WISCONSIN 2izine of ^^"^^ory Aide Leopoid Foundation

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ldo Leopold shaped the thinking of millions through the publication of A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There, A which came out in 1949 and is often cited as the century's most influential conservation book. Sib­ lings Bob and Janet SUbemagel, however, who grew up in the 1960s and '70s on a farm near the town of Riley in southwestern Dane County, absorbed Leopold's influence direcdy through the land itself. Li their story for this issue, they recount the histoiy of the Riley Game Cooperative and reveal the impact of Leopold's work on their lives.

m State Historian Michael E. Stevens Editor J. Kent Calder Managing Editor Diane T. Drexler Associate Editor Margaret T. Dwyer Production Manager Deborah T. Johnson Reviews Editor Masarah Van Eyck Research and Editorial Assistants Joel Heiman, John Nondorf David Waskowski, John Zimm Designer Kenneth A. Miller

THE WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY, published Conservation Pioneers 2 quarterly, is one of the many benefits of membership in the Wisconsin Historical Society. Individual memberships are Jens Jensen and the Friends of $37.50 per year; senior citizen individual, $27.50; family, Our Native Landscape $47.50; senior citizen family, $37.50; institutional, $55; sup­ porting, $100; sustaining, $250; patron, $500; life (one per­ By William H. Tishler son), $1,000. To receive the Wisconsin l^agazine of History, join the and Erik M. Ghenoiu Society! To join or to give a gift membership, send a check to Membership, Wisconsin Historical Society, 816 State Street, Madison, Wl 53706-1482, or call the Membership Expanding Waters 16 Office at 888-748-7479. You can also join via e-mail, [email protected], or at the Society's Web site, How Wisconsin Became the Wellspring www.wisconsinhistory.org (click on "Become a Member"). of a New Scientific Field The WMH has been published quarterly since 1917 by the Wisconsin Historical Society (Phone 608-264-6400). By Scott Spoolman Copyright © 2003 by the State Historical Society of Wiscon­ sin. Permission to quote or otherwise reproduce portions of this copyrighted work may be sought in writing from the pub­ lisher at the address above. Communication, inquiries, and MacQuarrie and Leopold o(J manuscript submissions may also be addressed to An excerpt fiom Gordon MacQu^rie: [email protected]. Information about the magazine, including contributor's guidelines, sample articles, and an The Story of an Old Duck Hunter index of volume 84 can also be found at the Society's Web site by following the "Publications" link from the home page. By Keith Growley Photographs identified with PH, WHi, or WHS are from the Society's collections; address inquiries about such pho­ tos to the Visual Materials Archivist, 816 State Street, Madi­ Tracking Aldo Leopold 34 son, Wl 53706-1482. Many WHS photos are available through the Wisconsin Historical Images digital service through Riley's Farmland available on the Web site. (From the home page, click By Boh Silbernagel and Janet Silbernagel "Archives.") The Wisconsin Historical Society does not assume responsibility for statements made by contributors. ISSN 0043-6543. Periodicals postage paid at Madison, Wl 53706- Uncovering the Story of 46 1482. Back issues, if available, are $10 plus postage (888- 748-7479). Microfilmed copies are available through Fort Blue Mounds University Microfilms, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml By Robert A. Birmingham 48106. On the front cover: The view from the south of the Trout Editors' Choice 58 Lake area In northern Vilas County. (Carl Bowser photo) Top right photo: Gibralter Rock, Columbia County. ^^^ Letters from Our Readers 61 (William H. Tishler photo) Back Matters 64

VOLUME 86, NUMBER 4 / SUMMER 2003 ^^^A^^

WHS Archives Name File JENS JENSEN AND

HS.^'-.-i --A- Courlesy of Ihe aulhor

By William H. Tishler and Erik M Ghenoiu

istorians of Amencan wilderness conservation that the Friends of Our Native Landscape embodied the would do well to remember the name "Friends preservation philosophy of its founder^ the visionary land­ of Our Native Landscape," First established in scape architectjensjensen,jensen^s ideas about people^s rela­ 191 8j the Friends was one of the earliest pri­ tionship to nature ofTered an original^ highly valuable lesson vatHe oi^anizations dedicated to conservation and the first of appreciation that still resonates today. His legacy has such significant organization active in the Midwest, The enhanced the lives of not just Wisconsin residents^ but count­ Friends counted among their ranks some of the country^s less other Americans,' foremost conservationists (Stephen Mather^ the first director Jensjensen was born to an affluent family in southern of the National Park Service^ and Aldo Leopold^ father of Denmark in 1860 and emigrated to the United States in wildlife ecology and distinguished professor at the University 1884^ apparently to escape his family^s disapproval of his of Wisconsin)j writers (Vachel Lindsay and Wisconsin native fiancee^ Anne Marie Hansen, The couple settled in Chicago Hamlin Garland^ and philanthropists (Henry Ford and in 1886j and within a few years Jensen worked his way up Gussie Rosenwald), The Friends were also responsible for a from laborer to a position of authority within the Chicago great deal of direct conservation work. In Wisconsin alone^ West Parks District^ where he served as a park superintendent from their first major project^ the Richmond Park ofthe Rock until 1900, During these first fourteen years that he worked of Gibraltar^ to their last^ the Toft Point natural area in Door for the city^ Jensen staked out a position for himself in the new County^ they had a hand in dozens of parks^ educational pro- profession of landscape architecture^ learning on the job how gramSj the development of rural planning^ highway beautifi- to transform vacant spaces into parks and gardens. He also cation^ and forty years of environmental legislation. Perhaps made many friends among the architectural^ literary^ and the most important of their accomplishments^ however^ was wealthy elite of Chicago society^ which helped him gain com­ missions when he moved into private practice for five years. L£fi: Jens Jensen sought and embraced the drama that life and In 1905 he returned to the West Parks District as superin­ nature had to offer Eighty-three years of an extraordinary life are tendent and landscape architect^ a position he held for the capturedin this photo, taken in 1943 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

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H. B. Chaffee The Hetch Hetchy Valley before the dam. The dispute that arose over the building ofthe darn that ultimately flooded this valley in Yosemite National Park revealed two conflicting schools of thought about protecting nature: conservation and preservation. next fifteen years. By 1910 Jensen had become a public figure Louis Agassiz, Charles Darwin, andjohn James Audubon. in Chicago, a tall, dashing European loudly extolling the The indefatigable John Muir, who spent his boyhood in Wis­ virtues of outdoor excursions and the importance ofthe nat­ consin, accelerated the growth of conservation, bringing ural landscape. But just as he began to enter the fray ofthe about the foundation of Yosemite National Park in California conservation movement, that movement was in the midst of in 1890 and founding the Sierra Club the following year. feeling its first major crisis of self-definition. In this uncertain Subsequently, a number of governmental initiatives and a moment,Jensen would establish a new and distinctive justifi­ handful of private groups arose in the midst ofthe progressive cation for the preservation ofthe natural environment. enthusiasm of Theodore Roosevelt and his administration. In In 1913 the American conservation movement was com­ 1908 Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, head of the National ing through a painful adolescence. Since the middle of the Forest Service, organized a major conference on conservation nineteenth century, people had realized that their environ­ at the White House, which was attended by Charles R. Van ment could no longer be taken for granted. During the indus­ Hise, president ofthe University ofWisconsin and one ofthe trial revolution, catastrophic landscape change had become originators of the Wisconsin Idea. Progressive conservation increasingly rapid and widespread. Nowhere was this more was at its peak, but a major division was about to come. apparent than in the United States, and it was here that the Up to this point, conservationists had been united in their earliest and most important conservation efforts took place: response to the loss of wilderness and wildlife. This reac­ Yellowstone National Park established in areas of Idaho, tionary confederacy had never formed a clear consensus on Montana, and Wyoming in 1872, and the Adirondack Forest the philosophical underpinnings of saving the wilderness. The Preserve set aside by the state of New York in 1885. These famous dispute over the construction of a dam in the Hetch early days saw the first rise of forestry and other environmen­ Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park revealed that there tal disciplines that branched out ofthe work of naturalists like were two conflictincf schools of thought in the fledcfling' move-

