Kickapoo Wildlife

This spring, I have been observing an interesting battle of the birds over some prime nesting sites on the ponds located below our house. These ponds were created several years back just for this use – for waterfowl to hang out, feed and nest there. There is a prime nesting site on each of the two ponds and for the past several weeks, some Canadian Geese and some Sand Hill Cranes have been jockeying for position as to who gets to lay their eggs where. Whenever the cranes appear and there usually are three of them – the nesting pair and a now-adult chick from last year – the geese, sometimes one but often two, will always climb to the top of the nests and stand in defiance to the Sand Hill invaders. The cranes seem oblivious to the honks and postures of their Canadian cousins and feed in the marsh grasses next to the ponds. The geese, being the more aggressive of the two species, seem to be winning this battle so far. If only one pair of geese stay on the ponds, then perhaps the cranes will take the other nest, but that has never happened before. There seems to be more than enough room as far as the cranes are concerned, but the geese, being much more territorial, don’t seem to want the cranes anywhere in the immediate neighborhood.

Of course, sixty years ago, none of this dueling birds saga would have been playing out in this spot next to Bear Creek. My father owned this farm at that time, located just to the east of La Farge. He wanted cropland and not wildlife ponds for his dairy farming. He tiled the low-lying fields so the water would drain out of them and corn could be planted there. (I remember his chagrin when I told him of the plans to create the conservation wildlife ponds on his former farm. He could remember how much work and expense it had been to create the drainage systems in his time on the land.) Much of the wetlands in the Kickapoo Valley had disappeared by that era of the mid-twentieth century as farmers drained and tiled their marshes and bogs for more cropland. With fewer ponds and wetlands in the Valley, there were fewer waterfowl as well – reduced habitat meant reduced populations of birds. I’m sure there were geese and ducks in the Kickapoo Valley in 1950, but they were surely not as plentiful as today. As for the Sand Hill Crane, they were nowhere to be seen in the Valley back then.

Most of us who have lived around these parts for a while, can remember exactly when we heard that crazy call of the crane for the first time. Most residents had never heard that strange sound in the Valley until recent times. Perhaps it was fifteen years ago or even ten when the call was first heard, depending on where you lived here in the Valley. The cranes have come to the Kickapoo as their populations increased in central Wisconsin and the habitat of wetlands and croplands increased in this area in recent years. Sixty years ago or a century ago, that call wouldn’t have been heard here in the Kickapoo.

Another ritual of spring on our Bear Creek farm is the strutting of the Tom Turkeys in the field behind our house. The turkey is another recent arrival in the Kickapoo Valley and a species that was nowhere to be seen when I was a kid growing up in La Farge in the 1950s. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources first introduced the wild turkey into the state in 1976. It was an exchange program with the state of Missouri DNR – they received some of our Ruffed Grouse and the Badger State imported some of the Show Me State turkeys. The DNR turkey management program began right here in Vernon County, over in the area around Romance in the western part of the county. In a few years the expanding flock of transplanted gobblers had moved east and found the Kickapoo Valley and multiplied magnificently in their new surroundings. Today, seeing flocks of turkeys feeding in fields and along wood lines is a common sight as one drives the roads of the Valley. When the tom turkeys start puffing up and rattling their feathers, show the bright blues and reds of their neck and head and start strutting their stuff, Kickapoogians know the turkey’s mating season has begun.

The first of the Spring Turkey Seasons starts this week so the woods and fields in these parts will be filled with hunters calling for their big tom. Turkey hunting today is a big economic boost here in the Kickapoo Valley, yet a short thirty years ago, the birds were nowhere to be seen. Over the years, the types of species and their densities can change dramatically.

In January, I watched three coyotes gambol in the snow in the field behind my house. Coyotes are usually heard rather than seen as the 10 o’clock whistle in La Farge always sets off the howling of the creatures each night. On this sunny winter day, the coyotes were hunting mice in the snow along the wood’s edge. Two of the coyotes were active in the field, tilting their heads to the snow to listen for the scurrying rodents below. Then one or the other would dive into the snow and start digging; eventually one came up with a mouth full of mouse from the efforts. The third coyote, smaller than the other two and probably a pup from last year, stayed in the woods and hunted through the brush and leaves there.

