Kickapoo Floodplain History

It seems so simple.  If you live in a house that occasionally has floodwaters running through it, you have two options.  You can move from that house with its flood prone location or you can move the house away from the floodwaters.  In either option, you are relocating away from the floodwaters.  It seems like a clear-cut solution to the problem, but here in the Kickapoo Valley it has not always been so simple to achieve.

            “The last rescue proved to be one of the most dangerous.  The family of Cora Henry was stranded in their home, the original Dempster Seely house, on the northern end of the village in Seelyburg.  The house stood several hundred feet out in the still raging floodwater.  Dave Elliot, who had been rescuing people for nearly twelve hours, decided to get to the Henry house.  Four times he flung his boat into the raging torrent, but was washed downstream before getting to the house.  Finally he launched his boat far up shore from the house and negotiated the torrents to land at the front porch of the Henry house.  Mrs. Henry and her four children were quickly loaded into the boat for the long haul back to shore.  A tired Elliot started to row through the swirling muddy waters.  It was a terrific pull and when he was still many yards from the shore, Elliot was unable to row farther and called for help.  Five youths on shore, Royal Donovan, Si Paul, Cedric Neefe, Francis Moon, and Furley Hodge, some of the same young lads who had begun the original rescue the night before, plunged into the water and pulled the loaded boat to safety.  Miraculously, none of La Farge’s residents were seriously injured or killed in the mammoth flood.”

            This harrowing account from the 1935 Kickapoo River flood, which I excerpted from Chapter 5 of Volume I of my history of La Farge book, describes the terror and danger inherent in the great floods of the Kickapoo.  Again, it seems so simple; move the people and the houses away from the path of the river’s floodwaters. Relocate out of the flood’s path.  Easier said than done in the Kickapoo Valley.

            To understand why “relocation” was such an unpopular concept for much of the history of flood control efforts in the Valley, perhaps we need to go back to the beginning as to why people settled so close to the Kickapoo River in the first place.  Why does someone build a house in a river’s floodway?

            Many of the first people to settle in the area around La Farge were drawn to the region because of the potential of waterpower provided by the Kickapoo River.  In the narratives of the original land surveys done in 1846 and conducted by the federal government surveying team, it was noted the potential for waterpower by damming up the Kickapoo River near La Farge.  In describing waterpower potential, the surveyor’s narrative mentions in particular a site in section 20 (what would become Seelyburg) and another in section 28 (in the area where Bear and Otter Creeks join the Kickapoo) that would be excellent places for dams and mills.

            Thomas and Anson DeJean and Dempster Seely would soon follow and construct the dams and mills at those places on the Kickapoo.  They also built houses right next to the river, close by their mill sites.  As the lumbering boom followed in the northern Kickapoo Valley, many of those who worked at the mills also built houses along the river.  Soon villages bloomed along the banks of the Kickapoo from Ontario to Steuben.  And those villages, being constructed in the later half of the 19^th century, flourished during those early years of existence.  Were they hit with catastrophic floods in those early years, like they would be in the following 20^th century? 

Evidence would suggest these early settlements were not in peril from the Kickapoo’s mighty floods, so common after 1900.  Those early settlers were not stupid people, who would establish their entire towns in harms way.  Prudent men would not build houses in areas where the safety of their family might be in jeopardy because of rushing floodwater, would they?  What happened to a river where it was once safe to build communities along its banks?

The very nature of the watershed that supported the river changed drastically in those early years of settlement along the Kickapoo.  The change in the watershed caused the river to undergo drastic changes as well.  It is not to say that the river did not flood during those early years of settlement, because all rivers have floods and the Kickapoo was not an exception.  But those early floods must have been tolerable for the people who lived near the Kickapoo River, because the riverside settlements continued to grow and prosper.  It was the river that changed; by the end of the nineteenth century, the Kickapoo River became a flooding machine.

Seelyburg Gals

(This blog entry is dedicated to the memory of Patsy Venner.  This story is about a girl, Alice Smith, who lived in Seelyburg over a century ago.  Patsy (Lawton) might have been the last of the Seelyburg gals and she loved stories of that place.  She was brought home to her final resting place on August 1.  She is buried in the Star Cemetery, looking down on old Seelyburg, a town originally platted by Chauncey Lawton in the 1860’s, a place where Patsy grew up and where her family continues to live to this day.)

