Dave Engel River City Memoirs $13.95 = -- ------------ -----------=---=-:--c--··- ~ --·---------------------~ III 1984 --------------- --•----- ------- -- - Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 85-050926 . ISBN: 0-910122-79-2 ©1985 Dave Engel Printed on Published by the Consolidated Enamel South Wood County _ Coated Printing Papers Productolith Dull, Basis 70 Historical Corp. Cover: Centura Antiqua Embossed 540 3rd Street South Sponsored in part by Wisconsin Rapids, Consolidated Papers Foundation, Inc. Wisconsin 54494 Wisconsin Rapids ·RCM III .. • Cover: 1899 fire at Rablin & Robb foundry, 1st Street North Standard Atlas of Wood County 6 Grand Rapids 8 Centralia Dam 12 The Wakely House 16 Point Basse 18 Granma 20 Swallow Rock 22 Nekoosa 24 Grand Rapids Street Railroad 30 Restoring the Mansion 32 Plumed Knights 34 T.E.Nash 36 Shanagolden 38 The Lost Marsh 40 Hog Island 42 Babcock 44 Pittsville 46 Vesper 48 Rudolph 50 Saratoga 52 Arpin 54 Skunk Hill 58 McCutcheon 64 Contents River City CCXXV 66 The Bridge 68 The Pinch of Unrighteousness 70 Grand Avenue 72 Wood County Telephone 74 Immanuel Lutheran 76 John Edwards High 78 Architecture 80 five & dime 86 Lincoln's Head 88 Brave Boys 90 Nixon 92 D-Day 94 Milk Strike 96 King of Fools 98 Ottumwa 100 Grim 102 Betty Boop 104 Summer Visitors 106 A Winter Day 108 Photos by Claflin 110 Index 114 Bibliography 119 River City Memoirs Volume III Contents transcendental history:· a continuing series in the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune 6 .5 4, 7 .8 8 19 R.3.B., l WOOD COUNTY G' j t j WISCONSIN 1928 r t.4,E. R:6B Grand Rapids Like a woman, or any awesome boat as far as Kilbourn with some natural force, our Wisconsin in a sol­ boys, and camped on the banks. I stice season radiates beauty and went up the river above Biron and comfort. Yet in the period of equinox, fished and camped." the river can knock a guy around Above Biron, said Brazeau, there pretty good. were shallow rapids called Crooked That whimsy has provoked govern­ Drive, which were bad enough but mental attention. In order to prove not as bad as those below. At Biron the Wisconsin a navigable stream, was a sawmill and a dam with slides the Federal Power Commission held to let the rafts through and rocky rap­ a hearing in 1930. Power companies ids below it. "Shortly below Biron with dams on the river brought wit­ you came to what is known as the nesses, long familiar with -the wiles eddy. Between there and Big Island, of the Wisconsin, to maintain she rafts laid up after going through the could not now nor ever be civilized. Biron dam to repair the pieces. There Included was testimony by Theodore was always some grub or something W. Brazeau (1873-1965), the noted that got loose, or something broke, attorney. "I was born in Wisconsin and then they would gig back. They Rapids, which was then Grand Rap­ had what they called gigging cars. ids," said Brazeau, "a place I think The old lumber jacks kind ofliked the then of about 800 inhabitants, with little boys and let us ride in the gigs three or four saw mills; and the prin­ into Biron. Gigs generally had three cipal industry was lumbering." seats, and the men sat in those seats Brazeau said he learned at an early and went up to take the next piece age to swim in the river and spent all down." his boyhood along her banks, riding Below Biron awaited the "worst on rafts over the rapids when the piece of rapids that I knew anything . - j a.cks would let him stay on, walking about," said Brazeau, referring of on the log jams, watching men drive course to the great, granite, "grand logs over the rapids, watching them rapids." raft and going on the rafts when they "The stream was tortuous and the laid up, to get pieces of prune or dried rocks were rugged; impossible to nav­ apple pie, swimming off the rafts, rid­ igate, or even go over with a raft ing logs, and entering 4th of July log­ without artificial help so they built rolling contests. "I fished all along little wing dams. There was a couple the river when I was old enough to of brush dams that threw the water carry a fishline in my pocket, and into a narrow channel, and there was turned over the stones to get th under another place where they had a sort bugs, and fished for bass, suckers in of crib dam." season. I went down the river in a Photographs: The Camera's Story of Raftsman's Life on the Wisconsin (1886), by H.H. Bennett. 