La Farge Organizes To Back Dam Project

“Emotions and tempers ran as high as a Kickapoo flash flood when it was learned here last week that Governor Lucey had set the date of April 27 for an intensive review of the Kickapoo Lake Project.” 

Thus began the coverage of the La Farge dam project controversy in the April 22, 1971 issue of the La Farge Enterprise newspaper.  The local weekly was full of news on how the people in the village and surrounding area were organizing to show support for the dam project.  Editor Arnie Widstrand wrote an excellent editorial listing several reasons to support the embattled project.  Jackie Thelen, the Senior Editor of the LHS student newspaper, The Windjammer (published each week in the Enterprise), wrote an editorial also supporting the dam project.  The village newspaper contained a press release from the Kickapoo Valley Association calling on all people in the Valley to support the dam project.  A huge ad in the newspaper shouted out, “SHOW YOUR CONCERN ABOUT THE KICKAPOO LAKE PROJECT”.  A group called “The Citizens For The Kickapoo Area” paid for the advertisement, which called for people to write letters to Governor Patrick Lucey to show support for the dam project.

The reaction to the announcement of the Governor’s “intensive review” of the La Farge dam project created immediate concerns in La Farge, especially among the pro-dam majority.  Within days after the announcement, a group called “The Citizens For The Kickapoo River” (later called “The Citizens For The Kickapoo Area” and eventually shortened to a more manageable “Citizens For The Kickapoo”) was formed to counter the opposition to the La Farge dam and lake project.  Arlen Johnson, who ran the funeral parlor in town, was chosen as the spokesman for the group and Robert Vosen, who sold insurance out of his home office on Bird Street in La Farge, was selected as the chairman of the group.

The new pro-dam group began by organizing an immediate letter-writing campaign that reached out to dam supporters in the Kickapoo Valley and throughout the state and beyond.  Everyone was asked to write a letter to Governor Lucey asking for his support for the project at La Farge.  Within weeks hundreds of pro-dam letters had poured into the Governor’s offices in Madison.  The new group also started to solicit donations for the public relations effort and $1,500 was raised in a matter of days to support the cause.  With the funds, radio and newspaper advertisements were purchased, spreading the message to support the dam project at La Farge.  Organizational meetings were held daily in the village as the pro-dam forces in La Farge continued to mobilize.  Letter writing sessions were held each day and evening to help with people getting the word out to support the dam and lake project.  A lady’s church group held a prayer vigil asking for guidance for elected leaders so they could support the dam and lake project.  School children made signs supporting the project as part of their class assignments and then carried the signs that read “Save The Dam” and “Save Lake La Farge” along La Farge’s Main Street after school.

At one of the first meetings of the La Farge pro-dam group, a surprise visitor was Congressman Vernon Thomson, who restated his firm support for the dam project at La Farge.  Thomson, a Republican from Richland Center, also castigated Governor Lucey for interfering with the project and said it was “callous of the Governor to deny rural America of benefits”.

The La Farge pro-dam group wanted more information from the Governor’s office about the review meeting scheduled for later in the month.  Blake Kellogg, Governor Lucey’s press secretary, spoke to the leaders of the La Farge group several times by telephone and then came to La Farge to meet with them.  He was faced with an angry group of fifty people at the meeting held in the basement community meeting room of the La Farge State Bank.  Kellogg tried to assure the people gathered there, which included all the leaders of the pro-dam group, that the review session would be a fair and open process and all sides would be heard.  He vowed that the review would not be conducted like a “kangaroo court”, that all sides and voices would be heard and that the purpose of the review was to “put the full issues out on the table, so Governor Lucey can see the pros and cons on either side”.  Kellogg, a professional at public relations, smoothed some ruffled feathers in the crowd that day, and left with a much greater appreciation of how important the dam project was to many people in La Farge.

On Saturday night, April 24^th, over 500 people gathered at the school gym in La Farge for a public meeting on the dam project.  Sponsored by the local pro-dam group, the attendees at the meeting were overwhelming in favor of completion of the dam and lake at La Farge.  Fifteen proponents of the dam spoke that night at the meeting and the rhetoric and emotion was heated.  The merits of the dam and lake were praised and the Governor’s interference was condemned.  “Professional panic-peddlers who call themselves ecologists” were vilified for stirring up the controversy.  Another speaker called for a “David and Goliath battle” as the Citizens For The Kickapoo took on the potent nationally financed conservation and environmental groups.  “These so-called environmentalists who don’t have to scratch a living out of these hills have no right to determine the future of these people”, said Arlen Johnson in referring to the anti-dam groups.  As the meeting wound down after several hours, more donations were collected to help finance the pro-dam cause, signatures were collected on petitions and instructions and addresses for writing letters of support for the dam project were distributed.