            Alice Smith was working at a hotel in Fond du Lac.  The year was 1902, the same year that she had finished her schooling through the eighth grade.  Being one of nine children in her family, she was expected to help with the family’s expenses.  So she boarded the train in Campbellsport, where her family lived, and rode it to the city of Fond du Lac to seek employment. 

The hotel was located near the Northwestern Railroad roundhouse and many of the railroad yard workers stayed at the hotel.  Alice helped serve meals, cooked in the kitchen and washed dishes for the meals served at the hotel.  Her workdays began at 4:30 a.m. and weren’t over until the supper dishes were all cleaned, usually after eight in the evening.  Alice worked seven days a week and was paid $3.50 for her labors plus room and board at the hotel.  She was 14 years old.

Because she was such a hard worker, Alice was offered another $1.50 per week in wages to help with the laundry.  The five-dollar weekly wages seemed like a fortune to her, but also meant longer days of work to get the meals and laundry done.  Sometimes, her brother Claude, who worked in the railroad yards part time, would help her to finish up the long workdays.

In the winter months, when Alice’s father had no work as a stone mason and bricklayer, she would send half of her weekly wages home to him to help out there.  One day she received a letter from her father.  It read like this, “Alice, I want you to come home, and if you don’t, I’ll be coming after you.”  In her own words, Alice went on to say, “I didn’t know why he wanted me to come home but I knew I better go.  When I got home, I learned my sister, Marie, who was living in La Farge, was going to have a baby.  She wanted me to help her.  I went.”  The year was 1903.

So, Alice Smith made her way across the state (probably by train) to the little Kickapoo River town of La Farge, where she helped her sister when she had a baby.  We don’t really know much about that time when Alice helped out in her sister’s house, but we can assume that it went well.  La Farge was a bustling little town during that time with lots of comings & goings.  Alice walked the busy Main Street and soon caught the eye of an admirer. 

Or was it the other way around?  Perhaps Alice can tell it best, “ While I was in La Farge, I met the man who was to be my husband.  He was a handsome chap who caught my eye, and since I had to work, I thought I might as well be working for myself.  I found out this theory didn’t work out.  After little persuasion, we got aboard the little narrow gauge railroad passenger train that made its way across the hills and valleys to Wauzeka, across the Mississippi by ferry and on to McGregor, Iowa, where we were married.  I was now Mrs. Orson Dyer.  The year, 1905.”  Alice was 17 years old.

Alice’s husband worked for Charles Seely, who owned the Seely Lumber Mill at that time.  Despite losing a hand in a hunting accident several years before, Orson still helped out the Seely’s with farming and jobs at the mill.  The newlyweds settled into a house in Seelyburg, probably renting one of the homes owned by the Seely family. 

Soon after they were married, Alice’s husband put in a successful bid on a mail route between La Farge and Ontario.  Since the train brought the mail as far north as La Farge, Orson’s mail duties included taking the mail north to Ontario and delivering mail to people along the way.  The route was thirty miles long and the pay was $50 per month.  Orson kept three horses to pull his mail rig, “the closed-in box-like body mounted on a wooden-wheeled chassis”.  Alice described the mail route, “In those days, many of the patrons did a lot of buying from mail order houses.  Sears Roebuck & Company sold a nearly full line of groceries and a lot of people bought canned goods, as well as big boxes of canned fruits.  Many times Orson left the post office with a rig full of cases and mail.”

Eventually, Alice and Orson bought their little house in Seelyburg and started to raise a family.  Soon baby Thelma joined the family followed by another girl, Flora.  In July of 1907, their home was inundated with the floodwaters of the Kickapoo River.  That flood was the greatest that the people of the Valley had ever seen and the damage was so great in Seelyburg that the old lumber town never really recovered.  Alice tells about that flood this way, “One year a tremendous flood came roaring down the Kickapoo River, destroying everything in its path.  Water raised in our little home to the firebox in the kitchen range, doing so much damage we had to abandon the home.”