There were no coyotes in the Kickapoo Valley when I was a kid, at least that I can remember. Growing up in La Farge, we hiked these hills around town on a daily basis when the weather was decent. We would see Red Fox back then, but one rarely sees that species around anymore. When the coyote came in, following the big deer herds, they supplanted the fox. Apparently the mange disease that the coyote carry is deadly to the fox specie and has nearly eliminated it.

Whitetail deer are so plentiful in these parts today that we hardly remember that fifty years ago it was rare to even see a deer around here. When I was growing up in La Farge during that time, the men all took off for the “North” to hunt for deer. For some that might mean going to Jackson County and hunting in the sand country there. For my family, it meant heading to far northern Wisconsin and hunting with relatives who lived in Vilas County. Men would be gone for weeks at a time to “deer camp” in the northern woods because that’s where the deer were. There were few of the species here in the Kickapoo Valley and those hunters who bagged a big buck locally were few and far between. Previously (December 2007) I wrote a Local History Notebook about those differences in then and now regarding deer hunting. (If you want to check that column out, it is LH Notebook number forty-six in my history of La Farge book.)

When researching the history of La Farge, I will often come across references to wildlife from year’s past. One notation in the old La Farge newspapers mentioned that a “Redbird” had been seen for the first time in the La Farge area. This initial sighting of a cardinal, a common bird in the Valley today, was significant because none had been seen before. The editor of the La Farge newspaper even wanted to lay claim that it was the first positive sighting of a cardinal in western Wisconsin, but a report from La Crosse indicated a sighting there a few weeks before the one seen in the Kickapoo Valley.

Another local story from the beginning of the twentieth century told of an opossum being brought to La Farge to view. It was displayed in town for nearly a week and the folks were amazed to gaze at the strange looking marsupial for the first time. It had been live-trapped on Weister Creek and the editor mentioned that few had ever seen possum in the wild here in the Kickapoo Valley. Today, the possum is common in our area and most often seen in the night, when it likes to roam and feed.

A front-page article from an issue of the La Farge Enterprise from the early 1960’s that I recently ran across speaks volumes as to how things change over the years. Back then, as part of the summer recreation program, La Farge kids were bussed to Viroqua a couple of mornings each week in the summer for swimming lessons at the Viroqua pool. One such bus trip on a June morning was stopped in the Brush Hollow area as the driver spotted a doe and fawn feeding in a roadside field. The bus stopped for several minutes to watch the animals, as most of the children had never seen a sight like that before. Imagine that, stopping the bus because seeing a doe and fawn was such a special and rare thing.

As I finish this writing, I will check the tree along Bear Creek that is located across from my driveway. For much of last fall and this winter, there was often a bald eagle perched there, surveying the menu choices for a morning meal. Breakfast on Bear Creek was nearly a daily repast for this fine example of our national symbol. The eagle has not been around much this spring. It may be doing some nest duty like our famous pair over in Decorah.

The Story of the La Farge Dam

(The following is an excerpt from "That Dam History! - The Story of the La Farge Dam Project", which I hope to have for release to the public by December of this year)

When Congress authorized the Kickapoo Valley flood-control project in October of 1962, most people in the Kickapoo Valley and especially in La Farge assumed that construction on the dam and levees would soon begin. After a quarter-century of study and assessment of the Valley and its flooding problems, most felt that the Corps of Engineers crews would soon be in the La Farge area to start construction on the dam, which would be located north of the village. With the Kickapoo River flooding continuing unabated into the 1960’s, Valley residents looked forward with anticipation to the remedies to the constant flooding as outlined in the federal plan. The structural approach of a dam and levees as proposed by the Corps would soon provide relief from the flooding problem. Alas, the immediate construction and implementation of the Kickapoo Project was far from being a reality.