During that April of 1971, in the few weeks before the Governor’s review meeting, La Farge was a hubbub of various activities to show support for the dam project.  Posters appeared in most of the storefront windows on Main Street businesses.  School children continued to walk the streets of La Farge (sometimes during recess and noon hour of the school day) carrying signs of support and marching for the dam project.  The daily planning meetings often drew representatives from the Corps’ St. Paul office to further explain the merits of the dam and lake project.  After much agitation by the Citizens For The Kickapoo with the Governor’s office, Robert Vosen’s name was added to the list of those allowed to speak at the Governor’s review meeting.  Finally, a La Farge leader would now be able to relate a local perspective at the “intensive review”.

Next time, we will look at how that review session, held in Madison at the state capital, brought together the two opposing sides on the La Farge dam issue.  For the first time, the dam and lake project would be measured with the newly defined parameters of the emerging national environmental movement.  For the pro-dam backers from the Kickapoo Valley, the review session illuminated the landscape of the debate over the federal project.

La Farge Dam Project - An Environmental Movement Incubator

There was a time in the not too distant past when La Farge, that little town in western Wisconsin located on the Kickapoo River, was the epicenter of a national debate on environmental awareness.  For a long time, most of the residents of the community did not realize that they were “front and center” in the discussion of whether a federal flood control project was an enhancement or a degradation to the environment that it was altering.  By the time that the environmental dilemma had played out its course and the dam project on the Kickapoo was stopped, many of the residents of the greater La Farge community were disillusioned with the whole process.  Some reacted with bitterness to the loss of the lake project and struck back in whatever way they could with various forms of protest.  (There will be more on that protest movement later.)

Placing the federal La Farge dam & lake project at the center of the nation’s emerging environmental debate of the early 1970’s should probably be credited to Wisconsin Governor Patrick Lucey.  When he was elected governor of the state in November 1970, Lucey immediately began to look for ways to stop the federal flood control project at La Farge.  In doing so, Lucey was reacting to the concerns about the La Farge project that were raised by the state’s emerging environmental contingent, which was based on the campus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison.  Citing poor water quality in the proposed lake, degradation of the natural environment of the Kickapoo Valley and the loss of rare and endangered plant species, environmentalists based in Madison petitioned Governor-elect Lucey in late 1970 to put a stop to the La Farge project.  Accomplishing that feat was easier said than done.

In looking back at that time in the early 1970’s when the debate on the La Farge dam & lake project often demanded headlines in most daily newspapers in Wisconsin, it is interesting and very important to remember that a federal flood control project like the one at La Farge had never been halted previous to this time.  Indeed, when one views the events in the dam project debate that play out during that time, it is still hard to surmise that the project would ever be stopped in the matter that it was.

Governor Lucey’s administrative team really had no idea how to accomplish the stoppage of a federal project like the one at La Farge – mainly because of the ominous reality that it had never been done before.  They tried to use as a model an earlier attempt to halt a federal dam project in Georgia that had been led by Governor Jimmy Carter as a possible way to attack the La Farge project.  (Ironically, later in this dam story, it would be President Jimmy Carter who would pound in one of the last nails in the coffin of the federal project at La Farge.)  But it is important to remember that the state’s attempt to stop that federal flood control project in Georgia had failed and the dam was built to completion and water backed up behind it.  So using the Georgia attempt as a model had its problems.

Eventually, Governor Lucey called upon the Corps of Engineers to conduct an “Intensive Review” of the La Farge project.  The review would focus on alternatives to the proposed dam and lake on the Kickapoo River.   

And so it was that the La Farge Dam and Lake Project became an incubator of sorts for an emerging national environmental movement.  The “environmentalists” who opposed the project at La Farge would use it as a “petri dish” to create and germinate methods and ways to oppose such federal projects and to protect natural resources.  The Corps of Engineers project was intended to dam up the Kickapoo River at a location just north of La Farge and create a lake that would cover the northern part of the river valley from there to Ontario.

