Monday, November 7, 2011
Dam Book Release!
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.
· 1st It would make La Farge the junction of two of the most important railroads in Vernon County.
· 2nd 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.
· 3rd 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.
· 4th 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.
· 5th 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.
· 6th 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.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Dam Book Finished!!
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Dam Nightmare
I’m sitting in a conference room with several dozen “suits” surrounding me. There is a discussion going on about a report that needs to be written to complete the research and study that has been conducted. Judging from the discussion, I can tell that all of the people in the room are well versed on the topic of the report. The discussion is focused on the organization of the study report, which will be divided into three different phases. Phases I and II are apparently nearing completion and are about ready to go to the printers. Phase III is not done and that seems to be a problem as the group’s discussion suddenly turns toward me.
The chairman of the meeting turns to address me and asks when the third phase of the report, which I have apparently been working on, will be ready to go to the printers for publication. There is a politician on the speakerphone, Senator Somebody-Or-Other in Washington or Madison, who is squawking at me that I have had plenty of time to complete my portion of the report. He wonders why I’m not ready to publish my findings. All of the people in the conference room glare at me and wait for my answer.
After fidgeting in my seat for a few eternities and as the sweat starts to trickle down my brow, I slowly respond to the inquiry.
“What is this Phase III that I am responsible for all about anyway? I have no idea what any of this is all about.” The conference room breaks into pandemonium. All of the bureaucrats in their suits are yelling at me, fingers are being pointed at me; papers are flying into the air. The Senator is screaming at me over the speakerphone.
I awake with a start; terror fills my heart; my nightclothes are soaked with perspiration. Awake, my mind starts to retreat from the terror of the nightmare; the early morning coolness dissipates the quagmire of the dream. Reality starts to overcome the subconscious fear raised in the nightmare. I think to myself, “What was that all about?”
I swing up and sit on the edge of the bed. Staring out the window at the fog that stretches out from the Kickapoo, I try to clear my own mind of the fog of sleep. As focus starts to come to my conscious mind, I see the volume laying on the nightstand beside my bed. The recognition of the title on the volume that lay there in the early morning light jars me awake some more.
ALTERNATIVES FOR FLOOD REDUCTION AND RECREATION
IN THE KICKAPOO RIVER VALLEY
OCTOBER 1976
VOLUME B
URS CORPORATION
150 EAST 42ND STREET
NEW YORK, N.Y. 10017
When writing on some books, you never want to stop working on them. For me it was that way with the first volume of the history of La Farge. I loved to write on that book. The only thing I liked better than writing on that history was researching the material for which I was writing. I was in Seventh Heaven when it came to researching and writing on La Farge’s history, but eventually the volume of material and scope of time became too vast to include in one book.
At a certain point, I had to make a decision to stop writing on the history of the village and publish the first volume of what I had found. Picking a spot to stop that history then became a question that I had to answer. Eventually I chose to stop volume one of the La Farge history in 1962, which is the year that the La Farge Dam Project was authorized by Congress. I chose that point at which to stop because I knew that there was a whole other story to tell when one came to the dam project. Little did I know how compelling that story would be for me to tell?
I have been compiling information on the story of the La Farge Dam Project for some time. For more than a decade I have been teaching groups of students and adults about the dam project. I don’t really know how many groups I have led out onto the Kickapoo Valley Reserve for a tour of the largest unfinished dam in the state of Wisconsin. Over the years I have talked to people on both sides of the dam project controversy about their involvement in it. When the interviews for “The People Remember” oral history project were being conducted in 2000-01, I was listening closely as the people told their stories about the dam project. Over the years, I have made several research trips to St. Paul, where the Army Corps of Engineers keeps their records on the project. As I was researching for the La Farge history, I was compiling separate files of material that I found on the dam project.
In January, I began the process to write the dam project book. It was a familiar story to me; after all, I lived and worked here in La Farge through much of the story. The story had a beginning and an end, which I was quite sure of how to tell. It was the middle of the story that got to me. How does a project of this magnitude get started and then never finished? How does a dam project not become a dam project? What made this project at La Farge play out the way that it did? I had some big questions to answer, so I started to pore through the press clippings on the dam project. The mountain of material in the studies and reports about the project became my favorite reading material. The deeper that I dug, the more engrossed I became in what I was finding.