Even before the authorization of the Kickapoo Project in the autumn of 1962, there had been a number of negotiations and correspondence between the Corps and various Wisconsin state agencies. As part of the run-up to the announcement of the project in September of 1962, the Corps had sent the proposal for the Kickapoo Valley to the governor and a number of state agencies in Madison. This was part of the standard protocol for the federal agency when planning these types of projects – to let the state agencies and governor know about the project in advance and seek input on the plan. Remembering that this was the first federal project of this type and scope in the Badger state, when the Corps of Engineers plan for the Kickapoo Valley was sent to the various agency offices in Madison, the initial process was anything but smooth.

The Wisconsin Department of Conservation was the first state office to question the Corps plan for the Kickapoo Valley. In the plan submitted to the state agency, the Corps had called for the development, maintenance and management of the recreational areas around the La Farge impoundment to be carried out by the state’s Conservation Department. Despite earlier correspondence about the Kickapoo Project by the Corps and state conservation department on a number of planning steps and studies, the two departments had not clarified which agency was responsible for the limited recreational areas included in the project. The cost of developing and maintaining the proposed recreational sites was a sensitive to the state conservation agency, since it had earlier begged off on any financial responsibility for the Wildcat Mountain State Park lake proposal. Citing lack of sufficient funding to take on the lake project at Wildcat Mountain, the Conservation Department informed the Corps that it also lacked funds to pay for recreational development for their project at La Farge. Negotiations between the federal and state agencies continued through the summer of 1962 and a compromise was reached. The final Kickapoo Valley plan presented for authorization by the Corps in the fall listed the development of the recreational areas as a federal responsibility, while the state of Wisconsin, through its Conservation Department, would manage and maintain the recreation sites.

Governor Gaylord Nelson also raised concerns about the Kickapoo Project when he first saw it in March of 1962. The Wisconsin governor’s objections were more towards procedure than to content. Apparently, the Corps of Engineers, when first presenting the plan for the Kickapoo Valley to the various state agencies and the governor, had asked for comments on the plan be submitted within a month’s time. Governor Nelson soon sent a letter to the Corps criticizing the short time frame for comment on the plan; a time frame that the governor felt was rushed and ill advised. When the governor’s letter became public, many people in the Kickapoo Valley were concerned that the governor no longer supported the plan. In a number of letters written to various government leaders in the Kickapoo Valley, Governor Nelson assured all that he still favored the plan, but was against the hurried process for approval that the Corps was using. Eventually Nelson signed on to the Kickapoo Project despite his objections to the hurried nature of the process.

Both of those early issues that were raised by Governor Nelson and the Conservation Department showed a certain detachment regarding the state regarding the Corps’ Kickapoo Project. The project was a federal project, administered by a federal agency and paid for with federal dollars. Over the years, the Army Corps of Engineers had developed a certain protocol in dealing with the states where their projects were located. Although it was important for the Corps to get the various state agencies and particularly the governor’s office solidly behind the projects, it was more a formality than a necessity. Most states welcomed the large federal public works projects with open arms. As was the case for flood control in the Kickapoo Valley, these federal projects filled a need and involved a minimum of cost to state and local governments. In reality, the Corps involved the states in the planning process on these projects more as a courtesy. For the Corps of Engineers, the political leaders to please resided in Washington D. C. and not Madison, Wisconsin.

Doctors in La Farge

When Dr. Frank Gollin left La Farge in 1960, the village needed to reassess its needs for medical services. Gollin, who had been the doctor for the village for over two decades, moved that year to Madison where he started to work in the radiology laboratories at the University of Wisconsin Hospital. For one of the few times since its inception, La Farge was left without a primary care physician practicing in the village. With Dr. Gollin’s departure from his full-time La Farge practice (He would maintain office hours in the village on a part-time basis for the next two years, while La Farge sought a replacement doctor), the little Kickapoo River town would scramble to provide for medical needs and services. In the end of this process to assess the village’s medical situation, a decision was made to build a new medical clinic in town. Before we look at the process of getting that new clinic built and staffed with a doctor, let us peer back into the village’s history to see what medical services preceded that time.

