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 - PT. IV

The great Kickapoo River Flood of 1978 was the culmination of a very wet spring season that continued into June.  That month, weekend storms seemed to keep the river at or near flood stage every weekend, thwarting the attempts of tourists to canoe on the river.  At the end of the month the tipping point was reached. Here is how I described that flood in volume II of my history of La Farge (page 214).

            On the evening of Friday, June 30^th, a series of heavy thunderstorms swept through the Kickapoo Valley.  During the evening, the National Weather Service issued a flood alert for the Kickapoo River and surrounding streams.  The Vernon County Sheriff’s Department mobilized efforts to move everyone away from flooding streams.  The La Farge Fire Department was called out during the night to look for canoeists who were camped along the river south of Rockton.  Later, the power went off in the village and firemen helped people with emergency power for sump pumps to keep water out of basements.

            By the morning of July 1, reports from communities upriver from La Farge warned of high floodwaters on the way.  Norwalk, Wilton and Ontario were all deluged with floodwaters and all of it was headed fro La Farge and other communities downstream.  North of Rockton, the waters of the flooding Kickapoo were almost over the 10-foot high railings of Bridge #10 that spanned the river. By late morning on Saturday, July 1, the flooding Kickapoo began to spill into La Farge.  Employees and volunteer work crews worked at Nuzum’s, Jeffer’s Truck Sales, and the cheese factory to get merchandise to higher ground. Volunteers and members of the fire department began to move furniture and other belongings out of the houses south of Main Street.  A caravan of volunteers in trucks and boats moved people out of their houses on Mill, Pearl, Gold, Silver and Snow Streets.  All of the trucks of the fire department as well as the ambulance were moved away from the firehouse on south Silver Street to higher ground.  Some of the trucks were kept at C&S Motors and a couple others were eventually driven over to the Major farm on Otter Creek, so the department could respond on the west side of the river.

            By mid-afternoon the waters of the Kickapoo had advanced up Main Street to crest between the post office and the Co-op Gas Station.  All events of the opening day of the 4^thof July Celebration were cancelled, but many people still came to La Farge for the events – many unaware of the devastating flood.  Others, however, cam to see the floodwaters and by late afternoon the village was jammed with people.  Sandwiches that had been made for the celebration were donated to feed the many volunteers, firemen and policemen helping with the flood.  Red Cross officials came to the village by nightfall and they arranged for meals to be served at Kennedy’s Restaurant for people displaced by the floodwaters.  Sleeping bags were placed in the school gymnasium and people with no place to stay could reside there until the floodwaters abated.  Others stayed in the KP Hall overnight as they waited to return to their flooded homes.

            The waters started to recede late in the day on July 1^st, but then an intense storm pummeled the La Farge area in the evening.  The storm had spawned several tornadoes in the Viroqua area and La Farge received nearly two-inches of rain.  The storm caused more severe flooding on Bear Creek, Otter Creek, and Weister Creek and caused the Kickapoo to again rise to former high levels during the night.  From Friday evening June 30^ththrough Sunday morning, July 2^nd, 6.15 inches of rain was measured in La Farge.

            By the morning of Sunday, July 2^ndthe waters of the Kickapoo at La Farge had begun its recession down Main Street and back towards the river’s banks.  The floodwaters had crested at 14.92 feet, the greatest water level ever recorded at the gauging station located on the bridge west of Nuzum’s.  12,900 cubic feet of water per second was rushing through the village at the peak of the crest, another apex never recorded before.  (Many of the older generation compared the great Flood of 1978 to that of the one in 1935, but the gauging station at La Farge was not in operation at that time of the Flood of 1935, so an official comparison was not available.)

            It is interesting to note that the gauging station at La Farge was installed because of the flood of 1935.  When the Corps of Engineers did their preliminary flood control studies of the Kickapoo Watershed beginning in 1938, one of their initial recommendations was for gauging stations to be placed along the river to measure its flow.  The stations were installed at La Farge and Gays Mills soon after that initial Corps study. Let’s now return to my account in volume II of that 1978 flood at La Farge.