Some of my findings were almost too good to be true, so I had to write them down for the book almost as soon as I found them. Reading over the press clippings and reports and writing on what I had read became my passion. The process of the researching and writing started to consume me. At a certain point, it was all that I really wanted to do and it pretty much consumed my waking hours. I couldn’t remember conversations with people because instead of listening to what they were saying, I was thinking of some dam project minutia. I would sit quiet in committee meetings, paying no attention to what was being discussed and yearning for them to end so I could return to my dam project research and writing.
I would read until my eyes clouded over and I couldn’t see properly anymore. I would type on the dam project manuscript until my fatigue would prevent me from putting sentences together. Sleep would help clear the mind and eyes and restore some strength, but then the dam project started to creep into my somnolence as well. As I slept an idea about the dam project story would form and I would awake with the idea fresh in my mind. I would race to the computer keypad to get the idea down in my manuscript. Later I could return to the concept or idea and flesh it out to better tell the story. This happened many times as story ideas would leap from my subconscious while in slumber.
Then the dam project dreams began. I did not even know what they were when they first started to form in my sleep. There is a nightmare that teachers have that goes like this: You are in a classroom, but you don’t know any of your students and you don’t know what you are supposed to be teaching. Usually the students are terribly uncooperative in this nightmare scenario, which makes the dream even more frightening. Occasionally when I taught social studies classes at La Farge High School for over thirty years, these types of dreams would happen. However, since I stopped teaching on a fulltime basis, the dreams have rarely occurred. Then this summer, the nightmares started to reappear in my sleep, but in an altered form. In the new nightmare classroom, I would be trying to teach the students about the dam project and I could not seem to convey to them what I wanted to say. I could not get the story across to them.
Then the nightmares morphed into the conference room scene that I described at the beginning of this writing, where I became an active member of the group doing a study on the dam project – except I didn’t seem to have any idea what my job was supposed to be.
As it turns out, my job was to tell the story. When I finished telling the story of the dam project and getting it down in written form, the nightmares and weird dreams about the project ceased. I have my version of the story of the dam project told. Now I’m working with my co-publisher Chuck Hatfield to get the book put together and ready for the printer. I plan to release the book to the public on the weekend of La Farge’s Small Town Christmas in early December.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Follow The Money
On October 13, 1978, the CBS Evening News aired a segment on their national news broadcast about the La Farge Dam Project. The segment was researched and narrated by Bob Faw, a reporter who worked for the CBS affiliate station in Chicago. Faw had been canoeing on the Kickapoo River earlier in the fall with his family when they paddled past the dam tower north of La Farge. The concrete monolith piqued the veteran newsman’s interest, so when he landed in La Farge, he asked about the tower and talked to some people in town. They told Faw about the long history of the dam project, including the great Kickapoo River flood of the previous July.
Faw thought that he might have a good human-interest piece for his station, so he ran it by his boss when he returned to Chicago. Soon Faw returned to La Farge with a cameraman and started conducting interviews and shooting footage of the Valley. A one-day stay turned into two and more footage was shot for the piece. The CBS national desk heard about the story of the Kickapoo dam at La Farge and it was scheduled for the big show to be broadcast nationwide. Local residents Bernice Schroeder, Lonnie Muller and Ward Rose were featured in the broadcast segment, telling of the turmoil that the project caused to people living in the Kickapoo Valley.
There was another interview that Faw included on that CBS piece that drew my attention when viewing it recently. Colonel Forrest Gay, the head of the Corps of
Engineer’s district office in St. Paul at that time was interviewed for the television story and he answered a question pertaining to the escalating costs of the La Farge project. The costs for the project had been one of the reasons why the dam project had been stopped. In 1975, Senator Bill Proxmire had cited those escalating costs as to why he had withdrawn his support for the dam at La Farge. Without Proxmire’s support in the U.S. Senate, the project was essentially stopped.