8 I Brazeau said the rafts were taken there was also a dam. "You went through the channels at "German through there on a slide with fingers," Rock" at high water. "In low water it he said. "One time when the slide got was impossible and they took them out of repair some way, they blew a over then with the wing dams and the hole in the dam, and turned the chan- . chutes. These chutes were arranged nel to go through there." with logs laid side by side, extending At Nekoosa was Whitney Rapids. down a couple of hundred feet. On the Below Nekoosa, what was known as end of those logs were fingers. Those the Bayous. There, "they struck sand fingers were like the fingers of a hand bars all through and in ordinary or and they were loose, so that they could low water you could not get a row boat float up and down with the water." through there without getting out and After lumber rafters got below the pulling it off or taking your oar out main rapids, said Brazeau, they and pushing off the sand bars." generally pulled in at the bridge here "When we got down to Kilbourn and laid up. Sometimes, while tied up, then we had a Dells to run," said Bra­ the water would "get away" from them zeau, "which is a narrow tortuous and they would have to wait weeks course, and many great fleets broke up "for water to get below them." on it, many men drowned and a great "Then we would swim off of those many men drowned at Wisconsin rafts, eat off the cook shanty, and Rapids, in log driving and rafting." have a good time," he said. To conclude his statement to the Just below the bridge was N eeves power commission, Brazeau said, Island and a series of bad rapids. "The "There has been no carrying of goods rocks were not as high, but when you up and down the Wisconsin River. The didn't have a good stage of water you only kind of traffic I ever saw, and couldn't make it over there at all be­ that was one way, was lumber, logs ca use the rocks were almost and rafts. That was difficult, hazard­ continuous. ous, expensive, great loss of the pro­ Brazeau said there was a bad stretch duct, both oflogs and lumber. As soon at Hurleytown, on the south side, and as they could find another way of car­ a dam of some kind. At Port Edwards, rying it, they quit." The smallest component of lumber. of a Wisconsin River lumber Six or seven cribs, each raft was a "crib" of planks containing about 4,000 pinned together with "grub board feet of lumber, would stakes"-stout pegs fash­ then be fastened in tandem ioned from small trees. to form a "rapids piece." Planks were laid across the Two or three such pieces crib, which was then filled together comprised a raft. with 16 alternating courses 10 .-- The Centralia Dam "Making the first trip over the new dam at half million feet of W.H. Cochran's lumber Centralia," reminisced Gustave Giese years waited above it in rafts. A few days earlier, later, "the crew was not feeling any too sus­ three trial rapids pieces had been successfully ceptible to dry jokes." sent over. The dam had been built the previous season "The water is high and strong," wrote the (1887) after the lumber rafts had gone down. Enterprise, "and while the experiment shows It was much higher than the dangerous Clin­ that the slide has been properly constructed, ton dam at Port Edwards and, said Giese, it requires the cool judgment and knowledge "there was no talk whatever among the men of a thorough riverman to steer a heavy raft for no one had any idea of what we were up in safety over the raging waters of the old against." ·Wisconsin, where they rush through a nar­ With Giese in 1888, the Wisconsin's last row passage at the rate of forty miles an rafting season, on the trial trip over the Cen­ hour." tralia dam were Jack Claire, Joe Whitney, "Another fleet oflumber rafted last fall, the Frank Brown, Ed Wheelan, Hans Halver­ property of Mr. J. Farrish," continued the sonn, Bill Madline, dirty Jack Mullen, George Enterprise, "will also have to be run over the Bennett of Baraboo and Charles Stainbrook. South Centralia Dam. We hope that it will The first four were old river captains, said meet with as good success as that of Mr. Giese, along to satisfy their curiosity. The Cochran." second four were new men who had never The rival Wood County Reporter of Grand been down the river before. Two of them quit Rapids, across the river from the Enterprise, for good after one trip.