The 1907 flood was made even worse at Seelyburg because of a new dam on the river that had been constructed a few years before.  That larger dam structure, located further downriver from Seely’s original dam, had been built to provide more head for the waterpower used to run the electric plant.  Thus, the larger dam and a containment levee built on the southern bank of the river backed the floodwaters up even more causing record levels in the homes of Seelyburg.  The damage was so remarkable that the dray and livery services in La Farge ran excursions up to Seelyburg for several days, carrying wagonloads of people to see the catastrophe wrought on the old river town.

Alice and her family moved to La Farge after the great flood, as did many other former residents of Seelyburg.  Orson ran the mail route for four years, and then had to rebid the route with the postal service.  “When Orson put in his bid for the next four years, another fellow underbid him by a single penny.  Orson was out of a job.”

Hard times followed for Alice and her family, which by 1910 had grown again with the births of twins, Mildred and Flora.  (Alice had been a twin herself, but did not grow up with her twin sister, Olive.  Shortly after the births of Alice and her twin in 1888, Olive went to live with an older sister in Black River Falls.)  Orson eventually had to sell the house in La Farge and they moved the family into an old log cabin on land owned by his stepfather, located outside of the village.  Orson tried to get lumbering work again, “but the vast, timbered forests had disappeared.  The heyday of Vernon County logging camps was at end.”  Times were difficult for Alice and her family. 

“When things looked most bleak, it seemed the Lord stepped in to help change our lives and provide the necessities, for a time at least.  Two of Orson’s cousins had returned for a Vernon County visit from the Livingston mines located in southwestern Wisconsin.  Men were needed there and the pay was good.  When it came time for them to return to their mining jobs, Orson went with them to begin a new life for himself and the rest of us.”

Alice and her family soon followed to Grant County.  Alice’s time in Seelyburg and the Kickapoo Valley was over.

I want to thank Amos Mast for helping with providing information for this story.  A while back, Amos lent me his copy of the magazine, “Good Old Days” (January, 1981 issue), which contained an article written by Daniel M. Evans titled “Little Links Make Long Chains”.  Evans was the son-in-law of Alice Dyer, who was ninety years old when he interviewed for the article about her life.  The quotes by Alice Dyer used in this story of her time in Seelyburg are from that article by Evans. 

Dam Book on WDRT-FM

I have been taping my book, "THAT DAM HISTORY - The Story of The La Farge Dam Project", for play on "Page Turner Radio" for WDRT-FM, 91.9, Viroqua.  The program continues to run Monday through Friday mornings beginning at 8:20 and may also be "seen" on Channel 17 of Vernon Communications TV cable access.  One can also hear the book read online at www.wdrt.org.  Many thanks to Cyndy Hubbard of WDRT for helping with the reading and taping of the dam book and putting everything together to be used on the program.  The book will begin to be read on the program on Monday, July 30 and continue for about five weeks.

ABSTRACTS & DEEDS

Lots 1,2,3 & 10,11,12; Block 4; Bailey’s Plat; Village of La Farge

            It is a piece of land in the Kickapoo Valley.

            It has a story to tell.

            The deed for the piece of land denotes ownership.  With the deed in hand and the piece of land registered at the land office, ownership is secured.

            The abstract of the piece of land narrates the story of the ownership of the land; it tells who has owned it over the years.  The question of who sold it to whom is answered on the narration of the land that is the abstract.

            Ownership for the piece of land could be determined only after the lands of the Kickapoo Valley were surveyed and marked into grids and squares.  That was done in 1846 by a crew of government surveyors who dragged their measuring chains rod by rod up the Valley in January of that year.  Wisconsin became a state two years later and land offices were established so that deeds for pieces of land could be entered.

            In 1853, Thomas DeJean came to this part of the Valley and probably walked on this piece of land.  He went to the nearest land office, located in Mineral Point, and laid claim to his land in the Kickapoo Valley.  For a few dollars paid down, DeJean had legal claim to his Kickapoo Valley land, but not this particular piece of land whose story we tell.   He returned two years later to the Kickapoo Valley and with his son, Anson, they began to claim a homestead from the wilderness.