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Jensen's interest in Wisconsin ti/ould lead him north after the end of his successful career in Chicago's park system. One of his many public programs^ the Prairie Cluh^ was founded in 1911^ the same -year Jensen submitted this landscape plan for Washington Park in Racine. ment: conservation on one side, and preservation on the twentieth century. One of the most colorful and most influ­ other. The conservationists, led by Pinchot, fevored the ential, yet overlooked of these philosophies was formed by responsible treatment of wilderness as an economic and Jensjensen, He realized this vision in 1913 by founding the recreational resource, to be administered for the public good. Friends of Our Native Landscape, the first midwestern organ­ The preservationists, led by Muir, regarded wilderness as a ization dedicated to protecting the natural environment. sacred entity, to be left untouched. From 1908 to 1913 the By I9I3 Jensjensen had risen to the top of his field and was dispute over Hetch Hetchy polarized these camps, creating a a respected figure in Chicago society, but his greatest accom­ rift in wilderness protection that has lasted to the present plishments were still ahead of him. As a landscape architect, day,^ Jensen would design an impressive array of public parks and pri­ vate estates in the Midwest and beyond- He had just prepared his capsule version ofthe early history ofthe nature plans for Garfield and Humboldt Parks, key components of protection movement presents a familiar dichotomy Chicago's extensive West Park System and was working on Tof preservation versus conservation. But there were many commissions for the wealthy elite of Chicago- He was other ideas about people's relation to nature and other striking in appearance, six feet tall with a shock of white hair and philosophies about preserving wilderness during the early full white mustache- A flamboyant figure, he preferred tweeds or

SUMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY white suits highlighted with a colorful silk scarf around his neck so popular that in 1911 a new organization^ the Prairie Club^ fastened with a sea-wo If ring. His appearance^ combined with was organized to administer them,^ Through these stages^ his strong opinions^ charismatic personality^ powerful oratory^ Jensen's attentions shifted from creating urban parks to fostering and reputation for integrity^ inspired passion in others and won a more personal^ individual appreciation of the natural land­ many friends and adherents to his beliefs. He was often called scape,^ upon to address civic and conservation groups and take part in In both pursuits Jensen's primary tenet was always that envi­ ceremonies dedicating a variety of conservation accomplish­ ronment engenders human character^ that the places where we ments. As his fame crested ever higher Jensen continued exper­ live help determine who we are. In his autobiography^ Siftings^ imenting with new ideas in his landscape designs. His written in 193 9 Jensen made his fundamental beliefs clear: professional use of native plants and the major role that he played in the development ofthe Prairie School of landscape Through generSstions ofevohjtion^ our n3£ve l3Jidsc3.pe becomes 3. architecture were accompanied by a very active civic life cen­ p3.rt ofus, 3.nd out of this we ni37f£orni £tting compositions for our tered on promoting a greater appreciation of the region's natu­ peoples In this little world is found all tha^t mia^kes for a, full life, Here ral landscape. Like others in the Prairie School movement^ we lea^rn toler3.nce and ch3.rit3.}^eness, pe3.ce snd friendlinesSs Jensen sought to combine and complement the natural environ­ ment with the private and public spaces of human beings. This As Jensen explained further in this work^ the landscape was included dwellings^ work places^ and recreational places^ most notably parks. In 1908^ through his involvement in the Chicago even more important to forming character than descent or Pla)^round Association (of which he was a founder)^ he helped genetics: organize the Saturday Afternoon Walking Trips to important natural areas beyond the confines ofthe city. These walks were Two brothers miigrste to America fromi Scotlands One settles in New Engh^nd 3.nd the other one in the G3.rohn3Js. Their descen-

WiIliam Tishler The Indiana Dunes, southwest of Chicago an the southern shore of Lake Michigan, was site of the first preservation battle waged by the the Friends (f Our Native Landscape after the group's founding in Illinois in 1913

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dants can not be recognized as coming from the same stock. ^

Jensen's philosophy included a strong regional focus, and in his book he described his belief that every type of landscape had a distinct soul and that the spirit of that soul was imparted upon the landscape's inhabi­ tants. This deeply held conviction provided the moral impetus for his public park designs, as he described:

The human mind is not influenced hy excur- sions, nor by bits of this and a little of that. We are molded into a people by the thing we live with day after day. When the city- dweller becomes contented to live in a desert of brick and mortar, then begins the real danger.

This ideology is fundamentally different from both Muir's preservation transcenden­ WH"; Archives Wl"; l/ss QF bu- 33 fulder talism and Pinchot's resource-use conserva­ The Wisconsin chapter of the Friends VMS formed in February of 1920, tion. All three are based on very old ideas, and this gathering at Holy Hill is a virtual Who's Who of the group, but where preservation and conservation in (from left to right): Wisconsin Archaeological Society Secretary Charles E. Brown; Father Bahrrneister; Friends president and Wisconsin Secretary their modern forms derive from Ralph of State J. S. Donald; a priest; and Franz Aust, Friends secretary, UW Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau professor of landscape architecture, and principal founder ofthe group. on the one hand and George Perkins Marsh on the other, Jensen's native landscapism is a development of divine completely separate from worldly affairs. Jensen, too, the ideas of A. W. N. Pugin andjohn Ruskin, middle-nine­ saw God's hand in nature, but his nature was a constant quiet teenth-century contemporaries of Marsh and Thoreau. In his lesson, celebrating the ordinary. Jensen wanted to infuse peo­ Contrasts, Pugin demonstrated the ways in which the replace­ ple's daily lives with their native landscape, not to keep the ment ofthe English medieval landscape by the modern land­ two purely distinct. In the practice of wilderness preservation, scape of industry had impoverished the quality of daily life in these ideologies necessarily came into conflict. England. In his many works, Ruskin established that archi­ "In the spring of 1913 Mr. Jensjensen invited a group of tecture and landscape are the material embodiment of histo­ men and women to attend a luncheon on April 7th for the ry and revealed how regional landscape can give rise to a purpose of discussing a conservation policy to protect tracts of common national identity. By 1913 newer versions of these Illinois landscapes of historic and scenic value to the people of ideas were being popularized in America by writers such as the state." Ellen Churchill Semple, whose work and ideas were discussed So begins the first yearbook of the Friends of Our Native by Chicago's Geographic Society, a group with whichjensen Landscape. Flush with professional success and the tremen­ had a longtime involvement.^ dous popularity of his Prairie Club, Jensen was ready for It is easy to see how Jensen's position differs from simple action. He invited nineteen of his closest and most influential conservation, since its essential factors—economic value and friends, including the writer Hamlin Garland, the prominent resource sustain ability—did not arouse his interest. It can be ecologist Henry Cowles, conservation advocate Gussie more difficult to distinguish his ideas from Muir's ethic of Rosenwald (wife ofthe Sears & Roebuck magnate, Julius), the preservation. Muir thought of nature as a temple that tran­ geographer J. Paul Goode, and Stephen Mather. They scended the ordinary existence of humans, a conduit of the appointed a committee to write a constitution and by-laws.