The Kickapoo River project had originated with the dam to be used strictly as a flood control structure, backing up water behind it during times of flooding.  This strategy was developed by a federal study emanating from the great Kickapoo River flood of 1935.  The concept of a flood control plan for the Kickapoo that included a dam structure north of La Farge (originally to be built just north of Rockton) and protective levees for the villages of Soldiers Grove and Gays Mills further down stream was developed by 1940.  However, any actual construction on the project was put on hold for over two decades.  Severe flooding on the river system in the 1950’s brought the federal project back to life.  Later in the mid-1960’s the project was expanded to include a significantly larger dam on the river that would create a 1,800-acre lake with potentially vast recreational and economic benefits for the region.  As part of the expansion, thirteen different recreational areas would be developed around the lake that would range from a drive-in overlook area near the dam structure that created the lake to a fully developed 300-site campground.

When Governor Lucey called for the “Intensive Review” of the project at La Farge to look at alternatives to the dam and lake, he was reviewing a project that had been scrutinized in one form or another for nearly a third of a century.  The Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies had explored options to deal with flooding problems on the Kickapoo River extensively over those years.  But the project had not been looked at through the new lens of reality being focused by the emerging national environmental movement.

The announcement from Madison about the “Intensive Review” of the dam project also radically changed the perspective from La Farge about the project.  That local perspective had already undergone significant changes in the decades before Patrick Lucey was elected governor.  The concept of a flood control dam on the Kickapoo River had been around in one form or another for such a long time, that people of the Valley, and especially those in and around La Farge, grew tired of the continually changing proposals from the federal government.  Eventually after years of “starts and stops” and federal inertia on the project, folks around La Farge thought that the dam project was really never going to happen.

When the Corps of Engineers and various Wisconsin state agencies began to work together on the Kickapoo River project in the 1960’s and came up with a new and vastly expanded vision for flood protection in the Valley, many local people were staggered by the progress.  There was not only a new plan to control flooding on the Kickapoo, but a way and a schedule to make the new plan happen.  Politicians at the local, county, state and federal level were finally aligned to make the proposal work.  All of a sudden, the flood control plan that was never going to happen became a plan that was actually going to become a reality.

So when Governor Lucey called the summit meeting to look at alternatives to the dam at La Farge and possibly stop the project, the reaction from the little village on the Kickapoo was fast and furious.  But more on that next time when we look at that local “drawing of the lines” on the dam project.  Were you for the dam project or against it?  Was there a middle ground to stand on?

An Earth Day Song On The Kickapoo

We are approaching another anniversary of “Earth Day” here in the United States.  Pausing on or near April 22 of each year to reflect on the relationships that people have with where they live, and to conduct activities and hold events to better that relationship has been happening in this country since 1970.  One of the originators of that first Earth Day forty-four years ago was a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson.

            It is said that Senator Nelson helped create that first Earth Day in reaction to a massive oil spill that ravaged the Pacific Coast near Santa Barbara, California in 1969.  With an emerging consciousness by the public about pollution dangers, Nelson sought to push environmental issues onto the national political agenda.  He persuaded Congressman Pete McCloskey to serve as his co-chair for the Earth Day event.  McCloskey, a conservative Republican, served as a political balance with the liberal Democrat Nelson for leadership of the young movement.

            At that first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, a national “teach-in” on the environment was held on college and university campuses across the country.  The messages that were heard that day resonated with Americans everywhere who were worried about things like air and water pollution. With the strong media blitz that accompanied the environmental teach-in, a push was made politically to enact legislation that would address some of the environmental concerns and problems.  By the end of that year, Congress had begun the process to pass landmark legislation to create the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and pass the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts.

            At the same time as the national environmental movement was blooming, the dam project on the Kickapoo River at La Farge was moving toward the construction stage.  Land for the dam project, which was to be constructed just upriver and north of the village, was being purchased by the Corps of Engineers’ land procurement officials based out of Rock Island, Illinois.  By the spring of 1970, the Corps had purchased several family farms along the Kickapoo for the proposed dam project.  Families were moving off from those farms and the buildings on the properties were put up for sale - to be moved or demolished by the buyer.  Corps' engineers dug sample wells and took soil and rock samples on Norris Ridge, where the dam was to be constructed.