            It was Anson who first made a legal claim on this piece of land, as he purchased it from the United States government in 1856.  President Franklin Pierce authorized the purchase transaction for this piece of land and the deed was entered at the land office in Mineral Point.  Anson’s piece of land laid to the west of his father’s.  Together, the DeJeans, father and adopted son, owned all the lands where Otter Creek and Bear Creek flow into the Kickapoo.  They owned the land south of the trail that ran from east to west through this part of the Valley and Anson’s lands lay on both sides of the Kickapoo River and on west along Otter Creek.

            Anson and Thomas DeJean built a sawmill and then a gristmill and bought more land for their lumbering pursuits.  In 1882, Anson DeJean sold this piece of land of whose story we tell to John Bailey. 

            The Baileys were farmers and soon had milking cows on the land and bought milk from their neighbors and made cheese on their farm for others to buy.  “Ma” Bailey ran a general store from a room next to where they made cheese.  Money was scarce then, so Ma Bailey operated a bank of sorts out of her apron for neighbors and friends to conduct business in the place that became known as DeJean’s Corners.

            In 1896, when word came that a railroad was coming to this place that was now known as La Farge, John Bailey was the first to officially plat his lands for sale.  He divided his lands and lots were sold to people anxious to own land in the railroad boomtown.

            In 1901, two brothers, John and Fred Thayer, purchased this piece of land of whose story we tell.  The Thayer brothers were businessmen and soon built a general store facing the busy Main Street of the boomtown.  Since lumbering was fueling the boom in La Farge, the Thayer brothers also became lumber retailers and built a large shed attached to the south end of their store to house those operations.  The lumber business became so lucrative and demanding of their time, that the Thayer brothers soon dropped the general store line of goods.  With their lumber business located within a few hundred yards of the railroad line and the various processing mills in La Farge, the Thayer brothers business flourished.  John Thayer eventually left the business partnership with his brother.  In 1904, Fred Thayer sold his lumber business on this piece of land to his son-in-law, Levi Millison, who had been working in the lumber business for some time.

            Floodwaters from the Kickapoo covered this piece of land in 1907.  Water ran through Levi Millison’s buildings and in that year he sold the land and business back to Fred Thayer.  By that time, Levi was heavily involved in speculations on lands in the West.  After selling the La Farge lumber business back to his father-in-law, Levi left the Kickapoo Valley and moved his family west to Montana.  The Thayer Lumber Company continued on this piece of land for another two decades. 

            Fred Thayer passed away in December 1927.  His son, Emory, ran the business on this piece of land until 1929 when the family sold out to Nuzum’s Lumber, their main lumber retail competitor in La Farge.  Emory Thayer was made the manager of Nuzum’s La Farge operation soon after.  The old Thayer Lumber buildings became additional storage space for Nuzum’s products.  Lots 10, 11, & 12, which fronted onto Snow Street, were used for outside storage of products. 

Floodwaters from the Kickapoo again covered this piece of land in 1935.  This land remained a part of the Nuzum’s retail lumber operation for more than two more decades.  Eventually, Nuzum’s Lumber no longer needed the piece of land for their business.

            Lester Fulmer bought Lots 1 and 2 and the buildings located on that piece of land from Nuzum’s in 1952.  Fulmer, who was active in a variety of businesses in La Farge, used the office of the old lumber store briefly, but then sold the buildings and the two lots to the Town of Stark in 1953.  The township used the old lumber office for a town hall and the shed to store its road maintenance equipment.  In 1954, Stark bought lot 3 of this piece of land from Ralph Nuzum and purchased lots 10-12 from him in 1958 to reunite the parcels, as they had been most of the time since being platted.  The township stored sand and gravel on the lots until 1986, when they moved much of their road maintenance operation to the Corps of Engineers maintenance building at the dam site north of La Farge.  The Town of Stark continued to use the old office for a town hall and the shed for recycling and storage of the township’s road grader.  With the lots empty, the township began renting the space to the nearby truck center for vehicle parking.