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WHS Archives (CS9)S482 The Wisconsin Friends achieved a glorious success in conserving the native landscape in 1927 vAen they dedicated Richmond Memorial Park ofthe Rock of Gibraltar, and Jensen himself performed the "con­ secration sevAces."

and byjune 14, 1913, the group held its first annual meeting Americas, beginning with an Indian and ending with "a in the state's only white pine forest near Oregon, Illinois, a Friend." community twenty miles southwest of Rockford. The programmatic theatricality of the Friends' meetings By the time of that meeting the ranks ofthe Friends had was an innovation typical ofjensen's zealous enthusiasm and risen to about two hundred. After luncheon they were enter­ very much in keeping with his native landscape ideal. The tained with a poetry reading from Vachel Lindsay (not yet stone "council rings," often included injensen's designs, were catapulted to fame by Poetry magazine, whose editor, Harri­ intended to accommodate meetings like those ofthe Friends. et Monroe, was one ofthe five directors ofthe Friends) and The group's mission was to mythologize landscape, to weave the performance of a masque written especially for the occa­ together identity and the native landscape into what Jensen sion by noted playwright Kenneth Sawyer Goodman, for regarded as their proper relationship. In 1919 and again in whom the Goodman Theater in Chicago was to be named in 1921 the Friends organized exhibitions of landscape paintings 1925. This masque, which would become a standard at and drawings at the Chicago Art Institute, whose Bulletin Friends' meetings for many years, was a ripe piece of melo­ describes the events as the following: "Their exhibition serves drama showing the stages of landscape appreciation in the two ends: to emphasize the importance and value of their

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organizing a 1917 dunes pageant attended by an estimated fifty thousand people.^ In 1926 this tireless advocacy paid off, and part of the dunes were set aside as a state park. In the meantime, the Friends had formed an advisory committee headed byjensen to help develop a state park system for Illinois, In 1921 the Friends pubHshed its findings in The Proposed Park Areas in the State of Illinois: Clearing A Report with Recommendations. This extremely successful work was followed eleven years later by the less ambitious Road- side Planting and Development, also the work of a committee headed by Jensen, While working on the park report, Jensen reached the peak of his command of the Chicago park system, and in a sense of the whole native landscape of Illinois; his atten­ tions were slowly drawn away from Illinois, In 1920 the new IlHnois governor, Leonard SmaU, aboHshed Jensen's position after the landscape architect made clear his disdain for political meddHng, His connec­ tions to Illinois had been growing fewer, and he was becoming increasingly involved with Wisconsin, At the end of the teens, Jensen had made the first of many pilgrimages to Wisconsin's Door Peninsula, where he began WHS Archives M93-152 box 1 folder 3 purchasing parcels of land that would In this undated letter, Jens Jensen writes from The Clearing, his home become The Clearing, his private retreat in in Door County, to Franz Aust, commenting on both the Illinois and Wisconsin chapters of the Friends. As Jensen's influence on the group EUison Bay, Wisconsin would prove to be began to wane in the 1930s, his criticism ofthe Friends began fertUe ground both for Jensen and for the to grow. most enduring branch of the Friends of Our work and to reveal the painter as the interpreter ofthe Amer­ Native Landscape, ican landscape."^ The Friends was also an active preservation organization, fin 1920 Chicago was the metropoHs of the Midwest, and it was not long before it faced its first major battle. The Madison was its model city,^ The eUte of Madison fol­ Indiana Dunes, near Chicago on the southern shore of Lake Ilowe d the example of the benevolent high society of Michigan, had been the site of the first Saturday Afternoon Boston, dedicating much of their wealth toward improving Walking Trip and was the spiritual home ofthe Prairie Club. their city's civic life. The Madison Park and Pleasure Drive Jensen essentially saw the dunes as an extension of his Chica­ Association (MPPDA), founded by John Olin in 1894, was a go park system, a true native landscape within easy reach of major branch of this benevolence, creating most of Madison's nature-starved city dwellers. Jensen could not convince the early parks. With the help of Charles Van Hise, OHn succeed­ University of Chicago, or his former cHent, automobile mogul ed in bringing the briUiant landscape architect and city planner Henry Ford, to purchase the Dunes, nor could Friends co- John Nolen to Madison, Nolen's visit quickly bore two fruits: founder Stephen Mather, as director of the newly created the 1910 plan for Madison—only a year after Daniel Burn- National Park Service, convince the U.S. Congress to pur­ ham's famous plan of Chicago—and the 1909 report, State chase it either. The Prairie Club took up the gauntlet next, Parks for Wisconsin, which anticipated the Friends' report for

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Illinois by more than a decade. Although a city of fewer than 25,000 inhabitants, Madison was a hotbed for planning ideas. It was a natural magnet for Jensen because its progressive WISCONSIN piJ^oTj^cf; ONi_y ideals led to important commis­ To £)X-Gr!N\/tTH sions for several prominent landscape architects. CoCKTAlU Since the early teens Jensen had tried to convince Van Hise TH£.XoAt)T to institute a program in land­ scape architecture at the Uni­ •Putddin^ "Potato versity of Wisconsin. In 1915 WHSArchivesWIS Mss QF box 34 folder 1

such a professorship went to /. S. Donald served as President Franz Aust, a friend ofjensen's ofthe Wisconsin Friends from its and a member of the Prairie K-O-tinE. Co. Celery-Ccvbboi^e formation in 1921 until his death L a-i-j J -o^--L

eighteen of his disciples, much WIS MSS QF box 33 folder 3 the Aztalan historic site. The Uke the group that founded the The Friends insisted that the food at their annual celebrations be Wisconsin Friends maintained just as "native" as possible, so this menu from an annual dinner original chapter. Thus, the Wis- this breakneck pace for a num­ announces "Wisconsin Products Only. " consin chapter was born. ber of years, instituting many Aust became the oi^anization's secretary, a post that he advances in Wisconsin's park and preservation poUcy. By 1923 held until his retirement from the university in 1942. The pres­ the Friends had 102 paid family memberships representing a ident ofthe new group was John S. Donald, Wisconsin's Sec­ total of about 240 members, according to that year's annual retary of State, who remained Friends president until his death report by Aust. in 1933. The organization's initial board of directors was com­ The group complemented its legislative activism with a posed of Wisconsin's leading citizens of 1920: Governor John thorough public awareness campaign. Friends always publi­ J. Blaine; Michael Olbrich, president ofthe MPPDA; Charles cized their meetings, which were often held at prospective E. Brown, secretary ofthe State Archaeological Society; and E. parks and endangered places. These outings, with their picnic A. Birge, president ofthe University ofWisconsin. With such luncheons and informative lectures, garnered considerable august credentials, the Wisconsin Friends were ready to spring local interest and often resulted in necessary conservation into action. action and more sensitive landscape management activities. A report entitied "Activities ofthe Society during the Year This was an idea they adapted from the Illinois chapter, and it 1921" lists many accomplishments for the fledgUng group, generated considerable pubUc interest in their projects and such as sending two delegates to the National Parks Congress, nativism. A 1923 meeting ofthe two states' chapters in Ore­ meetings with the Illinois chapter, and sponsoring four bills in gon, lUinois, was attended by nearly two thousand people, far the state assembly. These bUls were to preserve eight thousand more than the combined membership ofthe two groups. The

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WHS Archives WHi(X3)53S77 In April 1949 Jensen, always young at heart, joined in the fun at Madison's Glentuood Park.