The story of the history of medicine and doctors who practiced in La Farge is a remarkable one in many respects. Even in the pre-incorporation days of Seelyburg and DeJean’s Corners, there always seemed to be reliable medical service available in what would become La Farge. Star, or Seelyburg as it was known locally, had a medical man soon after settlement in Dr. Jesse Smith. Dr. Smith kept his office in his cottage built next to the old schoolhouse on Plum Run Road, located north of the Kickapoo River. In 1869, Smith’s practice was expanded to include Dr. Amos Carpenter. Carpenter built a home at the intersection of the hamlet’s Main Street (the old river road) and the Lane, which led off to the east and up on Maple Ridge. Carpenter built an office and apothecary (drug store) across the street from his house, where his practice remained for three decades. Carpenter was an “eclectic practitioner” who used herbal and Native-American remedies in his practice. The Winnebago Indians, who traveled along the Kickapoo and camped in the area, regularly traded their potions and poultices with their friend, “Dr. Amos”, when they were in the Seelyburg region. Mrs. Carpenter was an accomplished midwife, who assisted in many hundreds of births over the years, and continued her birthing assistance even after the death of her husband.

The first doctor in La Farge was E.E. Gaines, who came to the growing little village in 1897. Dr. Gaines first had his practice in the La Farge House Hotel before moving it to several other Main Street buildings over the years. In October of 1897, the railroad reached La Farge and the little community really spurted in growth. The following year, Dr. William E. Butt moved his practice to La Farge from Fox Lake, Wisconsin. (There will be another connection between La Farge and Fox Lake in regards to medicine seventy years after Dr. Butt’s move, but more on that in the next Local History Notebook.) Dr. Butt was the son of the renowned Colonel Butt of Viroqua and set up his practice in his room at the Klondyke Hotel (now the post office). Later he would move his practice to second-story offices in the Miller Building (now the Field House Bar).

Later in 1898, Dr. Adam Shambaugh came to La Farge to construct a residence and place for his offices. Shambaugh was 82 years old and well known in the area. He moved to La Farge from Muller’s Mill on south Bear Creek, where he had a drug store and practice for many years. He started his La Farge practice, limited due to his advanced age, in his new house (now the Walker house, just north of the Lawton Library), from which he also sold groceries and herbal medicines.

When La Farge incorporated as a village in the summer of 1899, there were four doctors practicing in the new town. They would all be gone before the tenth anniversary of the village. Drs Carpenter (1900) and Shambaugh both passed away (1905). Dr. Gaines joined the group of Kickapoogians who headed west in the early twentieth century, moving his practice to Montana in 1908 before eventually settling in the state of Oregon. Dr. Butt moved his practice to Viroqua in 1909.

Despite the fluid nature of the medical profession in those days, or perhaps because of it, La Farge did not suffer from a lack of doctors when that first batch left the village. Dr. Perres Randall moved his practice from Soldiers Grove to La Farge in 1901 and became a popular member of the community. Dr. Randall suffered a stroke and died in 1903 at the age of 55. That same year, Dr. A.J. Lewis moved into the village, coming from Bloomingdale. He built a bungalow south of the Hotel Ward and established his medical office in the front parlor of the house. Dr. Lewis stayed in La Farge for five years before moving back to Bloomingdale.

Dr. Joseph Esch, who had a practice in Rockton, moved south to La Farge in 1903 to also establish a practice in that booming town. He had offices in several locations before settling into space above the post office for many years (currently apartments owned by George Wilbur located across from the Stittleburg law offices).

Dr. Esch bought the first automobile to La Farge in the fall of 1904. The La Farge physician had traveled to St. Louis to purchase the auto and it was brought to La Farge on a railroad car. With the new automobile, Dr. Esch could expand his practice into the rural areas around La Farge. The good doctor liked his new auto so much that he bought another and then another. He was soon selling autos out of the Hotel Ward garage, a lucrative addition to his medical business. In 1909, he purchased a White steam-driven automobile. The White Steamer greatly enhanced the doctor’s country practice as the vehicle could climb the area’s steep hill roads without faltering. When Dr. Esch went into the country to make house calls, he would have someone drive the White Steamer for him, so he could rest or sleep between calls.