            In La Farge, the houses that had floodwater in them (Some for the first time ever) included Gerald Anderson, Stanley Potter, Elmer Storer, Catherine Norris, Eva Clements, John Sokolik, Bob Sokolik, Ron Gabrielson (renting the JaDoul house), Reynold Waddell, Jim Campton, Gib Stevens, Ethel Burt, Maxine Kennedy, Bob Erickson, Lucille Yarolimek, Vera Campton, Bob Jacobson, and Leslie Gillett.

            Business places in La Farge that were inundated with the floodwaters included the La Farge Cheese Factory, Nuzum’s, Gary’s Texaco Station, Caucutt-Olson Plumbing, La Farge Epitaph newspaper, Jeffer’s Truck Sales, Kickapoo Antiques, and Nelson’s Garage.  Also suffering damage from the flood were the Town of Stark hall and shed, the La Farge jail, and the new village hall and firehouse.

            The school’s bus garage, located on Main Street in the old Fulmer’s Garage building suffered heavy damage.

            Floodwaters kept area roads and highways closed for days.  Water covered the old portion of Highway 131 at Seelyburg for nearly two days and caused major damage to the road.  Highway 131 south of La Farge was closed for two days and almost one hundred yards of the highway were washed out below the new bridge at Lawton’s.  In addition the sewer plant at Seelyburg was inoperable for more than 24 hours at the height of the flood and raw sewage was dumped directly into the river’s waters. Many people boiled village water for drinking during the flood, but a DNR check on the village’s water supply on July 5^thindicated there was no contamination.

            Governor Martin Schreiber had declared much of southwestern Wisconsin, including the Kickapoo Valley, a disaster area because of the flooding.  (President Carter soon followed with his own disaster declaration, freeing up federal funds for flood relief.)  The move by Governor Schreiber allowed for state and federal assistance to reach those affected by the floods more quickly. Within a week of the flood, representatives from HUD and the Governor’s office were in La Farge to assess the damages. A list compiled by Village President Ted Erickson indicated that 38 residences, 23 businesses and several municipal facilities in La Farge had damages from the flood.  An initial estimate total of $200,000 in damages to La Farge residences, businesses, and streets was compiled.  That total did not include any of the damages to farm operations within the village.

            It is important to remember that a nearly completed flood control dam lay north of La Farge during that epic Kickapoo River Flood of 1978.  Originally scheduled to be completed two years before the flood, construction on the unfinished dam had been delayed for nearly four years.  It is interesting to notice how the Corps of Engineers assessed that 1978 flood on the Kickapoo River.  Again, I will return to volume II, page 219.

            Later, the Corps of Engineers came up with very different numbers for the impact of a completed dam on the flood.  Corps estimates on the total damages from the flood to Vernon, Richland and Crawford Counties was $20-million.  An additional $7-million in damages occurred in Monroe County, but those damages would not have been affected by a dam at La Farge.  However, the Corps estimated that with a completed dam at La Farge and the accompanying levee systems at Soldiers Grove and Gays Mills, 80% of the flood damages to Kickapoo towns would have been avoided.  With only the dam in place and with no downstream levees, the Corps still predicted a decrease of 63% in flood damages. 

            Wow, 80% less damages with a completed dam at La Farge!  It blows one’s mind to think that those kinds of numbers still created no impetus for the politicians to finish the dam project. As Bob Faw said on his TV news story about the La Farge dam project that was shown on the “CBS Evening News” on October 13, 1978, “An unfinished dam stops no flood waters”. 

DON'T BURN YOUR BRIDGES BEHIND YOU!

In late October 1975, the La Farge Fire Department notified the Corps of Engineers that there could be no fire protection coverage on the federal dam lands without a written agreement.  The fire department was leery about driving the fire trucks across the old bridges on Highway 131 north of town, since the trucks would exceed the 10-ton weight limits.  Eventually the Corps and the fire department came to a temporary agreement over fire protection coverage and the Wisconsin DOT gave approval to the La Farge fire trucks crossing the bridges as long as a 5-mph speed limit was followed.