When talking to Colonel Gay, Faw wanted to know why the costs for the La Farge Dam Project had gone up so much. Interestingly, the Corps’ Colonel laid the blame on the State of Wisconsin. He cited the insistence of the Wisconsin DOT on “high quality highways and bridges” for the project area as driving up the costs, and the DNR’s demands for enhanced recreational facilities for the La Farge Lake as another contributing factor. Gay said that those kinds of add-ons, mandated by the state, had helped drive up the cost of the project to more than $55-million. The Colonel’s contribution to the CBS piece is another interesting part of the story about the financial costs for the dam project.
Last time, we began to look at the financial reasons that included those escalating costs, for the stopping of the La Farge Dam Project. Financial, environmental and political are the three general categories of reasons to look at when explaining the stoppage of the project. Previously it had been mentioned that the dam project at La Farge had started as a $14.5-million project when first authorized by Congress in 1962, but had grown to a cost of over $51-million in 1975 when Senator Proxmire withdrew his support. Despite what the Colonel said, some better roads and bridges along with nice bathrooms and picnic areas at some lakeside campsites doesn’t quite explain the difference between $15-million and $50+-million. So, what does?
That man in the movie, you remember him hiding in the shadows of the parking garage, said, “Follow the money”. “Deep Throat” might have had good advice for those Washington Post reporters in the Watergate Scandal, but it is not so easy when following the money in this winding tale about the dam on the Kickapoo. Following the money when looking at the escalating costs of the La Farge Dam Project still might not lead one to a final answer. One problem with the trail of following the money is that the books might have been cooked from the get-go.
When the Corps of Engineers plans for a project like the dam project at La Farge, they have to be careful that the costs of the project do not outweigh the benefits. A benefit/cost (b/c) ratio was used when figuring the financial viability of projects such as the one on the Kickapoo River. In the end, for the project to be justified and more importantly to be authorized by Congress, the benefits for the project have to be financially greater than the costs. The Corps knew about how much the dam project would cost, that is a fixed cost that can be readily arrived at using standard projections. It is important to remember that by keeping actual costs low, the Corps can fit projects within a positive benefit/cost ratio more easily.
The price tag on the benefits for a project like the dam at La Farge is somewhat more elusive to figure. The Corps has to figure in the savings from Kickapoo River flood losses, which would be prevented with the dam being in place. Historic flood cost averages on the Kickapoo have to be used to establish these dollar amounts. Figures have to be developed for flood losses in agriculture as well as damages to houses and businesses in the villages along the Kickapoo. Local government costs for bridge and road damage also have to be included. Obviously, the more flood damages and costs that you can list, which then can become benefits of the dam’s flood control, the better it will be for the b/c ratio of the project.
The same is true with recreational benefits. The more money spent by those folks coming to visit Lake La Farge, the greater the dollar amount for the benefits for the project. If the lake increases the economic base of the Valley, those numbers have to be included into the ratio. The problem with the recreation and tourism dollars is that they are not hard and fast numbers. To arrive at a figure for the dollar value of those benefits, some extrapolations have to be made. Extrapolations are like gazing into a crystal ball; what you see may depend on what you want to see. What you see doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s actually there. There’s a certain amount of hocus-pocus in this whole process of developing a favorable b/c ratio for a dam project like the one at La Farge.
In the late 1950’s, when the Corps was putting the numbers together on the La Farge project, they were having a hard time getting a favorable benefit/cost ratio. For every dollar spent on the project, the Corps had to show a benefit return greater than that dollar cost. If your cost is $1, your benefit must be greater than $1. A b/c ratio of $1.30 to $1 is an excellent one for the project to move ahead, but a ratio of $.80 to $1 will stop it in its tracks. Remember that the benefit return in dollars has to be higher than your cost of construction. In the early planning stages of the dam at La Farge, the Corps was having trouble with getting a favorable b/c ratio for the project.
Part of the problem was the economic reality of the Kickapoo Valley. The region has traditionally been a poor, economically undeveloped area of Wisconsin. We’re not talking Beverly Hills when we look at La Farge and Viola will never be mistaken for Bel Air. There had not been any mansions washed away with the Kickapoo floods, which is too bad. Mansions washed away in Kickapoo floodwaters would have meant higher figures when calculating damage costs. The more property that was lost or damaged in Kickapoo floods meant better numbers for that b/c ratio because those flood costs turn into benefits when the dam prevents the damage from happening. But the Kickapoo Valley was a relatively poor region, so the flood damage numbers didn’t add up as well as other flooded places might. It’s easier to build dams for richer areas and communities than the Kickapoo Valley.