Friends also maintained the lUinois chapter's tradition of ally owned. The massive rock formation near Lodi, common­ involving respected cultural figures by giving an honorary ly known as the Rock of Gibraltar, in Columbia County was membership to Jensen's old friend and coUaborator Frank deeded to the Friends by Gilbert Richmond on the condition Lloyd Wright. Wright's sister, Jane Porter, eventually became that it be preserved as a park dedicated to his forebears, whose one ofthe group's directors (1940-1949), and the Friends often pioneer homestead was located nearby. In order to take pos­ met at her home at Taliesin as weU as at Jensen's home. The session of a parcel of land the Wisconsin Friends had to incor­ Clearing, in Door County. porate. This, according to their articles of incorporation, Several other ideas were original to the Wisconsin group. enabled them to "secure and preserve examples ofthe native One of these was Aust's publication. Our Nadve Landscape, landscape" in accordance with the organization's purpose. The which became the newsletter of the whole oi^anization in its incorporation was duly filed, and on October 29, 1927, the fifth volume." The first issue had short articles byjensen, Aust, Friends dedicated the Richmond Memorial Park ofthe Rock Genevieve Gillette (founder of the Michigan chapter), and a of Gibraltar. The dedication ceremony was very theatrical, Puginesque article by Glenn Frank, who in 1925 had succeed­ with many speakers and Jensen himself performing the penul­ ed Birge as the President ofthe University ofWisconsin. The timate "consecration services." The ceremony was a great suc­ Friends also sponsored a "Regional and Rural Planning Con­ cess, and the new park received glowing articles in newspapers ference" in Madison in 1930 and again in 1934. Using aU these throughout Wisconsin. It was, perhaps, the crowning moment techniques, the group became a leading force for conservation ofthe group's early years. action and landscape appreciation. By 1934 the Wisconsin Friends were slowing down, and In 1927 the Wisconsin Friends created what would become their aging membership needed a boost. Their presidentjohn their emblematic park, the only one that they themselves actu­ Donald was dead, and his pet project, the Forest of Fame in

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Courle&y of Ihe aulhor This contemporary lAew of Toffs Point bears vAtness to the final success ofthe Friends of Our Native Landscape

Mount Vernoiij fell into the care ofthe Friends, Started on Jensen's ties to Madison, At this time he focused his preserva­ Arbor Day in 1 916^ this unusual park contained a variety of tion efforts primarily on fighting encroaching commercialism trees grown from seeds and transplants from the homes of pres- on the Door peninsula. identSj governors^ and other distinguished people, Jensen and The year 1934 saw tyvo important developments for the Aust^ however^ wanted little to do with a commemorative gar­ Wisconsin Friends, The first was a reorganization. The group den of non-native plants, Jensen^s wife^ Anne Marie^ also died wrote a new constitution and decreased its board of directors in 1984^ and the following year Kenneth Jensen Wheeler^ from nineteen to nine. They would expand again to sixteen in Jensen^s grandson and the heir apparent for his practice^ died 1 938 for a brief time. The old ex officio seats were changed into shortly after graduating from the University of Wisconsin's a humbler but better-organized advisory board^ involving landscape architecture program. After these blows Jensen many ofthe same governmental and private groups with one closed his office in Ravinia^ Illinois^ and moved permanently to important addition^ the new Wisconsin Wildlife Federation^ The Clearing in Door County, He was growing dissatisfied which was the first nature protection group in Wisconsin to with the efforts of the Friends^ and he shifted his principal stand on a level with the Friends, The Friends still had sufficient attentions to The Clearing itself^ where he established a political clout^ and almost everyone invited to join the new '^school ofthe soil/' partially in competition with Wright's atel­ board quickly accepted. ier at Taliesin and partially reflecting the folk school he attend­ The second development of note for the Friends was the ed as a boy in Slesvig-Holstein, Established to foster Danish arrival in their ranks of Aldo Leopold, Leopold^ by then a pro­ patriotism while this part of Denmark was under German rule fessor at the UW and a colleague of Ausf s^ gave a lecture at the (from 1864^ when Jensen was a boy of four)^ these schools were Friends' April 26^ 1934^ conference on state and regional plan­ closely tied to Nordic culture and an appreciation ofthe Dan­ ning, Leopold became a longtime member ofthe Friends and^ by ish countryside while emphasizing outdoor activities, Aust and 1938^ even sat on their advisory board as the UW Agriculture other professors at the University ofWisconsin sent their land­ School's representative, Leopold's involvement is significant in scape students to The Clearings which helped to maintain that he carried an authority comparable tojensen's^ but his envi-

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Hank Erdmann Inside The Clearing's schoolhouse, adults discover their own connections to natural science, the arts, and the humanities, a combination that Jens Jensen believed was inextricable. ronmental ethic was not really compatible with Jensen's native resigned from both the Friends and the university. His successor, landscapism. Though Leopold may have absorbed some of professor G. W. Longenecker, wrote to Jensen that the Friends Jensen's rhetoric, he ultimately rejected privUeging human char­ had "been asleep at the acter over the maintenance of an ecosystem. If the Friends were switch."'^ originally the manifestation ofjensen's ideologies, they had now The worst blow to become an incubator for new ecological ideas, and Leopold's the Wisconsin Friends land ethic concepts would achieve world-wide acclaim. came in October 1951, This was, alas, not a sign of adaptation and growth on the part of the group but an early symptom of its ultimate end. As Jens Jensen, about 1938 Jensen lost his firm grip on the Friends, they lost the inspiration and single-minded purpose he provided. The group began to wander and show tendencies toward becoming more of a social club than an activist organization. During the Depression, mem­ bers were stiU involved in rural planning and state legislation, but by the end of World War II, their activity had slowed to a virtual standstiU. The group did not maintain vigilance over its earUer accomplishments, a fact which Jensen angrily reminded Aust of time and again. Significantly, Leopold wrote an article in the January 1943 issue of American Forests pleading for the preservation of the threatened Flambeau State Forest, one of the earUest ofthe Friends' projects. In 1943 Franz Aust, the group's principal founder, abruptly