Because of his auto, Dr. Esch became known as La Farge’s “country” doctor, who could make calls everywhere in the steep terrain of the Kickapoo Valley. Dr. J.E. Bingham, who came from Whitewater in 1909 to establish a medical practice, stuck with the old-fashioned horse and buggy form of transportation. Dr. Bingham was known as the “town” doctor in La Farge. During this time, a Dr. Cohen came to La Farge to practice in 1908-09, but left after a year to practice in Wonewoc. Eventually, La Farge settled in as a two-doctor town for much of the time from that time around 1910 until the 1930's.

Strange Political Bedfellows

Whenever I am giving a talk or leading a history hike about the La Farge Dam Project (which usually occurs at least several times a year in my capacity as unofficial historian for the Kickapoo Valley Reserve), a question that invariably comes up will relate to why the project was stopped. What were the reasons for stopping the project when it was nearly three-quarters completed? I have a pat answer, which I use in my presentations, that there were three general causes for the stoppage of the project in 1975 – financial, environmental and political. Looking at the politics of the failed dam project is an amazing gaze in many ways, rather murky on the surface at times, but it is a look that can become much clearer when viewed with some historical perspective.

A project of the magnitude of the La Farge Dam Project as designed by the U.S. Corps of Engineers can only become a reality through political sponsorship in both houses of Congress and the endorsement of the governor of Wisconsin. These kinds of massive public works projects only happen when congressmen and senators at the national level and the chief executive of the home state where the project is located “sign on” with their approval and political endorsements. Congressman Gardner Withrow was the politician who made the La Farge project happen.

Withrow, from La Crosse, made flood control for the Kickapoo Valley one of his political priorities in 1935, when the project was initially envisioned after the great Kickapoo River flood of that summer. The Kickapoo Valley was part of Withrow’s congressional district (then called the 7^th District of Wisconsin) and he soon had Congress authorize studies for the river system and its flooding problems. These studies, conducted over several years by the Army Department’s Corp of Engineers and the forestry and soil conservation branches of the Agriculture Department, yielded a plan that included a dam and levees to protect the villages of the Kickapoo Valley. When the first plan was released in 1940, which included a proposed dam at Rockton and a levee for the village of Gays Mills, Withrow was no longer in Congress. As the Progressive Party candidate, Withrow had been defeated in the congressional election of 1938 and would remain out of national politics for a decade.

Reelected to Congress in 1948 as a member of the Republican Party to represent Wisconsin’s 3^rd District, Gardner Withrow once again championed flood control efforts for the people of the Kickapoo Valley. Working closely with leaders from the Village of La Farge, Withrow organized meetings with the Corps of Engineers officers from the Corp’s regional office in St. Paul. His efforts would continue for more than a decade until finally in 1961, the Corps released another plan for flood control of the Kickapoo River. The new plan called for a dam to be built north of La Farge and levees for the downriver villages of Soldiers Grove and Gays Mills. When Congress authorized the spending bill that included the La Farge Dam Project in October of 1962, Withrow was nearing the end of his political career. He retired from Congress at the end of that session, deciding not to seek another term in the November election. Vernon Thomson, a Richland Center Republican, who would take up the task of sheparding the Kickapoo River project to its conclusion, replaced him in the 3rd District congressional seat.

In the U.S. Senate, Senator Alexander Wiley had championed the Kickapoo River project for many years. Wiley, a Republican and the senior senator from Wisconsin (Democrat William Proxmire was Wisconsin’s other U.S. Senator at the time, having been first elected in 1957 to fill out the term after the death of Joseph McCarthy), would also be ending his time in Congress in the fall of 1962, but not by his own choice. Wiley had been a Wisconsin Senator since 1939 and was an influential member of several committees including the powerful Foreign Relations Committee. When the Cuban Missile Crisis broke out in October of 1962, Wiley remained in Washington, hoping to be seen as a key figure in the foreign relations nightmare, and did little active campaigning in his home state. It was not a wise political move on his part, as his opponent, Wisconsin’s popular Governor Gaylord Nelson, carried the day in the November election and ousted Wiley from his Senate seat.