Many of the problems with traffic using the old bridges on Highway 131 could have been avoided if the new section of the highway, running from La Farge to Rockton had been opened in mid-October as planned.  The paving of the new section of highway was completed by then and ready for traffic, but disagreements between the Corps of Engineers and the Wisconsin DOT over the ownership of the new section stopped the transferal.  The DOT felt that the new section of highway did not meet state standards nor was adequately or properly completed.  Finally, Jim Ruyak announced from his Corps offices in St. Paul that the new highway would not be transferred to the state as planned nor would the new section be opened to traffic in 1975. 

The new highway project was also stopped when several local governments balked at plans for what to do with the old highway.  Once again, the local school district joined in the controversy.  It was suggested by some that the school buses could avoid crossing the bridges on old Highway 131 by instead using the new route.  But the La Farge School District resisted running their buses on the new road until the DOT had officially taken over that section of the highway.

 The school also wondered about the flood-prone section of the old highway south of Rockton and the condition of the bridges on that section south to Weister Creek.  That section of the old highway was to become part of County Trunk P, but Vernon County had no money for road or bridge improvements on that section of the old state highway.  Several Vernon County board members opposed the county assuming ownership of that section of Highway 131 due to the projected high cost of maintenance and repairs.  

The Town of Stark was supposed to assume ownership of old Highway 131 from the Corps’ dam site south to the La Farge village limits.  But Town of Stark officials rejected assuming ownership of the road due to the poor condition of that portion of the state highway.  That portion of old Highway 131 had damage caused by heavy machinery traffic on the road during the dam construction.

 Finally, the Village of La Farge was to assume ownership of the old highway from the northern village limits (next to the Star Cemetery) south to where the old road joined new Highway 131 on Mill Street near the ballpark.  But that section of the old highway contained the crumbling bridge at Seelyburg that needed massive repairs or replacement entirely.  Since the village had no money for either bridge option, La Farge also rejected taking over that portion of old Highway 131.

So as the winter season approached, the new section of Highway 131 remained closed to traffic (although it was unofficially open to those who chose to use it and many did) and what to do with several sections of the old highway remained in tumult.

With all of the controversy over the bridges around La Farge, there was one positive development when a new bridge was built across the Kickapoo River at the Lawton (Rehbein) farm south of La Farge.  The Highway 131 Bridge was opened for traffic at the end of November, but of course, not before some controversy.

The new bridge was actually the first part of a larger project to renovate and straighten Highway 131 between Tunnelville and La Farge.  The plan called for cutting through the hill known as Elk Point on the Rehbein farm, which would eliminate the old railroad tunnel still at that place.  Besides the historic tunnel, there was also an ancient Native American burial ground located on the top of the hill above the tunnel.  The DOT plan called for the elimination of the tunnel and the removal of the Native American mounds beginning in the summer of 1976.  The project was to be completed by the fall of 1977.  (More on the local efforts to save the old railroad tunnel and burial mounds in a later installment)

On Monday, December 8^th, 1975, as early morning drivers headed north from La Farge on Highway 131, they came upon a burning bridge a mile and a half north of Rockton.  One car stayed at the bridge (Bridge #9) to ward off any traffic trying to cross, while another driver went back to Rockton to notify authorities.

When the La Farge Fire Department arrived at 6:30 am, the south end of the bridge was fully engulfed with flames.  The creosote coated wooden pilings under the bridge on that end were already burned off, indicating that the fire had been burning for some time.  Some of the wooden under-planking on the deck was also burned through and the entire southern end of the bridge had collapsed, dropping a foot below the roadway approach.  The fire department was at the scene for two hours pouring water on the burning timbers.  Later that afternoon, the La Farge firemen were called back to the bridge fire scene as several flare-ups of the creosoted timbers were extinguished.

The Vernon County Sheriff’s Department and county highway crews were at the burning bridge scene immediately.  An alternate route needed to be established for traffic.  The lengthy detour routed traffic to County Roads P and F and Highway 33 before returning to Highway 131. 

Vernon County Highway Commissioner Ernie Urban inspected the bridge after the flames were extinguished and declared the burned out bridge unsafe for any traffic.  Barricades were set at each end of the bridge as Urban said it was even unsafe for people to walk across the bridge.  The bridge was also being treated as a crime scene. 