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vvhenjens Jensen died at The Clearing at the age of ninety-one. "purchase ihe land . . . provide a method of peipetuity, and . . . Jensen had grown even more striking in appearance in his old give the land to a governmental agency that w\ould relieve the age, and he had easily assumed the air of a prophet. His mind respoiisibUity of taxes, eic, [and] provide a life occupaticy . . . for and his strength were vigorous until the end, and though his last Miss Emma Toft." lilleen years were full of Icverisli activity, he leared that his By ihen iitany years had passed since the Jriiends were the entire leg"a.cy would lose direction without his guiding hand. only major preser\.^ation society in Wisconsin. In the years of This last fearliil prophecy was not liiiriUed: The Clearing was their iiiacdvily, newer groups took die fbrefroni. in the battle preserved through the indctatigablc efforts of Mertha Fulker­ for nature protection. None became more formidable than son, Jensen's longtime secretary and disciple, and later with the the Nature Conservancy, whose W^isconsin chapter was help of [he Wisconsin Farm Bureau, as well as 'Fhe Clearing's founded in 1960. In its firsi decade alone the W'iscoiisin chap­ many friends and supporters. The Friends, on the other hand, ter completed tyventy-one projects preserving 2,273 acres al a had already sirayed from their old ideals, and without Jensen cost of half a iiillllon dollars. Paul Olson, the leader of the much ofthe life went out ofthe movement. Just five years after Wisconsin chapter, had a single-mindedness and talent for his death, the Wisconsin Friends deeded their very first project, f'uiid r£Using that made hiiii a force in W'iscoiisiii coiiserva- the Rock of Gibraltar, to Columbia County as a county park; tion. The Friends enlisted his help in securing funds for the two years later, in 1958, they failed to slop the county from Toft Point project paving a. driveway to the top, After several years of negotiations, the deal for Toft Point Jeiis Jensen's legacy was destliiecl to contliiue through local was settled. The Friends purchased the land valued at preservation efiorts and the continuation of his beloved school $67,000 using some oftheir own money and a no-interest at The Clearing. Ultimately, the Wisconsin Friends took part in loan of $55,000 from the national ofiice ofthe Nature Con­ carrying oii Jenseti's mission lii the preseivation of Toft Poliit in servancy, Subsequently, the property was deecieci to the nas­ Baileys Harbor. Toft Point was the 740-acrc forest and cent University of Wisconsin-Green Bay as a.n arboretum, uiispoiled Lake Mlchigaii shorelhie held by uiiheralded conser­ with die condirion riiat Emma 'lofi be allowed to live there vationist Emma Toft, who had, with others, established the for the rest of her life as caretaker. Paul Olson continued to lodges VVildllower Saiictuar}','^ Toft had also been an Intlinate support the project, atid fouiid many major coniributors lo of Jensen and A'lertha Fulkerson and thereby had a link to the help pay off the loan. The Friends did their pait too, and on Friends. "Miss Eiiiiiia," as she was alfeciioiiately knowii, watit- April 12, 1973, they raised die last six huiidrcd dollars and ed to be sure that her propeity would be preseiv-ed after her the loan was repaid. death, ideally to be added to the adjoining Ridges Sanctuaiy. After this project, the Frietids of Our Native Landscape She conveyed this dream to Fulkerson, and it was discussed at faded from public view, a process notably helpeci by The the Friends' "Meeting ofthe Falling Leaf held at The Clearing Nature Conservancy's policy of claiming complete credit tor iii 1964, Earlier ihai year /\lber[ Fuller, a botanist at ihe Mil­ Toft's Poiiit wiihout meiitioning the Frietids.''* The Friends waukee Public Museum and a foundine member ofthe Ridees even sutTered the ignominy of being referred to as "a now^ Saiictuary. had also sug'gesied to the Frletids that the satictuary defuiici predecessor of The Nature Coiiscivaiicy" in that be enlarged to include the Toft property. However, there were group's summer 1977 newsletter. But the Friends were not two obstacles to this: diree other Toft relatives also held pari, cief'uiict; they were simply iiioving iiito their fiiial stage. Sur­ ownership ofthe point, and Toft's life of activism had not left passed at the forefront of conservation by newer, richer her eiiough financial security to allow simply giving away the groups, they were focusing again on landscape appreciation property. She had to find a buyer who would take responsibility and on their own history'. They had appointed a committee to for the preservation ofthe poliit In perpetuity. son through their hies and jjapers and assemble an i.ir'chive of Early in 1965 Fulkersoii, who woidd be elected to the board their past accomplishiiiciiis. 'Lhe Friends retiiaiiied primarily of directors ofthe Friends in a year's time, was holding prelimi­ a social club for another fifteen years, until 2000, when in nary talks with the Toft faiiiUy meiiibers oii behalf of the Wis­ Wisconsin the last remaining chapter disbanded. consin Friends. Tn February the Friends had made a The Friends of Our Nadve Landscape a,ccomplished a commitment lo purchase the property, and a committee headed great deal at a crucial period in the history of conservarion. by Madison's mayor, Flenr)-" Reynolds, was designated to pursue They were instrumental in establishing and protecting the the matter. In a leuer from Reynolds to Thoival T. Toft, the state parks sysiems of Illinois and Wisconsin. An annotated objectives of the Friends for the Toft property was presented: map in the Wisconsin Friends Archives notes involvement in

•IJMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY the following parks: Aztalan^ Tower Hill^ Wyalusung^ Nelson Tf?e Authors Dewey^ Devils Lake^ Rocky Arbor^ Roche a Cri^ Rib Moun- A Door County native, William H. Tish­ tain^ Terry Andrae^ High Cliffy and Peninsula State, By ler IS professor ementus of Landscape extending this account to include the activities of individual Architecture at the University of Wiscon- members of the Friends^ the map would include virtually sin-Madison. He holds degrees from the every state park established before 1960, They stood at the UW and Harvard University. A former forefront of the development of rural and regional planning chair of Wisconsin's Histonc Preservation J "^^ Review Board, he has developed and and environmental lobbying. Following the philosophy of H '^^^^^ taught courses in historic preservation, their founder^ the Friends were pioneers in the protection of B ^^ ^H and with his students, he prepared the typical regional landscapes and in the advocacy of public master plan for the state historic site. Old World Wisconsin, at access and public involvement in conservation. When Jensen Eagle . brought together many thousands of ordinary Chicagoans for Erik Ghenoiu is a doctoral student in a landscape preservation meeting or just for a nature walk^ he Architecture at Harvard University. He was breaking new ground. Moreover^ the Friends included holds degrees in urban geography, cultur­ many people who would go on to become crucial figures in al geography, and the history of art. He studies nineteenth- and twentieth-century American conservation^ from Stephen Mather to Aldo urbanism and issues related to the cultur­ Leopold, The history ofthe Friends is peppered with grand al landscape. Some of his recent projects sagas and famous characters. For any of these aspects and include a historiography ofthe concept of certainly for them all^ the Friends should be remembered. "place" in architectural discourse and an investigation ofthe relationship between Amencan and Gennan Behind all of these accomplishments lies the vision of a sin­ city planning around 1910. gle man^ a genius of landscape who not only wanted to save unspoiled nature^ but who had a compelling idea of exactly ^Unkssolheimseindicaled, lhe primary sources noted in lhe ailickaie from lhe archives of lhe why it should be saved, Jens Jensen wanted an environment WiKonsin chapter of lhe Friends of Oiu Native Landsc^e, heieinaflei lefened lo as FONL aichives, whichiscunenllyinlhe possession of lhe principal aulhoi, lhe gioup^s final piesideni that we would not despoil through our actions^ but which we 2 Slandaid liealmenls of this sloiy may IK found in Stephen Fciii.^7fte Ameticnn CsitserwiHoit would nonetheless live in and experience every day. He want­ Mowmenf John Mutt and His Legacf (19S0; leprinl, Madison, Wl' Univeisily ofWisconsin Piess, 19S5) and Roderick Nash, WddernsssoM the American Mmd{\9€l\is-^n.aX.'^s'ij'Ss^sa ed us to be a part of the landscape^ a product of it^ imbued and London' Yale Univeisily Piess, 19S2) ^ See the pamphlet seiies "Saluiday Afleraoon Walks in the Foiesls, Fields, Hills, and Valleys with its spirit—for our very identity to be firmly bound to the About the City," which ttcaire a publication ofthe Piairie Club in its twenty second issue, Cen- landscapes of home, Jensen wrote in Siftings: lei foi ReKaich Libiailes, Chicago, C-209IS •* A moie lengthy account of Jensen^s eailiei activity may be found in Robtil E Giese, Jens Jensen- Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens (BallimiJie' Johns Hopkins Univeisily Piess, 1992) It is quite essential to understand the soul of our own envi­ ^ Some lecenl scholaiship has cast doubt on Jensen^s moial integrity on the giound thai his advocacy foi native plants helped lead to the i&i:ist excesses of the Nazi ideology of the Volk ronment and of our own country before we can appreciate (e g , Wolsche-Buhlmahn,"Political Landscapes and Technology Nazi Geimany and the Land- and understand the arts and intellectual efforts of other peo­ sc^K Design of the Reichsautobahnen " Selected CELA Annual Conference P^eis' Natuieand Technology (Iowa State Univeisity, 1995. vol T) This passage of Jensen^s is a good example ple and the forces that lie behind them. of how foi him the genetic attributes of lace weie less significant than the foimative effects of native landsc^e Jensen, hiniKlf an immigiant,had no qualms about adopting and becoming a pait of a legion othei than thai of his biilh Foi a complete lefutation ofthe allegations against Jensen, see Dave Egan and WilliamH Tishlei,"Jens Jensen, Native Hants, and the Concept of Tc be a friend cf the native landscape in the wayjensjensen Noidic Superiority," Landscape Journal IS, no 1 (1999)' 11 29 wanted is tc be a friend tc cne^s cwn true self This lessen is the ^ A W N Pugin, Contrasts, intioduction by H R Hitchcctk (leprint. New Yoik' Humanities Piess, 19fi9)secoiidedition; E C Setaple.tnjluencesof Geographic Environment {on ike Basis principal legacy cf the Friends cf Our Native Landscape, LVi ofRatiel's System of Anihropo-Geography (New Yoik' Henry Holt and Co , 1911) Note that Seirple^s woik is a continuation of a Geiman school of geogjaphy with which Jensen might have been famihai thiough his Geiman ties Ac kn o wle dgm en ts ' See Bulietin of the Art Institute of Chicago. Vi.no^ 1-2, and 15,no fi ^ See Giese, p 127 Giese gives anessentially similai &i:count of the eaily yeais of the Elinois This article^ especially in its latter parts^ was made possible chapteiof the Friends ^ FOI a good account of Madison^s development, see David M.d\]£i\h.€£f.Madison- A History of by William H, Tishler^s acquisition ofthe archives ofthe Wis­ the Formative Years (Dubuque' Kendall/Hunt Publisheis, 1982) consin chapter of the Friends of Our Native Landscape, I*'See Yearbook of Ike Prairie Oub (Chicago' Piairie Qub, 1914) '' Most issues thiough 19Maie found in the FONL Aichive; othei copies aie in the possession Jensen^s autobiography^ Siftings^ originally published in 1 939^ ofthe Wisconsin Historical Sctiety and the SteenbsKk Libiaiy at the Univeisity ofWisconsin In the 1940s a laigei-foimat Illinois chaptei newslettei succeeded this pubhcation was reissued in 1 990 by the Johns Hopkins University Press^ 12 Personal conespondence, Longeneckei to Jensen, Febiuaiy 22, 1944, ft'om the Jensen and it is an essential resource for anyone interested in learn­ Aichives ofthe Moiton Aiboietum, Lisle Illinois '^ FOI the histoiy of Toft Point, see Roy Lakes. Tofi Pomf A Legacy of People & Pines (Egg ing more about the man and his philosophy. Haiboi' Namie-Wise, 1998) ^•* &e foi example the Nature Conserwincy News 18, no 1 (19^8) oi the Wisconsin Chaptei, The authors are grateful to Ms, Marion Kerr and Mrs, Natuie Conseivancy pamphlet of 1970 Jeanette Paul for assistance in preparing this article.

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The original Trout Lake Station was built in 1925, and its rustic buildings offered the same view ofthe lake that appears here. The station was moved across the lake to the south shore after the mid-1960s. Courtesy of the author Expanding Waters How Wisconsin Became the Wellspring of a New Scientific Field

By Scott Spoolman

w^

en thousand years ago, as the great mass ofthe last gla­ cier retreated to the north, it littered the northern quar­ ter of Wisconsin with thousands of huge chunks of ice. The ice chunks gouged great holes in the earth, and as Tthey melted, water filled the holes and formed what are now called ketde, or ice block, lakes. Because of the random nature of glacial - lake formation, the myriad lakes of the region vary gready in their structure, chemistry, and biological characteristics. One ofthe larger ketdes in what is now Vilas County in the northeastern part of the state is Trout Lake, an unusually deep and cold body of water. It is one of the very few lakes in Wisconsin that house relict populations of lake trout. he author of this article is the recipient of an Alice E. Smith Fellowship from the Wisconsin Historical Society. WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

Graphic by Joei Heiman

Above: Trout Lake in Vilas County. Left Professor Cbancey Juday bad pined tbe Wisconsin faculty in 1900, but it would be anotber tv)enty-five years before be andE. A. Birge founded tbe Trout Lake Station. Before 1925 tbey often worked on Madison's nearby lakes, just as tbey are bere in WHS Archives (X3)37040 1917 on Lake Mendota, using a plankton trap.

The setting offers a picture-postcard perspective of north­ that ringed the lake. The grayness ofthe water and sky, along ern Wisconsin, but the significance of Trout Lake goes with the muted colors, lent an eerie mood to the beauty ofthe beyond the state's natural beauty or sport fishing opportuni­ landsc^e. ties. It was here that Trout Lake Station, officially known as "Sometimes when I stand in this spot, I can sense the his­ Trout Lake Limnological Laboratory ofthe Wisconsin Geo­ tory of our discipline," he said, "and it seems like the ghosts logical and Natural History Survey, was founded in 1925 by of Birge and Juday are here with me." Professors Edward A. Birge and Chanceyjuday, Wisconsin pioneers in the field of limnology, the study of inland waters. Lijune—"Pool or Marshy Lalie" Scientists and technicians began arriving in the 1920s to study Edward A. Birge grew up in New York state, graduated Trout Lake—to probe its depths, to tramp its shores, and to from Williams College in Massachusetts, and came to Madison examine the creatures living in its waters. The state of Wis­ in 1875 to be an instructor of natural history at the University consin, home to thousands of inland lakes and thousands of ofWisconsin. Among the creatures he came to study were the miles of rivers and streams, continues to be affected by their zooplankton in Madison's lakes, specifically Chdocera. As a work to this day. natural historian and biologist, he sought to describe how the I visited the site ofthe original laboratory, now an empty lakes' physical and chemical conditions determined the distri­ beach backed by tall pines on the northeast corner of the bution ofthe zooplankton, from hour to hour, and from month southern lobe of Trout Lake. My guide was Dr. John Mag­ to month, asking questions about water temperature and cir­ nuson, former Director of the Center for Limnology at the culation, animal and plant life, weather patterns, and how all University of Wisconsin—Madison. Though recently retired, those factors interacted. Magnuson continues his work and makes frequent trips to Birge's goals and approach certainly sound reasonable to Trout Lake. He stood at the site of the original lab on a our twenty-first century ears. In 1894, however, when Birge cloudy, wet October morning, gazing out over the water. began formal sampling of Wisconsin's lakes, scientific practices Mist and light rain dampened the blaze of autumn foliage had been changing all over the world. The traditional, finite