In a remarkable few weeks for the Kickapoo Valley, the appropriation bill for the La Farge Dam Project passed Congress in October of 1962, and a few weeks later, the political leaders who had championed the project, Gardner Withrow and Alexander Wiley, were out of office. In Washington D.C., that left the project’s fate in the hands of Thomson, the new 3^rd District Congressman, and Nelson and Proxmire, the state’s senators. How these three politicians, a Republican and two Democrats, would come together in the nation’s capital at that particular time is an interesting story of Badger state politics.

The saying that goes, “Politics makes strange bedfellows” would certainly fit as Vernon Thomson, Gaylord Nelson and William Proxmire settled into their Congressional seats in January of 1963. For the three to work together on the La Farge Dam Project might have been doomed from the start if one looks at their previous political connections to one another. Those connections, mostly adversarial, go back to the 1950’s and center on the gubernatorial elections of that decade.

William Proxmire is remembered locally as the man who stopped the La Farge Dam Project in 1975. By many he is seen as the biggest political villain in the dam story, perhaps unfairly cast in that role by the infamous and hilarious “Proxie Funeral” that took place in La Farge a few months after his announcement to pull the plug on the dam. Many remember that the Wisconsin Senator served for thirty-two years in the U.S. Senate, finally retiring in 1989. Few realize that Proxmire was a three-time loser in Wisconsin elections for governor, losing gubernatorial races as a Democrat in 1952, ’54 and ’56. In the 1956 election for governor, Proxmire lost to a long time assemblyman from Richland County, Vernon Thomson. A year later, Proxmire would finally win a statewide election in the special election called to fill Joe McCarthy’s seat. The following year in 1958, Proxmire would be elected to his own six-year term as Wisconsin’s Senator.

Vernon Thomson served as Wisconsin’s Governor for one term from 1957 to 1959 (The governor’s term was for two-years at that time.), but was defeated in 1958 in his bid for reelection for governor by Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic State Senator from Clear Lake. Nelson, a staunch conservationist (the term environmentalist wasn’t used yet in those days), was reelected as governor in 1960. While running for the state’s highest office in that election campaign of 1960, he visited La Farge and expressed his support for the La Farge flood control project. In 1962, when Congress authorized the La Farge project, Governor Nelson gave his endorsement to the project (although he would say later that his endorsement was given guardedly and perhaps too quickly as he was leaving his position as governor, campaigning for Alexander Wiley’s U.S. Senate position and preparing for his move to Washington D.C. to take his Senate seat). In that same election, Thomson became the new 3^rd District Congressman, replacing the long-time representative, Gardner Withrow.

And so there they were in Washington D. C. together, Thomson, Nelson and Proxmire – names that would become all too familiar around La Farge for the next decade and a half. The three had been winners in those previous races for governor (Thomson and Nelson), but losers as well (Proxmire and Thomson). During those campaigns, they all must have had some familiarity with the La Farge project. Could any of them imagine how familiar the project would become to them all in the upcoming years?

From a Yuletide Dream

I awoke with this falderall swimming though my mind a couple of weeks back. I had to get it down on paper to get it out of my head. “He’s a strange one”, but sometimes we’re minions of the muse. I hope that you find some little morsel of enjoyment in it.

TIME-SLIDING TO LA FARGE

What startles me awake on this cold winter’s night;

Is it a noise that I hear that fills me with fright?

The din comes from the front; the sounds from the road,

Wagons and sleighs, trucks and cars from all ages pass my abode.

Where do they all go now, this caravan so large?

Son, hop on board; we’re heading to La Farge.

How can I go sir; it’s so very cold and chilly.

There’s straw on the wagon, horsehide throws in the sleigh,

The heater works fine in the Roadmaster; climb in son, don’t be silly.

Clip-clopping down the snowcovered road, pulled by Topsy and Mae,

Bundled in the back seat of the Chevy; the day we will stay.

The Yuletide is upon us, festivities and shopping to do,

So on to La Farge this Saturday, to spend the day through.

The village streets are filled with people; my, what a sight.

Garlands of fir boughs hang from the lights.

Brightly decorated stores are packed to the rafters with goods and wares

Front windows filled with wonders; mouths agape as we stare.