Remember that the Corp’s Kickapoo Valley project, with a dam at La Farge and levees at Soldiers Grove and Gays Mills, was strictly a flood-control project at its inception. The levees for those two down-river villages were added to the project by the Corps to enhance the flood damage numbers. By adding the levees, the flood damage benefit numbers for the two villages could be added to the total to enhance the b/c ratio.
So if the dollar benefits for the flood prevention of the dam and levees did not exceed the costs for building those structures, the Corps had a problem on its hands. To get a better b/c ratio, the Corp’s planners had to bring in some more benefits to exceed the cost of the construction of the dam and levees. The benefits to be added to the ratio came in the form of recreation and tourism.
Recreation was an easy addition to such a project as the dam at La Farge. Besides providing flood protection, dams back up water that can be used by people for recreational purposes. Fishing and boating is a natural set of recreational activities in such a water reservoir. With a little work along the shores of the reservoir, swimming, picnicking and camping can be added as well. You need people to come to the water, so the Corps calculated usage from local people in the area of western Wisconsin. That number of people would be your base group because they would have little distance to travel. By expanding the distance traveled to places like Minneapolis, Dubuque, Rockford, Madison and Chicago, the Corps could add more dollars to the recreational benefits and make the La Farge project more feasible. The more people that could be projected to come to La Farge to recreate in the waters behind the dam and spend some money locally in the process, the better for the Corps’ plans. By adding these recreational benefits to the dam project at La Farge, the b/c ratio changed to a greater amount of benefits received than the money spent on construction of the dam. The ratio was tight, but by 1960, the Corps was ready to go to Congress for money to build.
The 1960 Census threw a monkey wrench in the dam work plans. When the census was released, it showed that most of western Wisconsin had decreased in population from the previous census. The village of La Farge as an example had lost seventy-two people from the 1950 census, while the Town of Stark, where the dam and reservoir would be located had lost 197 in the ten-year period. The numbers were the same for most of the rest of the Kickapoo Valley, Vernon and Crawford Counties and most of the surrounding area. Less people in that area meant less people to recreate on the waters above the La Farge dam. That base group for potential recreation dollars spent on the reservoir at La Farge had shrunk with the new population numbers. Due to the shrinking local population and its potential recreational dollars, the benefit/cost ratio of the dam project was off kilter again, with the costs greater than the benefits. (The decrease in the population in the Kickapoo Valley also affected the flood protection benefits. Less people in the Valley meant less potential loss from floods, which adversely affected the ratio.) The Corps had to come up with some new numbers to make the project go.
With new calculations for the lower populations numbers so greatly affecting the b/c ratio, the Corps’ planners looked to cut on the costs side. Previously, the development of the four recreation areas that were to be around the lake was a cost figured for the federal government to pay. Another part of the costs originally to be assumed by the federal government of the 1962 project was expenses incurred to relocate roads and utilities around the reservoir. The section of Highway 131, which ran along the Kickapoo River from La Farge to Rockton, would have to be relocated to the east of the reservoir. Vernon County Highway P and roads in the Town of Stark would also need to be moved with the expense picked up by the federal government. As the 1961 deadline for submitting the project for authorization by Congress approached, that all changed. A positive b/c ratio had to be found and that could be accomplished if the Corps dropped the federal costs of recreational development and road and utility relocation from the formula. When the project was announced in late 1961 and then authorized a year later, a positive b/c ratio of $1.2 to $1 had been achieved for the La Farge Dam Project. However, those costs did not go away. Somebody had to pay for those aspects of the project and that burden would fall upon the state and local governments. Which was a problem for the State of Wisconsin DOT, Vernon County, the Town of Stark and the Village of La Farge. Suddenly this long-awaited federal flood control project was not coming cheap.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Excalating Costs for the La Farge Dam Project
A couple of weeks ago a group of teachers from all over Wisconsin gathered here in La Farge to take a class called “Making It Home In The Kickapoo Valley”. Chuck Hatfield and I help as lead instructors in the class and I focus on the history of the area. The Kickapoo Valley Reserve and Visitor Center serves as host for the course with college credits provided through the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse.