Vernon County Sheriff Geoff Banta said that the burning of the bridge was a deliberate act of vandalism.  Some noted that the bridge had been burned only four days after the U.S. Senate had rejected all funding for the La Farge dam project.  Earlier in the fall, the Wisconsin DOT had inspected the bridge and a 15-ton weight limit had been placed on it.

The week before the bridge burning, another meeting had been held in Madison between the DOT and Corps’ officials about the possibility of opening the new section of Highway 131 between Rockton and La Farge.  Earlier, possibly spurred on by the school bus protest, the DOT had asked that the old section of Highway 131 between Rockton and La Farge be closed due to the old and crumbling bridges along that section of the state highway.  Corps’ officials had seemed ready to open the new section of highway in mid-October, but that plan was thwarted when state, county, village and town officials balked at assuming control of the old highway and its poor bridges.  The early December meeting in Madison had been called to see if those problems could be resolved and the new highway opened.  But in the end, the Corps again said that the new section of highway would not be opened to traffic.

The week before Christmas, Senator William Proxmire made a surprise visit to La Farge.  As he talked to people in an impromptu meeting on the sidewalk in front of the La Farge bank, tempers flared and several people cursed the Senator.  Local anti-dam leader Gale Huston defended Proxmire, but also drew curses and jeers from most of the gathered crowd.  Before quickly leaving, Proxmire, who some in La Farge called “Senator Scrooge” as befit the holiday season, told people to buy flood insurance or move out of the flood plain.

The following week, the Vernon County Highway Department announced that the burned bridge north of Rockton would be rebuilt.  In La Farge, members of the fire department and ambulance squad held a practice on the use of the new Jaws-Of-Life extrication device.  Using some donated junk vehicles the emergency personnel learned how to open up vehicles with the device to get to injured people trapped inside.

As 1975 ended, there did not seem to be much good news in the village of La Farge.  At the last village board meeting of the year, it was noted that the village Christmas tree located at the old firehouse between the bank and post office did not have enough lights to be sufficiently festive.  The board also heard that the brand new Bean Park skating rink leaked.  Bah, Humbug!

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Save the date!  As part of the Driftless Dialogue lecture series at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, I will be talking about this crazy time of the La Farge dam project history on Wednesday, June 21.  “More On That Dam History!” will begin at 7 pm with socializing and refreshments offered one-half hour prior to the program.

Canoeing The Kickapoo

The month of June has been a tough one for visitors to the northern Kickapoo Valley who are looking to do some canoeing on the river.  There has been so much rain over the past two months that has saturated the ground in these parts, that any rain amount in the last few weeks has regularly sent area creeks to bank full status.  So, Weister Creek, Otter Creek, Bear Creek and the other area tributaries empty their full loads of water into the Kickapoo and soon the river is bank full or even out of its banks.  With so much rain in June, the Kickapoo has been high all month and not much good for canoeing.

            I happened to notice a group of campers at La Farge’s Village Park on a recent Saturday morning.  All of the vehicles at the campsites seemed to have two or more kayaks or canoes piled on top.  With the heavy rain of Friday evening continuing into that Saturday morning, canoeing or kayaking on the Kickapoo became a risky venture and that group stayed in camp throughout the morning.  (Later on that Saturday, in the evening, fifteen canoes were stranded in the high waters between Bridges 6 & 7 north of Rockton.  Eventually, those people needed rescue from the high waters by local emergency personnel.)

            Today, canoeing the Kickapoo has become a recreational summer staple for locals and visitors alike. But when I was growing up in La Farge a half of a century ago, it was unheard of to attempt to canoe on the Kickapoo River.   What has brought about this transformation in the recreational use of the river?  What is different about the Kickapoo today that affords thousands of recreational and sport canoeists to travel on its silt-laden waters?  Let’s go back and take a look.