Andrew’s window has sausages, ducks, geese and ham.

But wait – Isn’t that Jennie’s store; puzzled where I am?

She had Variety; amazing puzzles and toys,

Then wasn’t Muriel’s here, too, with gifts for little girls and boys?

Quick up to the Opera House; they’re lighting the candles on the village tree,

As we race up the dark stairs and into the great hall, shouting with glee.

There will be fresh oyster stew and crackers across at the Hotel Ward,

And cracklin’ roast goose and dressing for all at Harris’ Checkerboard.

They’re giving out treats at the theater lobby, over at the Mars,

Santa is there, giving out goodies like apples, peanuts and candy bars.

But He’s in the back of the village truck, there by the bank

Mush brought Santa in the police car, isn’t that Ray or Dick; surely not Hank.

La Farge’s ice rink is frozen; let’s join hands to “crack the whip”,

We can warm by the wood fire; hot chocolate to sip.

Hike up the river; bind blades to our shoes,

There’s always best skating on those Seelyburg sloughs.

There are candies aplenty at Weisner’s, but Harry’s has them, too.

Pete Chase, Casey, Everett, Bun or Lillian; they’ll find us a gift or two.

Let us get sacks of oranges and apples from the groceries in town,

The store clerks are always helpful and smiling; with nary a frown.

The light is now gone; for home I must start,

But from these time-sliding memories, I surely do hate to part.

What’s the matter son; don’t you know where you’re at?

Please mister, please, can you give me a ride out to Jordan Flat?

Mom, my legs do hurt so; why can’t I walk?

Your brothers will carry you; hush now, no more talk.

What startled me awake on this cold winter’s night;

Was it a noise that I heard that filled me with fright?

Merry Christmas to all

May you all make it home for the holidays!

The response to the release of my first book on the story of La Farge continues to amaze me. People from all over the country have contacted me via emails, phone calls, or regular mail. It is so heart-warming to hear from you all. Thanks for your interest in this little history project.

Unfortunately, by the time you read this, we will have sold out of the first printing of three hundred copies. I have another order in to the printers for a couple hundred more, but they will not be here until after the first of the year. When they do arrive, we will have them available locally at the regular retail outlets and the area libraries. If you wish to order a book by mail, send $25 per copy to me at PO Box 202, La Farge, WI 54639.

See you next year!

La Farge History Book Released

My new book about the history of La Farge has now been released. Titled "La Farge: The Story of a Kickapoo River Town - Volume I" the book is for sale at the Visitor Center of the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, the La Farge State Bank, the La Farge Episcope newspaper office, Lawton Memorial Library - La Farge, the Viola Public Library and Brambles Bookstore in Viroqua.

To order the book by mail, send $25 (check or money order) to Brad Steinmetz, PO Box 202, La Farge, WI 54639.

The Sad Demise of Sam Hook

SAMUEL S. HOOK

NOVEMBER 7, 1857

MAY 5, 1917

WE KNOW NOT THE CAUSE OF HIS DEATH

(Epitaph from gravestone in Chapel Hill Cemetery)

Sam Hook, the last merchant in Seelyburg drew his last breath in the early morning hours of May 5, 1917. His death and the suspected foul play that accompanied it haunt the old river hamlet to this day. Was Sam Hook murdered as robbers looted his store? Who was responsible for such a heinous crime?

The flames shooting out of Sam Hook’s store building in Seelyburg were first discovered around four o’clock on that Saturday morning. An alarm was immediately raised and many neighbors and friends rushed to the conflagration. However, the old store building was a mass of flames and beyond any hope to save from destruction. With Sam nowhere to be found in the little hamlet on La Farge’s north side, everyone feared he had perished in the fire. When the flames had subsided an investigation found the store owner’s body in the southwest corner of the building. He had either crawled or been placed under the floorboards and was near the cistern that he used for cooling items for sale in his store.