Early Tuesday morning, I led many of the participants in the class out to the dam site north of the village for a little tour and explanation of the La Farge Dam Project. Most of the participants in this year’s class were from other parts of the state, such as Milwaukee, West Allis, Janesville and Madison, who had very little prior knowledge of the dam project. We started the tour at the Corps of Engineer’s maintenance building on the west end of the 3,000-foot long dam. I used drawings and photographs done by the Corps at the time of construction to help tell the story. By the time that our caravan of cars had reached the east end of the dam, the group’s curiosity had peaked. Looking down at the water-intake tower and gazing across the unfinished gap towards the new highway, the question had to be asked. What stopped the completion of the dam?
My standard and short response to this question when I lead these tours of the dam site is that there were three general reasons for the stoppage of the dam at La Farge. Those reasons were financial, environmental and political – three neat and tidy categories for a project that was anything but neat and tidy. Let’s spend some time in this Notebook looking at perhaps the easiest of the three to explain – the cost of the project. In the end, that was the reason why Senator Bill Proxmire came to La Farge in September 1975 to announce that he was pulling the plug on the dam project. He withdrew his support for the dam project at that point because it had become too expensive.
William Proxmire was viewed as a fiscal conservative in the U.S. Senate, even though he was a liberal Democrat on most social issues. Proxmire had a monthly press release gimmick back then called the “Golden Fleece Award”. The award went to a government program or agency that in the Senator’s opinion was foolishly spending money. Proxmire’s “Golden Fleece Award” was immensely popular, not only because it poked fun at and exposed wasteful government programs; but also because the Senator was good at telling the story of the federal follies. Proxmire gained a reputation as a watchdog of wasteful government spending. That reputation led the Wisconsin Senator to finally withdraw his support for the La Farge Dam Project. That support was pulled due to the escalating costs of the project, which made the La Farge dam look like wasteful spending in Proxmire’s eyes. The dam project became too expensive for the Senator to support.
It wasn’t always that way.
The cost of the La Farge dam is an elusive number to follow when researching the history of the project. When I am giving presentations on the dam project at the Reserve, I have a Pop Quiz that I spring on the participants. (This is a holdover from my days of teaching history classes to students at La Farge High School.) One of the multiple-choice questions on the quiz deals with the cost of the La Farge Dam Project and it includes five or six different numbers ranging from a low of just over a million dollars to a high in excess of $50-million. Just to be difficult (another holdover from my teaching days), I throw in a “None of the above” or an “All of the above” as a possible answer for most of the questions. By the end of my presentation, the participants realize that all of the cost numbers listed as answers are true at some point in the history of the dam project.
I have been writing all summer on my next book, “THAT DAM HISTORY! – The Story of The La Farge Dam Project”. The research for the writing has led me to some interesting conclusions about the project. One of those conclusions that I have formed is that the story of the dam project is very complex and convoluted. There are so many crazy twists and turns in the story of the dam project that I have come to the realization that the story has taken on the nature of the river. The story of a failed dam project on the twisting Kickapoo River apparently has to meander, just as the river does. First you are here in your research and then you are there. First you think that you’re paddling in the main current towards truth and understanding, and then you realize that you’re diverted and trapped in the backwaters of a fetid slough of rumors and gossip.
But the key question to answer about the escalating costs of the La Farge dam is: Why and how did the La Farge Dam Project become too expensive for Senator Proxmire to support? It seems like a simple enough question with an attainable answer, but looks can be deceiving here in the Kickapoo Valley. Cost numbers and estimates can also be deceiving on a federal project like the La Farge Dam Project. For our purposes here, lets begin with the cost estimates of the dam project when Congress first authorized it in 1962.