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approach of discovering, utaries. Before Birge's time, lim­ describing, and naming species nology had been practiced in was giving way to one of critical rudimentary ways in Europe inquiry and ongoing observa­ and in the United States, As tion. By framing his research early as the late 1600s, Euro­ with questions, observing condi­ pean geologists, biologists, tions for extended periods of chemists, and engineers took to time, and incorporating the use the lakes to discover and of other scientific disciplines in describe the species living there his pursuits, E, A, Birge took a and to study waves, temperature leading role in developing a differences and effects of light at branch of science that was new different depths, movement of to North America—the study of microorganisms, and the limnology. dynamics of flowing waters. Shorthand definitions often Such sources were also found in describe limnology as "the study the United States, where in of lakes," and some dictionaries 1850 Swiss-born naturalist include the phrase "fresh Louis Agassiz published Lake water," but these terms are too Superior: Lts Physical Charac­ limiting. The field draws its ter, Vegetation, and Animals. name from the Greek word Agassiz also founded the lirane, meaning "pool or marshy Museum of Comparative lake," But it has come to include Zoology in Cambridge, Mass­ inland salt waters, fresh water achusetts, where Edward Birge lakes, rivers, wetlands, and came to study in 1873, Agassiz groundwater. It is growing to died only three months after encompass more even than the Birge's arrival, and within two physical scientific aspects. It is, years, Birge left his studies there as John Magnuson describes it, to accept an instructor's position the study of inland waters in all at the University ofWisconsin, aspects. WHS Archives (B4S)S1 E, A, Birge had been teach­ The best definition is still In 1912 E. A. Birge bad served as professor, dean, committee ing for more than twenty years member many times over, and even acting president of tbe Uni­ the one found in the 1963 clas­ at the University of Wisconsin versity of Wisconsin, but be seems most corrfortablepictured as sic textbook Limnology in be is bere, taking readings from an anemometer and enjoying when he completed his first North America: tbe view of Green Lake. plankton studies in 1895, Two years later, Wisconsin's legislature established the Wisconsin the study of all inland waters and the external influences that Geological and Natural History Survey and appointed Birge as affect the nature ofthe waters and the processes going on in them director. He was also serving as Zoology Department Chair, . . . concerned not only with the life in these waters . . . but also Dean of the College of Letters and Science, and the state's the chemistry and physics ofthe waters, the geology, meteorology, Commissioner of Fisheries, While the Survey provided signifi­ hydrology and hioecology of their drainage basins, and the pro­ cantly more resources, Birge had little time for research. Even gressively greater influence of man on the total complex of life and that small amount of time could not be protected when, three processes in these waters. years after his appointment as the Survey's director, he accept­ ed the position of acting president ofthe University ofWiscon­ Even today, this scientific endeavor continues to expand, sin, a post he would hold until 1903, (Years later Bii^e would somewhat like a flooding river, in many directions. again be asked to serve, and he would accept the tifle of uni­ If the analogy of a river is apt for limnology, it is largely versity president, holding that office from 1918—1925,) To keep because the discipline, like a river, has several sources and trib­ his lake studies going, he sought out a partner in 1900,

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WHS Archives (X3)37041 Above: Birge at left and Juday at rigbt (vAtb a man identified as Marcb in tbe center) testing tbe first mud tbermometer on tbe ice, ca. 1927. Tbe permanent bammer, attacbed to tbe tv)o insulated lines, drives a tbermometer into tbe mud as far as tbe bammer itself can go. Right: Even a land-based vebicle bad limnological uses, as Birge demonstrates in 1930, reading tbe gauge of tbe "sun macbine," a small demce attacbed to tbe car's rooftop.

That partner was to be Chanceyjuday, a biologist and a native Hoosier trained at Indiana University who was study­ ing plankton in a lake close to where he had grown up. Birge invited Juday, twenty years Birge's junior, for an interview and hired him immediately. The Birge-Juday partnership became the driving force for limnology in Wisconsin during WHSArchivesPH1282 its first four decades. Birge carried on as an administrator and took care of fundraising, personnel, and politics, whilejuday were in their natural state, to compare that data, to describe the served as the field manager of the program. Birge later changes over time, to find patterns, and then to explain those describedjuday as "the first, and for years the only limnolo­ changes and patterns, Birge was probably influenced by the gist in the country." Juday was the first teacher of limnology notion advanced in 1887 by Professor Stephen Forbes ofthe courses at the University ofWisconsin; later, he would direct University of Illinois that a lake is a microcosm—that a body of thirteen graduate students in their work. water is analogous to the body of any organism, complete with Birge believed the most important work of limnologists was anatomy and physiological processes. To understand the parts out in the field—which, for a limnologist, means out on the and processes of a lake, Birge argued, one must collect enough waters. His approach was recognized as both comparative and data over a long enough period of time, and he tirelessly col­ descriptive. He sought to gather data from the lakes as they lected samples and amassed data in pursuit of his goals. m SUMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

Many years after forming his partnership with Juday, Birge described one culminating experi­ ence in that endeavor in an address before the Madison Literary Club, entifled A House Half Built, in 1936. From 1911 to 1916, his team had filtered more than 2000 tons of water and cen- trifuged nearly 200 more tons to extract the food­ stuffs offish. He reported:

Here we had for the first time a definite notion ofthe total quantity of food and eaters handled by the lakes in the process of their housekeeping. . . . After nearly 20 years of experience in the study of lakes we had learned to ask the question: how does a lake keep house?

That notion—how a lake keeps house—was a UW Center for Limnology photo hy Eleanor Tressler defining one for Birge's career and for the daily Tbe Trout Lake crew in 1929, left to rigbt: Cbancey Juday, Willis lives of many who worked with him. Tressler, Fred Stare, Lowell Taylor, Ed Scbneberger, E. A. Birge, and Hugo Baurn. Juday shared Birge's view of limnology as a descriptive, comparative field, and believed his work was to of the lake. Later, the shore would boast permanent sleeping be done out on the lakes. Birge and Juday both regarded lab­ quarters. One ofthe researchers in the early days was a graduate oratory work with skepticism and looked askance at experi­ student named Rex Robinson. Robinson was one of many for­ mentation. They didn't believe they could learn anything by mer limnology students who gave interviews to writer Annamarie manipulating the lake environment, because that would L. Beckel, who, with historian Frank Egerton, told the story of involve artificially changing what they were studying. the University Limnology program from its very beginnings The first collaboration for Birge and Juday, examining dis­ through the early 1980s in the 1987 publication, Breaking New solved gases and their biological effects in Wisconsin's lakes, Waters: A Century of Limnology at the University ofWisconsin. would become a classic study that involved collecting data Robinson recalled the rugged conditions ofthe station in its early from 156 lakes, many of which were in the north central part years: ofthe state. In 1925 that area had captured the attention of this prolific team, and in fact, would become the locale for the We used a Model-T Ford for transportation . . . The 'improved' next great surge of growth in Wisconsin's limnology program. roads were grave! and became very rough during heavy summer Birge and Juday needed one central location in the area usage. . . . Many lakes were inaccessible except by trail. . . . If no where they could observe and gather information, a place boat was available, we setup a portable wood-frame canvas boat or that would serve as a base for the entire program and for the inflated a portable rubber boat A few times one of us would swim state ofWisconsin as a whole. They found that place at Trout out a distance from the shore to take a water temperature and obtain Lake. a water sample.