            Kickapoo floodwaters again swept through the buildings on this piece of land in June 2008.  The town hall building was condemned after the flood’s damages and the township began looking for other land options for their building needs.               

It is shown on the plat maps as Lots 1,2,3 & 10,11,12 of Block 4 of Bailey’s Plat in the Village of La Farge.  Three lots fronting Main Street; three lots on Snow Street; divided by a platted alley running east and west in the middle of the piece of land.  It is owned by the Town of Stark, but will soon be sold to Earl Nelson for use with his truck center business.  His name will be placed on the deed and his name added to the narrative of the abstract for this piece of land, as its story continues to be told. 

Bean's Grove

I spent some time in La Farge’s Village Park over the past couple of weeks.  Despite the oppressive heat spell, the park is still a pleasant outdoors setting with its abundant shade and seemingly constant breezes.  For those venturing out from their air conditioning during the summer’s sweltering heat wave, the wooded park on the hill might be the coolest place in La Farge.  And that is as it has always been.

            When Dredsel Bean returned from his time in America’s Civil War, he bought property located just to the south of the bustling lumber boom town of Seelyburg and on the northwest corner of where two old trails crossed.  He built his house and blacksmith shop near the place known as “The Corners” and started clearing much of the rest of his land for farming.  But on the hill on the northern edge of his property, he kept a stand of mature maple, oak and elm trees as his wood lot and sugar bush.  Eventually because of the cool summer breezes, which wafted through the forested glade, people began to gather on the wooded hill when the weather warmed up.

            After the maple sugar season ended in early spring, Dred Bean would let a crew of town’s folk trim the undergrowth to better promote gatherings in his grove of trees during the warmer months of each year.  By the 1870’s, Bean was hosting reunions of his Civil War comrades on a yearly basis in his grove.  Picnics, church gatherings and other reunions and gatherings became common during these early years in Bean’s Grove and by the 1880’s the 4^th of July Celebration was played out either in Dred Bean’s front yard or in his grove on the hill.  By the time that La Farge was incorporated as a village at the turn of the century, Bean’s Grove was hosting nearly all of the village’s important outdoor events.  The Civil War veteran reunions, usually held in the month of September, drew thousands to the events held in Bean’s Grove.  Dred Bean never charged a penny to anyone who used his grove during all of those years.  His only requirement was that people keep the place clean and help mow the weeds back.  Bean also frowned on the evils of liquor, so his grove was always “dry” regardless of the status of saloons in town.  By that early tradition, alcoholic beverages have never been sold in his grove.

            When Dred Bean passed away in 1913, the village leaders made inquiries to acquire Bean’s Grove as a village park.  The family offered to sell the grove to the village.  This move caused some considerable consternation among some folks in La Farge since Dred had never charged anyone for the use of his woods.  Finally in the spring of 1916, the good people of La Farge voted overwhelming in a special referendum to instruct the village board to purchase the woods on the hill.  La Farge’s new village park located in Bean’s Grove was officially dedicated that year at the 4^th of July festivities.  This year the grove hosted its 97^th 4^th of July Celebration as the village’s park.

            Because of its heavy use for gatherings of all kinds, bandstands and shelters were added to the park over the years.  Structures to host food stands, particularly for the 4^th of July, were constructed.  After World War II, the La Farge VFW members built a new cement dance bowery in the grove.  My recollections of the Village Park began soon after that.

            The Free Methodist Church moved their Sunday service to the Village Park on July 1 of this year, calling it “Church In The Park” and invited the community to attend.  The service was followed by a potluck dinner and drew an overflow crowd to the Village Park bowery.  I was sitting way in the back and could not hear Pastor Mark Phillips very well, so my mind started to wander back to my first remembrances of Dred Bean’s Grove.  (I felt kind of bad for not paying attention to Pastor Mark’s message, but then remembered how he sometimes didn’t pay the best attention to some of my history lectures back in the days when he was a student at LHS.  So maybe, what goes around; comes around?)