            At that particular time in history, few people would realize that a convergence was about to happen with the emerging national environmental movement and the Corps of Engineers’ project on the Kickapoo River.  Gaylord Nelson had been a strong proponent of the flood control project on the Kickapoo, first when he was governor of Wisconsin and then as a senator in Washington D.C.  In the spring of 1970 as those first properties in the La Farge area were being purchased for the dam project, Nelson and the other elected representatives of western Wisconsin were solidly behind the endeavor.  By the following spring, Senator Nelson and many other state politicians would be singing an entirely different tune.

            What changed the lyrics in this little harmonic ditty formed by the new national environmental movement and the dam project at La Farge occurred later in that year of 1970.  For it was the elections that were held in November of that year that would forever change the direction of the dam project on the Kickapoo River.

            When Patrick Lucey was elected governor of Wisconsin in the general election in November 1970, he immediately began to assemble an administration team and cabinet for his state executive department.  One of the goals of Governor-elect Lucey and his team was to stop the dam project at La Farge.  Although Lucey had not campaigned against the dam project at La Farge prior to the election (Indeed, the project had been a non-issue in the run-up to the election with neither Lucey or Jack Olson, the Republican candidate, showing anything but support for completion of the project.), there were ominous signs that opposition to the project, especially from the emerging environmental community, was gathering.

            During the summer and autumn of 1970, many articles about the Kickapoo Valley project had started to appear in the Madison and Milwaukee daily newspapers.  Many of the articles were based on canoe trips taken by the newspaper writers on that section of the Kickapoo that would eventually be covered with the waters of the lake behind the dam to be built at La Farge.  (At that time, canoeing on the Kickapoo was just beginning to take off as a recreational activity in the area.  Few local Kickapoogians were interested in canoeing on the snag and snarl infested Kickapoo at the time, but those people from away found the recreational activity alluring.)  A variety of the writers from the state’s daily newspapers, including well known outdoors writers Steve Hopkins of the Wisconsin State Journal and Bill Stokes of the Milwaukee Sentinel, penned feature articles on the Kickapoo River and the dam project.

            Beginning in late 1970, increasingly the tone of the articles in the state papers began to slant against the dam project at La Farge.  Sporting such headlines as “Mother Nature May Be Evicted” and “Virginal Valley Today, But Tomorrow?” the articles on the Kickapoo Valley dam project focused more and more on the loss of the natural scenic beauty and the “wildness” of the river.  The focus of the media coverage began to shift away from the beneficial flood control, recreational and economic aspects of the dam project and toward the protection of the natural environment of the Kickapoo Valley.  This concern with the environment being shown by many who opposed the La Farge project was emanating from that rebirth of environmental concerns in America that was introduced on that first Earth Day earlier in April.

            On Saturday, April 19^th, “Kickapoo Earth Day 2014” will be held at the Visitor Center of the Kickapoo Valley Reserve.  A wide variety of events and activities are planned throughout the day and evening to celebrate Earth Day.   Some of the events held at the Reserve will feature nationally known speakers on many different topics of environmental interest.  How ironic that this Earth Day event will be hosted on land that was originally purchased for the La Farge Dam & Lake Project.  Dis-harmonic convergence perhaps?

Winter of 2014

Thirty days has September,

April, June and November.

All the rest have thirty-one,

Except in the Winter of 2014,

When January and February

Each had two hundred and forty-two.

And March came in like a Lion,

When it was minus twenty-five on the Kickapoo!

            It has been that kind of a winter around “these parts”.  Cold, cold, cold descended on the “Valley” and hasn’t really loosened its icy fingers as March tries to go out like a lamb. 

January was one of the coldest months on record as the average temperature for the month ranked in the top five or so.  There was a week or so in the middle of the month where that little red string of mercury in the thermometer climbed up toward the freezing point, but for the most part below zero numbers were the rule.  We were introduced to the term “Polar Vortex” as temperatures plunged towards the -30 degree mark and beyond in the first week of the New Year.

They used to call them “Cold Snaps” around here.  I think that the term “Snap” was used to capture the brevity of the occurrence.  But this little “Snap” arrived on the first weekend of the month and didn’t depart until the next.  A little long for a “Snap”, don’t you think?  Besides the record-setting cold, another little “Winter Myth” was shattered during the first month of 2014.