            Several years back I was sitting at the Rockton Bar with Roy Stone.  Roy had dropped in for a bottle of “medicine” and I was there for lunch and to find out what was happening in the world.  There were maybe twenty young folk, clad in t-shirts, bathing suits and flip-flops getting ready to take off on an afternoon canoe adventure.  As we watched the group prepare for their afternoon of paddling the Kickapoo, Roy offered a story about an experience that he had on the river when he was a young lad.

            Although he didn’t give an exact date, Roy’s adventure on the Kickapoo probably happened in the 1930’s.  He and a friend hatched up an idea to get a boat and go fishing on the river for some big trout.  Roy said that they knew the best fishing holes on the river were far off the highway, so drifting down the Kickapoo on a summer afternoon was the trick to reaching those big Rainbows.  Roy’s friend had a small flat-bottomed duck boat of sorts with a couple oars.  They figured it would be dandy for making the trip.  They would float down to La Farge, fishing along the way, fill up their gunnysacks with big trout and then catch a ride with someone coming back upriver their way.  Roy talked his Mom into making a lunch for the trip and the two Rockton boys were off on their fishing adventure on the Kickapoo.

            They put in below the Rockton mill and headed down river.  They immediately came to a fallen tree blocking the river and had to portage around it.  They no more got there little boat back into the water then they came to another blockage and had to do another portage.  And so it went for several hours as the boys did more carrying their boat than paddling it.  At some of the smaller obstructions, they tried to maneuver their little boat through the trash and snags.  More than once, their boat ended bottom side up in the water, dumping the passengers into the muddy waters.  Their lunches were lost and the fishing was forgotten.

By the time they reached the Star Valley flats, the two teenage boys were soaked and beaten and hadn’t achieved the halfway point in their trip.  They pulled and pushed their boat over and through numerous snags and fallen trees as they tried to float the meanders on the flat.  The banks were so steep in that section of the river, that the boys eschewed portages and virtually walked their boat down the clogged river.  Roy said it seemed like they pulled their boat for miles through water too shallow to float the little craft.  By the time they reached Bacon’s Bridge (the Reserve’s Covered Bridge today), they had all of the river that they could take and hauled their boat out.  Far from the village that was their original ending point, the boys sat glumly, beaten by the snarls of the Kickapoo.  Wet, tired, muddy, and forlorn, the two must have been a pair to behold.

Suddenly a Model – A pickup came putting down off Norris Ridge to the south and crossed the bridge.  It was a neighbor heading back up river.  He stopped and asked the boys what they had been up to.  When he heard their story of woe, he smiled and told them to get in.  The back of the Ford was full of ground feed, so the boat would have to wait for another time, so off they went, back home to Rockton.

Roy never did know how the boat was returned, nor did he care.  When I asked if they had caught any fish, he guffawed as only Roy could do and said they hardly had time to get a line in the water.  “We never caught a dang one,” is how I remember Roy telling it.  As we watched that day in Rockton as the young folk headed out to canoe the Kickapoo, he still remembered that awful afternoon on the Kickapoo from over seventy years before and wondered why anyone would want to canoe that river.

I grew up in La Farge nearly twenty years after Roy’s little adventure, but I remember no canoeing on the river of any kind.  It’s not as if we didn’t hangout on the river.  As a kid, we fished off the old dam at Seelyburg and dropped our worms by the power plant there.  We skated on Darrell Hollenbeck’s Slough next to the river in the wintertime.  I speared carp in that slough a couple of times – a Rite of Spring on the Kickapoo carried over from the old days.  My friends and I were in the Boy Scouts, so we did lots of outdoors stuff and activities, but we steered clear of canoeing on the Kickapoo River.

It wasn’t like we were adverse to the activity.  When Scout Master Harry Lounsbury took us up to Camp Decorah on the Black River, we learned canoeing skills on the lake at the camp and then took our canoes out for an afternoon trip on the river. It was great fun.  But we didn’t canoe the Kickapoo because, as Roy and his friend found out, it wouldn’t be great fun.

In Scouts we even built our own canoe! It was a project that the scout troop tackled in the garage of assistant Scout Master Arnie Widstrand.  We worked on assembling the wood strut frame and covering it with canvas as a winter project.  We admired our canoe in the spring, but didn’t take it out on the Kickapoo.  Harry loved to fish at Petenwell Flowage on the Wisconsin River over by Mauston and it seems to me that we took the canoe over there to use.  I don’t know what happened to that canoe – hope Royce Gudgeon didn’t take it out on the Kickapoo.