The dam at La Farge that was authorized at that time was a little over 1,000-feet in length and seventy feet high. Behind the dam would be an impoundment or reservoir of water (The term Lake is rarely used in discussing this early body of water) of approximately 840 acres at its greatest size. Most of the water would be retained in the Star Valley area, but at its greatest size during floods, the reservoir’s waters would stretch up into the mouths of Weister and Jug Creeks and lap at the sandstone cliffs below Rockton. Spillways would regulate the flow of water over the dam and back into the Kickapoo River.
In addition to the costs to build the dam, other money would be spent purchasing the property from people who lived and farmed in the impoundment area. Additional money would be spent on the relocation of State Highway 131, as much of the section of that highway between La Farge and Rockton would be under the impoundment’s waters. Part of County Highway P would also have to be rerouted. Utilities would also have to be removed and relocated, specifically the electrical sub-station at Star Valley. There were four undeveloped recreational areas planned around the impoundment’s waters – two at the site of the dam and two more located farther up the river.
The estimates for the cost for such a project were just under or a little over $15-million, depending on whose numbers were used. That 1962 project also included the cost for construction of flood control levees for the downstream villages of Soldiers Grove and Gays Mills. The total cost of the Kickapoo Valley Project as estimated by the Corps of Engineers, who were the builders of the dam and levees, was a tad over $14.5-million. When Senator Proxmire withdrew his support in 1975, the cost had escalated to almost $52-million. What happened in those fifteen years to more than triple the cost for flood protection for the Kickapoo Valley?
Monday, June 20, 2011
4th of July Festivities in La Farge
Another 4th of July is quickly approaching, a big day each year for the town of La Farge. I don’t know if La Farge’s celebration of Independence Day is the oldest in the area, but the little village on the Kickapoo has feted our nation’s birthday regularly for over 130 years. That would take us back to around 1880, twenty years before there was even a Village of La Farge. But at that time, the folks from Seelyburg, DeJean’s Corners and the Lawton District where the La Farge Post Office was located were gathering on July 4th to celebrate the day.
Many times the gathering for the 4th would take place on the property of Dred Bean, who owned what today is the northwest corner of La Farge. Sometimes the people would gather on his sloping front lawn for the festivities, that lawn today is Bean Park. In the 1880’s, people would gather for patriotic speeches given by politicians or county officials brought in for the day. Races and games would be held for children and adults alike to test their fleetness of foot or strength of arm. The La Farge Cornet Band, already one of the premier musical groups by the 1880’s, would play patriotic music. Perhaps some of the Civil War veterans would don their old military uniforms and caps and play some wartime lilts in the GAR Fife & Drum Band. They might play tunes like “The Girl I Left Behind Me” or “Let’s Rally Round The Flag Boys”.
The Star GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) Post of Civil War veterans was established at Seelyburg in 1884. (Star was the official name of the place, but locally it was called Seelyburg after the mill owner who made the place a town.) The gathering of the veterans for a reunion became a yearly activity, which sometimes occurred on the 4th of July. Dred Bean was a charter member of that Star GAR Post and was very active in arranging the reunions of his former comrades in arms. Bean had a sugar maple bush on a hillside on the northern end of his property, which he would have cleared of weeds in the summer months for the veteran’s gatherings and the 4th of July Celebrations. It became known as Bean’s Grove and was a favorite for summertime gatherings like family picnics and the 4th of July celebrations because of its shade and cool breezes.
Mrs. R. E. Wolfgram provides us a wonderful account of one of those early Independence Day Celebrations in Bean’s Grove. Mrs. Wolfgram (nee Myrtle Griffin) wrote historic articles about Seelyburg and La Farge for the Vernon County Broadcaster & Censor and La Crosse Tribune for several decades. As a little girl, she grew up in the Seelyburg area and saw the lumber boomtown at its busiest as well as witnessing the birth of La Farge to the south. In 1974, she wrote an article titled “A Little Girl’s Memories: Seeleyburg’s 4th of July”, which detailed her recollections of those 4th of July festivities held in Bean’s Grove. Although Wolfgram gives no exact dates, the time that she writes would be around 1900 or a little earlier. Her article might be a compilation of several years of memories of the 4th from her youth.
