 pm except for Wednesday and Saturday. Operating hours for local businesses could be a point of contention in a small town like La Farge.  Probably because the stores actually competed for people’s business when they came to town to shop, establishing a mutual time for hours of operation was difficult to achieve at times.  But later that month the community came together to promote La Farge’s 4^th of July Celebration.

            A call was made to all the automobile owners in the La Farge area, estimated to be about 75 at the time, for a Booster Club Trip to promote the 4^th of July.  Eventually 36 automobiles and around 150 people went on the booster trip that included stops in West Lima, Bloom City, Woodstock, Rock Bridge, Hub City and Yuba in the morning of that last Saturday of June in 1915.  When the booster caravan reached Hillsboro, everyone stopped for lunch before continuing on to Dilly, Valley and Rockton in the afternoon to conclude the trip.  La Farge’s 4^th of July Celebration was well attended and successful that year thanks to the efforts of the business community.

            In 1920, the La Farge businessmen united once again to sponsor the La Farge baseball team.  The “town team” was the pride of the village and always seemed to play for a championship each year.  Over the years, the sponsorship by La Farge’s businesses for the ball team was a given.

            During World War II, the La Farge Commercial Club ceased to function as the village turned its attention to various drives to support the war effort.  After the war was over, there were calls for the Commercial Club to again unite La Farge’s business community.  In 1947, the La Farge Development Association was formed and Casey Sanford was chosen as its first president.  Sanford, who owned a men’s clothing store on La Farge’s Main Street, led the new organization in helping with the village’s annual 4^thof July Celebration. The new business organization sponsored a raffle for that year’s Independence Day.  The following year, the development association co-sponsored the 4^thof July with the newly formed VFW Post.

            In 1949, a Lions Club was formed in La Farge and it seemed to take the place of the previous business organizations.  The president of that first Lions Club in La Farge was Ed Deibig, who owned the Chevy-Buick garage in town.  The new Lions Club sponsored a “Wild West Rodeo” that was held on Labor Day.  The rodeo was held at Calhoon Park, but crowds that first year were small because of rainy weather. 

             That Christmas season, the Lions Club sponsored a “Clock Stops Contest” fundraiser. People would pay to make a guess on how long a hand-wound clock would run. The clock was on display in the front window of one of the Main Street stores.  The clock ran for 92 hours before stopping and a winner was announced with much Yuletide fanfare.

            One of the main projects that the La Farge Lions Club undertook was to build new tennis courts in town.  Using proceeds from several more successful rodeos, the courts were constructed beyond the left field fence at Calhoon Park.  John Ferris, who ran a funeral parlor and furniture store in the village, was key in making the rodeos successful.  Finn Johannesen, who ran a grocery store in town and also served as the village’s president for several years, led the Lions club in getting the tennis courts completed.

            Over the years several different business organizations were formed in La Farge to provide some type of order in the commercial sector of the village.  Some times the individual businesses had to act upon their own.  

            In May of 1947, a notice appeared in the Enterprise that the four grocery stores in town – the Cash Store, Clover Farm Store, Andrews Market and Kennedy’s Grocery – would all be closed during the summer on Thursday afternoons.  The reason given for the new closing hours were due to the late Wednesday nights when the free movies were held on Main Street during the summer.  At a time when those La Farge grocery stores were sometimes open for 15 hours a day, a break was needed for the workers in the store to catch some rest.

            Different times; different needs for this little Kickapoo River town.

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.