Kevin Alderson and his group of friends came through La Farge’s Scouting program soon after.  They also built a canoe, but I’ll have to tell of the fate of that craft in the next entry.  We’ll continue this paddle through the past about canoeing the Kickapoo next time.

The Ottevale Railroad

I was interested in reading the recent story about the reincarnation of the Ottervale Store taken on by the Alderson’s living up Husker Hollow way. There was a nice little article on the history of the store that was put together by Patsy and Kevin Alderson included in that issue of La Farge’s local newspaper. Reading the articles and looking at the many photos of the moving of the store building stirred memories of the story of the ill-fated railroad line from La Farge to Ottervale. As with many a tale told on the Kickapoo, it started with the best of intentions.

It was the winter of 1901-02 and by January the snow was piled so high as to scrape the telegraph wires running along side the Kickapoo Railroad line. In those days, when the snow was piled that high, folks stayed indoors more and gathered to talk at the stores on La Farge’s bustling Main Street. Sitting around the pot-bellied stoves at Chase Brothers Mercantile, Millard’s Store and Post Office or Pott’s Hardware Store, the local wags would pontificate on the latest news and gossip.

A story of interest all that fall and running into the winter was the decision by the Kickapoo Railroad officials to not extend the line north beyond La Farge. Original plans had called for the railroad line to continue north towards Rockton and Ontario, then on up the Valley and over the hill at Briggsville to Tomah. There it would connect with the main east-west rail line running to La Crosse. Good intentions indeed, but the Kickapoo railroad line was always short of funds and did not have the money to pursue expansion beyond La Farge, so the plan for extending the railroad line north to Tomah was scuttled. Although that decision left La Farge in the envious and financially lucrative position of being the northern terminus of the railroad line, some in the community saw a need for more connections to the outside world. Soon the idea of a branch line to bustling Ottervale was being bandied about.

With tongue firmly in cheek, the La Farge Enterprise newspaper came out strongly for the Ottervale branch line in its January 31, 1902 edition. An article on the front page of that issue, Railroad To Ottervale, outlined the positive benefits of the plan:

What is the matter with having a railroad from La Farge to Ottervale? For our part we can’t see anything of importance to hinder, and what little obstacles there may be in the way are not of enough account to prevent the carrying out of such an important project as this. The benefits to be received from such a road are too many and great to be enumerated here, but we will mention a few which we think will set at rest any doubts in the mind of the reader as to the advisability of the plan.

· 1^st It would make La Farge the junction of two of the most important railroads in Vernon County.

· 2^nd If Ottervale should ever happen to grow to be a large city like Milwaukee or Chicago it would be a great advantage to this town to have direct railroad connections.

· 3^rd If a gold mine should ever happen to be discovered over at Ottervale our citizens could go over there to dig and come back on the evening special and in this manner we could get rich without depopulating the village any.

· 4^th It would be of great advantage to La Farge to be the junction of two important railroads and might induce some large manufacturing establishments to locate here and help build up the town.

· 5^th If the railroad was successful we could build other roads out to West Lima, Muncie, Rockton and other points and make La Farge a great railroad center.

· 6^th The Enterprise could be carried to Ottervale by mail without taking it a whole week for it to get there as it does now.

We trust that there are none of our readers who do not yet see clearly the advantages of this road and we will go on to explain why we think the road can be built just as well as not. There is nothing as we can see lacking to build the road with except the money, but there is no use in getting discouraged for the lack of that when everything else necessary for railroad building can be found right in the village. A good set of officials can be picked out here and we would suggest the following persons as being, according to our best judgment, in every way capable and competent to serve as a good set of railroad officials:

Jonathan Gift President

M.O. Morris V. President

Dr. Butt Sect.

Dr. Gaines Treas.

