"Near La Farge" Photos from the Past

A while back, I received a request from the Vernon County Historical Society to help identify an old hand colored photo postcard.  The photo was of a bridge spanning the Kickapoo River with the only title being “Near La-Farge, Wis. By, Potter”.  The photograph was probably taken around 1908 and the photographer was Walter Potter as his name is hand written on it.  At the probable time of the taking of the photograph for the postcard there were three photographers operating in the village of La Farge.

            Walter Potter operated a photography studio out of his residence on Main Street next to Donaldson’s Hardware.  Today Deb Moore operates her beauty shop from that location. Another prominent photographer in La Farge in 1908 was Charles Brown who operated a studio in his house on south State Street, just south of the present hardware store.  A third photographer, A. E. Strait operated a mobile photography studio that when it was in La Farge the wagon was usually parked in the back of a building where today Cheryl Haas’ resell store is located.  

            It is hard to imagine that three photographers could make their living in a small town the size of La Farge, but those times of more than a century back obviously called for the need for people, places and events to be remembered in a permanent way.  Fortunately, many photographs from that era still survive, helping us to know the history from that time.  Each of the three La Farge based photographers left behind a variety of photographs to help us understand the little Kickapoo Valley community from that time so long ago.

            Walter Potter probably published the photo postcard of the bridge around 1908.  I base my reasoning for this choice because I have another similar photo from that same year that shows the sandstone cliffs along the Kickapoo River north of La Farge. That photo is also identified with the “Near La Farge, Wis.” title and it is hand colored, also like the photo of the bridge.  The similarity between the two postcards is quite evident, both from the river scenery choices and the coloring techniques used on the postcards.  But there are differences in the two cards, as the printing on Potter’s bridge photo is hand written while the river bluffs postcard “Near La Farge, Wis.” is printed.

            There is also a nice Kickapoo River photograph by A.E. Strait from this era, showing the river just south of La Farge and it is titled “Kickapoo Near La Farge, By Strait.”  If we attribute the sandstone cliffs postcard perhaps to have been taken by Charles Brown, we could have each of the three local photographers vying for the almighty tourist dollar of the time.

            La Farge was somewhat of a tourist destination of that era both because of the natural beauty of the Valley in which it lays and the terrible flood that hit the community on July 22, 1907.  That flood was one of the worst ever recorded in the Valley up to that time and the local photographers were out in force to record the event.

            First, we have Walter Potter’s iconic photograph, probably taken from the roof of the Opera House (Now Phil & Deb’s Town Tap) that shows La Farge attorney Alva Drew walking down the flooded Main Street with his son and dog in tow.  There is also an A. E. Strait photograph on that same day in 1907 with a view looking at the flooded houses on Snow Street a block south of Main Street.  Another photograph of the great flood of 1899, taken by C. S. Brown shows Seelyburg on the north end of La Farge being inundated by the floodwaters.  That photograph is taken from part way up Ed Nixon’s hillside hay field and actually shows where Brown’s former photography studio was located before he moved it to higher ground.

            With all three La Farge photographers publishing photos from those floods, the little river community became well known around the Midwest.  People would ride the train north to La Farge to view the village with the flooding past and to be amazed at the beauty of the Kickapoo Valley.

            Within a few years after that great flood in 1907, the photography business in La Farge would be drastically changed.  In 1909, A.E. Strait sold his photography wagon to Sam Steinmetz, who continued to run the business for several years after that. The announcement advertisement about the sale placed in the May 13, 1909 La Farge Enterprise newspaper read, “I wish to announce that I have purchased the Photo Gallery of A. E. Strait and will remain at the old stand just north of the Rittenhouse & Davidson’s Market, prepared to do good work at reasonable prices, will do all kinds of enlarging, also expect to handle picture moulding and make frames to order at reasonable prices.  Work guaranteed or your money refunded.  Yours for Business, S.I. Steinmetz”.  Charles Brown closed his La Farge studio in 1910 and moved to California, where he would eventually become the photographer for the movie stars of Hollywood.

            Walter Potter continued to run his photography studio in La Farge for many more years.  Eventually, his son Elmer would run a radio store from the same Main Street location after his father retired from the photography business.

            Thus, from these photographers from yesteryear, the story of this little Kickapoo River town can be better told. 

            As for the identification of where that bridge in the Potter photo was located, I think it was the Lawton Bridge at Tunnelville, located two miles south of La Farge.  Joe Young called to say that he thinks that the bridge was the Schroeder Bridge, now Bridge #16 on the Kickapoo Valley Reserve.  When pressed on the matter, local newspaper publisher Lonnie Muller thinks it might be the original Bacon Bridge located north of Norris Ridge, now the KVR Covered Bridge #18.  I think we old-timers should continue to stare at the photograph for a couple more weeks to see if it will improve our squints any.        