“It can’t snow when the temperature falls below zero”.  Remember that little

 “Oldie, But A Goodie”?  By the way, or “BTW” if you’re used to reading in “Text-Speak”, as part of my exclusive contract that I signed last year with my publisher, I am required to use so many sets of quotation marks in these pithy little scribblings.  If I don’t use them up by the end of the year, I end up getting charged so much for each unused set of quotations.  My editor said that there is apparently a whole bin of the quotation marks ready for the linotype and if they are not used, it gets to be a big storage problem at the publishing house.  Last year, I was charged a “pretty penny” for those unused sets of quotation marks, so now I’m making a “conscious effort” to meet my quota.

            Anyway, back to the “It can’t snow if it’s below zero” myth.  It was totally shattered in January as it snowed all the time when the temp was in the minus category.  Mind you, not a lot of snow each day, just an inch or two – enough so that it had to be cleaned off nearly every day as well. 

It warmed up in the middle of the month and usually snowed a little each day, but by the end of January, we were ensconced in another of those damn “Polar Vortexes” and we had more days when positive numbers above zero were not visible to the frozen naked eye.  Those blasts of cold air from the Arctic covered most of the eastern half of the United States, reaching south to Georgia and Florida where frosty peaches and oranges were common.  But it seemed the “Cold Snaps” always started here in the Midwest and seemed to hang on the longest here.  On several days, the coldest temperatures in the region were centered here near the Kickapoo Valley.  Perhaps this could be another glimmer of excellence for local pride and accomplishment?  I think not!  Besides, February had to be better, didn’t it?

Again, I think not!  It took until the 12^th of the month before the temperature stayed above zero for an entire day.  On Groundhog’s Day, February 2^nd, the Kickapoo Valley’s groundhog – “Doonie”, which lives in a secluded hollow near the Vernon-Crawford County lines, was frozen in his burrow.  Doonie did not show on that day for the annual forecast about an early spring, but there was a notice posted in the next week’s edition of the “Soldiers Grove Surprizer” newspaper that the end of winter, kind of like Doonie, was no where to be seen.

It warmed some in the middle of February, but that also meant some snow just about every day and more shoveling.  Boy, my wife’s back was really getting sore from all that shoveling.  It warmed even more and rained on the 20^th of the month.  There was thunder and lightning in that rainstorm and the first thunder of the year always means something significant in the “Old Timers Weather Calendar”.  I started checking around with some of the “Old Timers” about what that first thunder of the year meant.  But they were all sick of talking about winter weather and that I could “Go mind my own business”.

It turned really cold again by the end of February and kept snowing a little every day.  But it is a short month and when March appeared, “Hope Sprung Eternal” for spring to spring upon us.  It was minus twenty-something here on Bear Creek on that first morning of March after Groundhog Day.  “Pogo” gave it up the next day.  The “Winter of 2014” had finally got to him.

“Pogo The Possum” had been hanging around our place all winter.  We had trimmed some bushes and trees in the fall and took the trimmings and made a little brush pile to the west of the house.  I was intending to burn the pile before winter set in, but didn’t get that job done either.  Pogo found the little pile of brush and limbs pleasing to his housing needs for the winter and moved in.  He should have picked a more substantial home for this winter.

  On the few warm days of the winter, Pogo would come out of his lair and amble around the property looking for food.  He would often come up on the deck to sample the birdseed strewn around there by the “Little Missus”.  I tried to run Pogo off the deck early in the winter, mainly because he was a “Prolific Pooper”.  Interestingly, he didn’t “play possum” when I approached with a broom, but instead whirled around and flashed his yellow fangs.  I stopped my attack and Pogo scurried under the water bubbler stored on the corner of the deck.  I left him alone after that little skirmish.

After those several days of brutally cold temperatures in early March, Pogo was back on the deck again.  But things were not right as he could barely walk.  On close observation, we could see that his feet and nose had been badly frozen.  Pogo took one last portion of birdseed, deposited one last poop in front of the deck door and crawled under the water bubbler.  We could see him from our bedroom window.  After several days of non-movement, we surmised that Pogo had moved onto “Opossum Heaven in The Sky”.  Eventually, I scooped up the little critter’s remains in a snow shovel and deposited them in the swamp down by the ponds for final decomposition. 

Pogo just couldn’t make it through the “Winter of 2014”.

PS – After submitting this for publication, I was informed by the editorial supervising board that I had exceeded my “normal quotation marks usage” and would have to pay an “Excess quotation marks penalty fee”.  Oh my, will this winter never end?