G.E. Tate Train Master

J.H. Potts Engineer

H.C. Plimpton Fireman

R.P. Dalton Brakesman

D. H. Bean, Mike Ward, and Sam Hook could furnish the money. To show that we are in earnest and are willing to do our part we will agree to furnish the hot air for the airbrakes. If there is anything else necessary for building a railroad just let us know and we will find some way to get it. We hope that all those who wish to take stock in the road will get together soon and get the work started as soon as possible so that we can have it completed before all the snow melts away.

That mention of snow in the last line of the article was probably a key to the idea of the fictitious branch railroad running up Otter Creek. In an earlier issue of the Enterprise that winter, the correspondent from Ottervale had mentioned that the snowdrifts were packed so hard on the road leading to La Farge that you could drive a train over them. At around the same time, there was some grumbling about the deep piles of snow on La Farge’s Main Street, which made it hard to maneuver around with horse & sleigh or on foot. Somebody mentioned that they should haul the huge piles of snow out of town, so why not use them for a firm bed for the proposed new line running to Ottervale? The idea was hatched to lay the track of the proposed line across the firmly packed snow and within a week of the original article, a notation was made in the local newspaper that “stock for the Ottervale railroad was going as fast as pancakes & honey” and that William Riley would run the new railroad eating house.

Two weeks later in the February 21 issue of the Enterprise another article appeared titled Our Railroad. The article read:

“We found the following article with no signature attached in front of our office door one day the first of the week. As we first read it over a suspicion crossed our mind that the writer was trying to make fun of “our” railroad, but upon sober reflection we deemed it incredible that anyone could be so trifling and frivolous with the serious things of this life and so we concluded that the writer must have ment (sic) it all for the best but was probably not as well posted on railroad building as we are. Following is the epistle:

Mr. Editor: The Enterprise seems very enthusiastic over the R.R. to Ottervale, as the stock is nearly all sold and the balance will be well watered and the new road will be christened the U.C.& L.C.R.R. The grade stakes will be set as soon as the first train passes over the line. The tickets will be good on all divisions of the drop in and catch on line. The conductor will take up all passes by anyone not holding the same and the lucky person who holds a pass will be entitled to ride on foot or horseback from any place in the whole wide world clear up to Ottervale.”

The railroad to Ottervale wasn’t the only fanciful proposal circulating as winter turned to spring in the Kickapoo Valley in 1902. In the March 14 issue of the Enterprise, the following piece of local news appeared, “This is the time of the year when railroad building takes its usual boom. On of the latest railroad projects is to run an electric line from Union Center to La Farge, taking in the towns of Rockton, Valley, Hillsboro and Dilly. Hillsboro has long been wanting a railroad but the present scheme of running an electric line clear through to here originated with some of the men over at Valley who would also like a road for their town. It is said that all the businessmen in the towns along the line are in favor of it and they claim to be able to raise $100,000 among themselves toward carrying out the project.”

Alas, the electric line through Dilly was never to be (But at least we know where the idea for those postcards that showed a train line running down that little ghost town’s main street came from.), and alack, the line to Ottervale met the same fate. In the April 11, 1902 issue of the Enterprise a brief mention was made of the demise of the phantom line when it was noted that the Ottervale RR was abandoned due to not enough snow. Hot air will do that some times to even the best of ideas.

Although the idea of the mythical Ottervale Railroad had drifted away like the cigar smoke from whence it was hatched, the Kickapoo Railroad made plans to expand in La Farge. By later in April, the real railroad company was building side tracks to facilitate easier loading and shipping from the La Farge mills and stockyard, further positioning the village as a main transportation center in the Valley.

Later in the spring, Ottervale was dealt another blow when the U.S. Postal Department announced that the Ottervale Post Office. (probably housed in the store there) was being discontinued as of June 30. Mail would be hauled out to Otter Creek on a new rural mail route from La Farge after that date. It must have seemed as if the whole world was shrinking away from Ottervale, what with the loss of their post office and mythical train line. But good news arrived that November when Alex Hill, the owner of the La Farge Telephone Company revealed plans to string telephone lines out Otter Creek and up to Salem Ridge. By the following spring, Ottervale was connected to the outside world with the latest telephone communication devices. You win some and you lose some.