Water Over The Dam - Part III

La Farge, as a community located along the Kickapoo River, has a long history of recovering from floods. As we wait to see how the village reacts to the greatest Kickapoo River flood ever in 2018, perhaps a look back at some of the other post-flood times is in order.

            The June 1899 Kickapoo River flood was the first great flood to be felt by the communities in the valley.  There had been other floods before that, but nothing like the destruction caused in that year.  At the mill in Rockton, the 1899 flood of the Kickapoo River was measured as over a foot higher than any previous flood.  The flood was devastating to the downriver town of Seelyburg as the river cut a new channel right through the middle of the community. Every house and store in the hamlet was damaged or destroyed.  Many of the people who lived in the little community along the Kickapoo moved away from Seelyburg to higher ground.  Several of the Seelyburg businesses including the Millard General Store and the Brown Photography Studio moved south to La Farge to reestablish their businesses. The exodus from Seelyburg continued after the flood as the Methodist congregation moved from Chapel Hill on the southern end of Seelyburg to a new church in La Farge in 1902.

            Interestingly, only one house in La Farge suffered damages from the 1899 flood.  A month after the flood, the village was incorporated and the new municipality including flood-ravaged Seelyburg on the north end, was established.  La Farge had damages to the railroad that had come to the town only a year earlier.  Most of the railroad’s track bed in the village was washed away and the railroad bridge south of town was washed askew and had to be straightened.  Of course, in the summer of 1899, the new village had not yet begun its expansion towards the river.  By 1907, when the next great river flood hit, the village had expanded to the west and south from the original “Corners”.  Many houses and places of business had been built south of La Farge’s bustling Main Street and would be in the way of the flood.

            The July 1907 Kickapoo River flood devastated La Farge and the other communities along its path.  In La Farge, the crest of the floodwaters reached nearly three blocks east from the river.  According to an article about the flood in the La Farge Enterprise newspaper, the floodwaters reached the base of the hill where the Central Hotel stood (Today, the post office is located where that hotel once was.  That serves as a good comparison of that 1907 flood to the recent 2018 flood.)  Major damages were suffered at many of the lumbering businesses along Mill Street, including the Arm & Pin Factory, Nuzum & Hunter Lumber, Hammer Brothers Lumber & Excelsior Mill and several other lumber mills located along the street.  Further north at Seelyburg, the La Farge Milling Company & Electric Company also suffered heavy damages.  

            The railroad depot and freight warehouse (next to Nuzum’s today) also were heavily damaged in La Farge.  At Seelyburg, the railroad’s “Wye” turnaround was washed out as well as the spur line to the mill there.  South of the depot in La Farge, most of the railroad’s spur line to the lumbering businesses was washed away or damaged in some way.  It was weeks before railroad service was restored to the community. 

             Many people living in houses south of La Farge’s Main Street had to be rescued by boats during the night when the floodwaters rose dangerously in town. Amazingly, nobody was hurt or killed during the numerous rescues in La Farge during that 1907 flood.  During the height of that flood, water was measured at five-feet deep in some houses in La Farge.

            For Seelyburg, the 1907 Kickapoo River Flood virtually marked the end of the little riverside hamlet.  After the flood, only one residence and one business remained on the once bustling main street of the mill town as everyone else moved away from the river, continuing the exodus to the higher ground to the south in the village. 

When the big floods come, the Kickapoo washes away more than ever comes back.

            After the 1907 flood, some people living in La Farge moved from their flooded houses to higher ground.  A few businesses that had been hit hard by the flood did not choose to stay in La Farge.  Some of the lumbering businesses located along Mill Street would close within a short time.  Some of that was due to the damages suffered from the flood, but another reason was the lack of available wood to use in the lumber and excelsior mills.

            It would be nearly three decades before another massive flood would hit the Kickapoo Valley.  In August 1935 the greatest Kickapoo River flood that had ever been seen devastated the valley.  The floodwaters rose rapidly in La Farge during the evening of August 5^thand people once again were rescued from their houses during that terrible night. The floodwaters rose so rapidly that some people had to be rescued by boats from the second story windows of their houses.  The La Farge telephone operator stayed up all night calling homes in the village and beyond towards Tunnelville to warn people to get out of their homes if they lived near the river.  At its height that night, the Kickapoo River floodwaters rose two feet in one hour in La Farge.  People displaced by the flood were temporarily housed in the KP Hall, the Odd Fellows Hall and the Masonic Temple.  The Red Cross was in town the next day and over the next week served nearly 300 meals to those displaced by the flood.