Of course, a girl had to have a special dress for the big day and this little Seelyburg lass had one with “fine valenciennes lace edged the ruffles of the dresses worn with red saches”. She and five of her classmates dressed alike for the day because they were to sing patriotic songs at the celebration. The songs were taught to them by Alice Nixon (Wolfgram called her “Allie”), who taught many children in Seelyburg over the years. The chorus of one of their songs was “Hurrah for the flag, our Country’s flag, with its stripes and bright stars, too. There is no flag in any land like our own red, white and blue”.
The festivities for the 4th began with the shooting of a cannon at dawn. Wolfgram said she could not sleep after the shot and put on her fine white dress and red sash. The family packed a lunch of fried chicken, homemade buns and cakes and a lemon pie. Lemon pie was a special dessert made just for the 4th as the first crates of lemons came to Kickapoo Valley stores around the first of July. A dance bowery was set up in the Grove and around the dance floor were rows of planks nailed to wooden blocks for seating. She remembered a Viroqua politician giving a speech to the gathered crowd and her uncle saying that it was a good day for anyone running in the fall elections to speak to that many people.
Indeed, the crowd was immense for the time, measured in thousands of people and not hundreds. “People had come from South and North Bear Creek, Warner, Otter and Weister Creek, Rockton, Ontario, West Lima, and the Kickapoo towns from Wilton to Wauzeka.”
There was a baseball game played near the grove with young men from La Farge and Viola competing. She remembers the Rittenhouse boys and Ray Calhoon being good players for La Farge and Lee and Lester Griffin playing for Viola. Wolfgram didn’t pay too much attention to the ball game, but instead focused on the music and dancing in the Grove at the bowery. The music went on into the night and continued on even after a little girl from Seelyburg fell asleep under the plank seating and had to be carried home on the shoulder of her father. The last jig from the fiddles would often welcome in July 5th before the music would end.
Wolfgram remembered how her uncle praised Dred Bean for his patriotic spirit for having the celebration held in his Grove. “Mr. Bean was a staunch Democrat. His grove was open to Democratic and Republican groups alike, and for reunions of families. He would not accept a penny for the use of it.” Wolfgram did remember that Bean asked the girls to put a button on their new white dresses of one of his favorite political candidates. “Allie Nixon felt it would not be in good taste.”
Dred Bean passed away in 1913 and the family offered to sell the Grove to the village for a park. There was some anguish over the asking price for the parcel (After all, Bean had never charged a penny for its use!), but eventually a village referendum approved of the purchase. The Grove of Dred Bean was formally dedicated as La Farge’s Village Park on the 4th of July in 1916.
Over the years, structures were built in the park to facilitate the 4th celebrations. Wooden food stands were built to house the church ladies groups that provided the first food for sale at the festivities. Bandstands and speaking platforms were added. A wooden floor for dancing was laid at the bowery each year and larger outdoor bathrooms were installed in the park along the east border. Over the years, a midway of carnival games and sales tents stretched along a path from the north end of the park down the hill towards the school.
After World War II, the newly created VFW Post built a cement bowery for dances and an enclosed food stand next to it. The La Farge Firemen put up a ring toss stand that paid off better than most of the carnival games. Chief Whitehorse sold rattlesnake soap from his wheelchair and put on a remarkable show. A pony ring offered rides for the little ones in the bottom of the park.
The parades continued over the years, leading the crowds up to the “grounds” at the Grove for fun on the 4th. In the early 1970’s, the focus of La Farge’s 4th of July celebrations shifted to Calhoon Park when the Lions Shelter was built there. Softball tournaments, a beer tent, water fights and truck & tractor pulls drew people to the ballpark area and away from the Grove over the years. The bowery deteriorated from nonuse and other than some family picnics, the Village Park was no longer the focus on the 4th of July. Then in the mid-1980’s an effort was made to save the old bowery in the park. A new cement pad was laid to replace the old crumbling concrete and in 1986 a large shelter roof was built over the dance floor. Eventually music returned to the old park bowery on the 4th of July. The village built new bathrooms next to the bowery. The La Farge Lions Club started a free “Music In The Park” program in the Village Park on the 4th of July in 2004. The program, featuring popular area bands playing a variety of music, has grown in popularity and draws crowds back to the park. Crowds of folks once again return to enjoy the shade and cool breezes of Bean’s Grove on the 4th of July.