            My early memories of the Village Park revolve around the 4^th of July Celebrations and the Steinmetz family reunions, always held there the Sunday before Labor Day.  Those family reunions were immense gatherings at the time in the early 1950’s as my grandfather Emery Steinmetz and his siblings and cousins were all still alive.  All of “The Cousins”, which is what my Dad’s generation was called, would return with their families to the grove each year for socializing and a big family potluck picnic – the highlight of the reunion.  Oddly, I remember that there were large outhouses along the east edge of the park back then.  The outdoor privies were dark; foul-smelling places and the men’s featured a long metal trough urinal, which intrigued me to no end.  Romping around the park with my seldom-seen cousins in endless games of tag is a fond memory.  With so many trees to hide behind, Hide & Seek was another favorite game in the grove during those family reunions of over fifty years ago.

            My favorite memory of the Village Park is of those first 4^th of July celebrations when I was a kid.  Growing up in the village, I was always up to the park to check out preparations for the holiday, as the “grounds” were being prepared.  One year I helped Dick Trappe, who worked for the village, put up red, white & blue bunting for the celebration.  We wrapped it around trees and draped it on the bandstands and food stands.  A large American flag was hung on a wire above the bowery for people to dance under.  By the time we were finished on that Independence Day eve, the green arbor of the grove was adorned with red, white & blue everywhere.

            Another time, I helped Leo Smith, who was the village clerk at the time, to stake out where all of the carnival stands would be located along the park’s midway.  In those days the carnival midway ran from the top of the park, down both sides of the road that led to the bowery and on down nearly to the road that looped back to the entrance.  Leo had the stakes marked with the name and size of the carny stands.  As we pounded the stakes in the ground, my imagination leapt ahead to the thrill of playing the carnival games.  By late in the afternoon, the first carnival trucks drove up to the park and the tents of the carnival started to blossom along the midway.

            Somebody had to watch the park grounds overnight to keep mischief-makers from causing trouble.  Often the village would hire Cody Kidd to do that night watch of the grounds.  When dawn broke the next morning on the 4th, I was usually up early and begging my folks to let me head up to the park.  Once I reached the midway, my nickels and dimes just flew out of my pockets as I tried the carny games of chance.  I was always trying to win that nice large teddy bear, but it seemed the Chinese finger tortures and the “Made in Japan” statuary was all that I could come up with.  (One time I won a large garish clown statue, which I proudly presented to my Gramma Campbell as a present.  She smiled and accepted the fat clown of a gift, but I’m not sure she was too impressed with the thing.  It eventually found a home in the back of an out-of-way knickknack shelf on the back porch – far out of anyone’s sight.)  I was often dead broke by the time I traipsed back down the hill to go downtown and watch the parade and it was only 9:30 in the morning!  What was a boy to do?

            The parade always led everybody back up to the park right before noon and the picnicking would begin in earnest.  Before my Granddad and Gramma Campbell, Pearl and Isa, moved to town from up on Salem Ridge, our Independence Day picnic would center around wherever they set out their blanket in the grove.  Uncle Mike and Aunt Alice Lawrence and their kids were usually there as well and many others would drop by.  The gatherings for the 4^th of July picnics were rather fluid as old friends and former neighbors wandered around striking up conversations and reconnecting with folks not seen in awhile.  The food was always the best and someone always made some lemon pies – an old tradition on the 4^th.

            By the time dinner was done, I usually had begged or otherwise acquired a handful of change to lead another charge on the carny games.  If Chief Whitehorse was there, and he usually was, I would watch him handle his snakes and sell rattlesnake soap.  The longer the day went on, the cheaper the soap would get as Chief Whitehorse didn’t want to haul it all back to Madison.  I could listen to the Chief’s wonderful lingo all afternoon and sometimes did.  (Did you know that rattlesnake soap contained no animal fats as all other soaps did?  Learned that from the Chief and I knew he wouldn’t tell a lie!))   One year I was patient and ended up buying a whole armful of soap for fifty cents, which I was made to reluctantly share with family.  (Might have been my Mother’s attempt to square things with family after my earlier begging for money foray.)  For the next several weeks, I washed up more frequently than a small boy was want to and smelled of the Chief’s special and wonderful rattlesnake soap.

            Oh my – memories of Bean’s Grove – the coolest place in La Farge.