            The aftermath of the Flood of 1935 was a massive cleanup.  Disinfectant by the gallons was used to clean up the flood’s stinking residue.  The village’s health officer ordered everybody to boil any water used for drinking for fifteen minutes to avoid the ill effects of typhoid fever and other bowel infections.  Waste and garbage from the flood was burned immediately or buried. Dead animal carcasses, and there were many of them in the village, were removed in haste.

            The Red Cross brought in two-dozen large tents to La Farge for people to live in while their houses were drying out.  People in the village shared their garden vegetables with their neighbors who had lost their gardens to the floodwaters.

            Damages to businesses in the village were massive. Nuzum’s, the cheese factory, both gas stations on the corners of Main and Mill Streets, the lumber mill and pickle station on south Mill Street and the power plant at Seelyburg all had heavy damages from the floodwaters.  

            Every aspect of the railroad received heavy flood damage as the tracks from south of La Farge all the way to Seelyburg were heavily damaged.  The railroad’s depot, freight warehouse, coal shed, icehouse, engine house and nearby cheese warehouse were all heavily damaged.  The railroad bridge south of town had to be repaired again.  A freight train had stood next to the depot in La Farge during the flood and the high water mark was three feet up on the wooden boxcars.  It was nearly three weeks before the trains were able to run to La Farge once again after the flood.

            Residential damage in La Farge from the Kickapoo River Flood of 1935 was immense.  Many people’s woodsheds and out buildings were burned instead of repaired, too far gone to be fixed up.  Most of the damaged houses in the village were eventually cleaned up and repaired. Some of the houses were elevated to avoid future floods.  Many of the former occupants moved back in, but several houses were dismantled due to the excessive damages from the flood.  By September, several small single story houses had been built along north Mill Street (across from the present Calhoon Park) to help provide temporary housing for those displaced by the flood.

            After the Kickapoo River Flood of 1935, the people of La Farge and other Kickapoo Valley towns began to seek some type of relief from the river’s floods.  Led by La Farge Village President Arch Davidson, a delegation went to Washington D.C. to plead with Congress for some type of flood control help.  Thus, the story of the dam project at La Farge began. But that is another story for another time.

CATCHIN' UP WITH THIS & THAT

Every once in awhile, I need to stop and catch up.  I have to pause and write about some things, this and that, I learned along the way on this little path of historical research. 

In the last Local History Notebook that I write for the La Farge Episcope, I was ruminating on the beginnings of the Zzip Stop gas station/convenience store in La Farge.  I forgot to mention that when the Zzip Stop opened in 1987, the La Farge Co-op was also still selling gasoline.  After talking to Kevin Janecek, the present manager of the Co-op, he related that the Co-op stopped selling gas around 1990.  When that happened, the Zzip Stop was the last and only place left in town to buy fuel for your automobile.

            After that column on the Zzip Stop came out, I was chatting with Megan Stone, the friendly gal at the cash register of the Zzip Stop.  She informed me that there was no hyphen in the Zzip of Zzip Stop.  I was aghast, as I had changed the spelling of the gas station several times as I wrote that column.  I originally had it spelled Z-Zip with two capital Z’s, but edited it down to one capital Z and one small case z.  But through the editing process, I had not noticed that there wasn’t a hyphen in the name of the business. So, for now, Zzip Stop with two Z’s (one big – one little) and no hyphen should be correct.  If you think differently, keep it zzipped!

Joe Young called me last week about the Lyons School.  Harry Peterson has been trying to take photographs of all the old country schools that once were in Vernon County and had contacted me about that school’s whereabouts.  I wasn’t sure, but Harry and I had both heard that the school had been moved to La Farge and converted into a residence.  The problem with that story was that I couldn’t find anyone among my reliable history sources (not to be confused with my unreliable history sources) that knew anything about that move of the schoolhouse to La Farge.  Turns out it never happened.  The schoolhouse burned down back when it was still being used as a school.  According to Joe, some of the students had to go to Fairview School after the fire.  I also heard from others that some Lyons School students went to Tunnelville School after the fire.  Some of the remains of the old school are still visible along the old roadway that once ran from Tunnelville out to Buchanan Ridge.

Later, another Lyons School was built and in 1951 that schoolhouse was moved to Viola.  (So we had part of the story right; the school was moved to a town, but it was Viola and not La Farge.)  John Burnard lived in the school that became a residence for years.  Now it is owned by Max Perkins, who gave me a phone call about the old school house, its location (on the corner of McKinley & York Streets in Viola) and some of its history.  Harry now has a photo or two of the former schoolhouse as well.