Foul play was immediately suspected in Sam Hook’s death as the first people to arrive at the scene of the fire had found the front door wide open. Scattered in the front of the store were pieces of money and bunches of shoestrings. It was well known in the area that Sam kept large amounts of money in the store, often tied into bundles with shoestrings. It was unusually cool on that morning and frost covered the ground. Several rods south of the store building, a person’s shoe tracks were visible in the frosty dew leading off Seelyburg’s Main Street towards the west. A bloodhound was brought up from Viola to track the trail, which led north towards the mill, across the dam to the north side of the Kickapoo River and then east back to the Advent (Star) Cemetery. The trail was lost at the cemetery by the first hound, but later in the day another dog was brought in from Richland Center. That dog followed the trail of the first, but then continued on from the cemetery south across the bridge and to a house nearly across from Sam Hook’s store. A man named Clint Rockwell and others occupied this house; when the bloodhound’s baying ended at that location, many citizens of Seelyburg feared the worst. According to the account of the incident in the La Farge Enterprise (5/10/1917), “This place has for some time been known as a rendezvous for people of none too good of a reputation and suspicion at once fell on Rockwell and frequenters of his home.”

Apparently, Hook had previous trouble with Rockwell and others who hung out at his abode. On the night of the fire, the well-liked storeowner had a dispute with Rockwell, which nearly led to fisticuffs and further indicated foul play was involved with the fire and Sam Hook’s death.

The Vernon County District Attorney and Sheriff came to Seelyburg later in the day on that Saturday of the fire. However, after interviewing many of the neighbors and friends of Sam Hook as well as the occupants of the Rockwell house, the county law enforcement officials could not find enough evidence to warrant any arrests being made. At the local level, the investigation did not cease and new evidence and information was gathered. Using that, the La Farge authorities arrested several occupants of the Rockwell house and took them to Viroqua on the following Monday for a hearing. After that session in the county courthouse, two men and a juvenile girl (all names were listed in the Enterprise article) were retained in the county jail in Viroqua. Sadly for the folks left in Seelyburg, after a few days, all of the suspects were released from the county jail and no charges were ever filed in the case.

After the initial outrage over the lack of any prosecution of those suspected in Sam Hook’s death, fear crept into the village. Doors that had never been locked before were now locked at all times. Nightlong vigils with shotgun in hand were kept at some residences in Seelyburg to protect against a fate such had befallen Sam Hook. Shortly after the release from the county jail, many of those implicated in Sam Hook’s death left the Seelyburg area, but others remained.

But the friends and neighbors of Sam Hook knew that a wrong had not been righted. For years after the death of the last storeowner in Seelyburg, they would attest to the fact that Sam had been murdered. One neighbor said, “He was murdered, plain and simple.” Another resident when questioned about the event decades later, said, “ Of course he was murdered, everyone around here knew that.” But if there was such a foul crime committed, no legal justice was ever carried out as a remedy. Yet, perhaps even today that justice for a terrible wrong is still being sought.

The funeral for Sam Hook was held the day after his death, Sunday, May 6 at the Methodist Episcopal Church in La Farge. Sam’s mother, two brothers, two sisters, friends and family laid him to rest on that day in the Chapel Hill Cemetery, south of where Sam had grown up and lived all of his life. The epitaph, which was quoted at the beginning of the Notebook, can still be seen on his headstone in the last row in the back of the cemetery. We Know Not The Cause Of His Death, indicates the remorse over his sudden loss and the agony of never knowing quite what happened, which was felt by the family over Sam’s death.

Even in the silence of the grave, justice perhaps is still being sought. Each spring when Village of La Farge employees return to the Chapel Hill Cemetery for maintenance, invariably they find Sam’s headstone askew from the winter’s frost. Most of the other grave markers at Chapel Hill survive the winter fairly well, but Sam’s always seems to have been moved, as if drawing attention back to that eerie epitaph, We Know Not The Cause Of His Death. It still seems to cry out for some kind of justice.

However, even today that cry for justice from Sam’s grave would be somewhat muffled. Sam certainly didn’t hear the intruder enter his store that night and he probably couldn’t yell out for help when he was accosted and robbed. Over his lifetime, the circumstances of Sam’s life had rarely hindered his progress, but they might have played against him on that fateful night in May so many years ago. For you see, Sam Hook, the last merchant in Seelyburg, was a deaf mute.