Harry was also looking for the Buckeye Ridge School.  Art Thelen filled me in on the final journey of that old country school.  Years back, after the school closed due to consolidation, the building was moved down off the ridge to a property along Plum Run Road.  But the school was not well maintained and, alas, soon fell into disrepair and collapsed in on itself.  Eventually the property was cleaned up and the old Buckeye Ridge School became a large pile of ashes.

I have this file saved on my computer screen called “LHS Strikeout Kings”.  It is the possible genesis of a column on notable La Farge Wildcat baseball pitchers with lots of K’s.  While conducting some research recently on what was happening in La Farge back in 1976, I found where Van Bergum had been named an All-Conference pitcher in his senior year at LHS.  Van had led the Wildcats to a conference championship that spring and had pitched two no-hitters along the way.  In one of those No-No’s, Van had struck out 16 batters.  That rekindled my wondering who held the school record for strikeouts in a game. 

In May of 2013, Josh Lisney had struck out 20 batters in ten innings in a 1-0 LHS win over Seneca.  At the time, everyone wondered if that was a school strikeout record.  As it turned out, it wasn’t.  Upon examining the contents of the Years past in La Farge column in the October 27^th issue of the La Farge Episcope, we found that Mac Marshall Jr. struck out 22 batters in a 9-inning 1-0 win over Wauzeka.  That strikeout total of Mac’s was a Kickapoo Valley League record (which I’m assuming stood the test of time).  It’s interesting to note that both Mac’s and Josh’s strikeout totals were reached in extra-inning 1-0 games won by La Farge.  Ironically, in that 2013 game in which Josh fanned twenty Seneca batters, the game actually went eleven innings.  But by WIAA pitching rule, Josh had to leave the mound after the tenth inning, thus never having the chance to challenge Mac’s school record.  Are there any other stories out there about LHS hurlers and their strikeout exploits? 

            Another notable accomplishment in high school athletics was achieved a couple of weeks back by a former LHS student.  Mark Johnson, LHS Class of 1980, coached the Eau Claire Memorial High School girls’ cross-country team to a second straight WIAA D-1 state title!  Johnson, who is the co-head coach along with Angie Rush, watched the Old Abe runners win the D-1 title over the Ridges Golf Course in Wisconsin Rapids on October 31.  It was plenty of treats and no tricks for the girls in the purple and white of Eau Claire Memorial that day.  Way to go MJ!

            Several people have talked to me about the question that has arisen recently regarding the Viola Horse & Colt Show.  When did the Horse & Colt Show switch from being always held on a Friday to being held on a Saturday?  My rather vague recollections put the change at about 1960.  I seem to remember of the change being made at the insistence of the principal at the Viola school because he didn’t want the students in Viola to be missing another day of school.  It seems to me that the students at La Farge also got out of school when the Horse & Colt Show was held on Friday, so there was some consternation by the upriver students about the change as well.  I must admit that my memories of this are rather murky.  Can anyone clear away the clouds?

            A friend recently talked to me about a column written last month by Matt Johnson, the editor of the Vernon County Broadcaster newspaper.  Matt’s column addressed a division that he saw in the city of Viroqua between the old-timers (people born and raised in the area) and the newcomers.  He identified the newcomers as the people who have recently moved to the city and as those that espouse charter schools, home schooling, alternate and back-to-nature lifestyles and have other sorts of  “New Age” credentials.  Matt saw the newcomers as almost isolating themselves from the community at large through their choices of lifestyle.  I found that observation by Matt interesting because usually one would view the separation to be caused by the non-acceptance of the new people by the more traditional establishment folk.

            My friend, who moved to La Farge in the 1970s along with many other “Hippies”, “Back-to-the-Landers” and other societal dropouts of that time, said that he never felt that separation in the community of La Farge.  He said that he thought the “new” people of that time were well accepted in La Farge.  I tend to agree with him for the most part.  Generally, Kickapoogians are not a group that wants to put on airs (for some very obvious reasons), so acceptance of others may come rather easily.  It is interesting to note though that at the same time as there was this influx of new blood into the community, La Farge was being torn apart over the controversy of the dam project.  Perhaps the La Farge locals did not have time to discriminate against the newcomers since they were so busy staking out their sides over the dam story.  I will write more about these dynamics of division within the community at a later time.

            I also want to send a “Shout Out” to the folks at North Crawford High School for their recent production of “Fiddler on the Roof”.  The students, faculty and entire community came together to make the 48^th season of musical theater at North Crawford a rousing success.  Historically, I found the production interesting in that this was the third time that “Fiddler” had been done at North Crawford.  The musical had previously been done in the school years of 2000-01 and 1973-74 and there were cast members from those two previous productions in attendance the night we saw this years production of “Fiddler”.  I found that connection with the past quite amazing.