Trout Lake Station In 1925 three biologists and one chemist worked at the sta­ Edward Birge had traveled by train to Trout Lake in the early tion, but by the mid-1930s as many as twenty-two scientists and 1920s. The railroad station at the southeast corner ofthe lake assistants spent their summers there. Juday ran the station from included a hotel and dance hall that serviced workers and visitors its inception until 1942 when he retired. During those years, at the existing State Forestry Headquarters. Birge and Juday Trout Lake became the center of fimnological research in Wis­ chose the site for their new field station and set up operations in consin. 1925 in an abandoned schoolhouse and a garage near the A vital aspect ofthe early days of Trout Lake was the variety Forestry building. Eventually, they converted four old beach of fields from whence the researchers came, Birge and Juday bathhouses into laboratory buildings. For the first couple of used their greatest resource, the University of Wisconsin, to years, most workers, including Juday, camped out on the shore recruit the numerous people needed for the job, Birge, as a for-

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WHSArchivesPH1282 Above: Despite tbe lack qf/oliage, tbe unmistakable backdrop of Trout Lake frames E. A. Birge as be takes to tbe water, bis preferred location for study. Right: Art bur D. Hasler brougbt a laboratory-based approacb to researcb, and tbis departure from virtually exclusive researcb in tbe natural environment lost birn tbe support of Birge and Juday but earned birn tbe respect of bis students, wbo sougbt greater experimentation. mer dean and president, was able to entice chemists, biologists, bacteriologists, physicists, and engineers to journey north to Wis­ consin's limnological frontier. Trout Lake became the scene of major cross-polfination among the various fields, and this multi- discipfinary cooperation became a well-estabfished tradition, Juday maintained his bent for collecting data, fiterally by the boatioad. Researchers surveyed over 500 lakes to gather data on their geological, chemical, and biological properties. That included cataloging flora and fauna; measuring water depths, temperatures, alkalinity, dissolved gases, visibifity and other properties; studying the lakebed soil; describing the lay ofthe sur­ rounding land; and recording how these aspects changed over time for each lake. In that mass of data, they hoped to discover patterns and principles that would apply to lakes everywhere. In fact, so much data was assembled that much of it was never used by Birge or Juday, or by anyone, until it recentiy became part of a computer database shared by the current UW fimnology pro­ gram and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Juday's retirement in 1942, the year Birge turned ninety- UW Center for Limnology photo by B.W. Hoffman m SUMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

UW Center for Limnology Tbe Lake Mendota lab, situated nexS to tbe Memorial Union on Madison's campus, is a familiar building to students and longtime Madison residents, altbougb many do not know tbe building's pupose. It was built in 19

one, coincided with the decline of Trout Lake as the center of laboratory on Lake Mendota at the end of Park Street and limnology in Wisconsin. The demands of World War II lim­ ran it independently of Birge and Juday, who had little inter­ ited station funding. They had also made no plans for who est in his pursuits. Guyer was looking for someone to run that would succeed them in directing limnology lab and, eventually, to lead the limnology in Wisconsin. The university's limnology Hasler embraced program. program generally faded for a few years experimental limnology, In 1937 Guyer found Arthur D. Hasler, after Juday retired. He and Birge wrote a graduate of Brigham Young University their last paper together in 1941, and regarding it completing his doctoral degree under Chancey Juday died in 1944. Edward Chanceyjuday and working as a biologist Birge died in 1950, at the age of ninety- as adventure for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. Hasler eig-ht. had come to Wisconsin from his native state of Utah in 1932 to join his fascination for experimental A New School of Thought in Wisconsin—the Hasler Years biology and his field experience underjuday. UnUkeJuday, As the careers of Birge and Juday were winding down, however, he planned to conduct experiments in the natural other scientists began to point out the limitations of their environment. (Hasler was to become eminenfly successful in descriptive, comparative approach. These younger scientists that pursuit; he is best known for determining how salmon wanted to spend less time collecting data and more time ana­ seeking spawning grounds find their way back to their natal lyzing it—to spend less time in the field and more in the lab. streams using their sense of smell.) Hasler's vision was to One such scientist was Michael F. Guyer, who chaired the frame a new era for Wisconsin's limnology program. Zoology Department in the mid-1930s. Limnology studies Whenjuday retired in 1942, Arthur Hasler took over his were housed in his department at the time. He built a small teaching and research responsibilities. In these last years of

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UW Center for Limnology Above: A year after tbe formal establisbment of tbe Center for Limnology in 19S2, a conference titled "History of Limnology in Wisconsin" drew students from several generations and fields of study. Le&: fobn Magnuson, looking over Trout Lake in 2001, recalls botb bis own twenty-two year tenure of leadersbtp and tbe significance of tbe men wbo led before birn.

the Birge-Juday era, Hasler had not been invited to use the Trout Lake station because his experimental approach was in conflict with the priorities of Birge and Juday. Hasler clearly had higher regard for experimentation, and he was one of many experimentalists who felt that the old compare and describe approach was not really scientific in a modern sense. Hasler wanted to recreate lake conditions in the lab in order to manipulate variables. Eventually, he did whole-lake manipulations, changing variables in the lakes themselves. But whilejuday was still in charge of the Trout Lake Station, it was not available to Hasler for such endeavors. Juday felt that studying nature could not possibly involve manipulating it, and he reserved the facility exclusively for his brand of research. Hasler did not assume the directorship ofthe station until 1962, but he did become the new driving force in the limnology program at the University after Birge and Juday left. The transition from one era to the next was anything but smooth, and in fact, it was really a major shift more than a transition. Hasler regarded experimental limnology as adventure. As reported by Beckel, Hasler's first group of graduate students Courtesy ofthe author set out to build experimental ponds in the University of Wis-

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consin Arboretum. While they the rigorous process of peer eventually succeeded—and the review. They received Hasler's ponds are there to this day—they invaluable assistance in obtain­ first tried to create the ponds ing grants. using dynamite, an escapade that At the same time, once on became known as "Hasler's their way, they were expected to Folly." The explosions made a go it alone. "For independent mess, and the researchers were types," Robert Ragotzkie said, pelted by peat that blew straight "Dr. Hasler's program was a up into the air and rained down great place to be." upon them. C>ver the years, Hasler's fifty- Other tales of adventure still three doctoral students fanned told at Umnologists' reunions out to explore a wide range of involved night diving in Lake research areas. The earliest Mendota. In an interview in projects were conducted in 2001, Robert Ragotzkie, who highly controlled situations akin became one of Hasler's students to laboratories, but the experi­ in 1950, told of a study of yellow mental work quickly expanded perch that required diving after to the natural environment. sunset. Long before there were Hasler became known for his diver training and certification whole lake manipulations, in programs, Ragotzkie and his fel­ which he and his students would low students ordered air supply change one variable in a lake tanks through the mail. Accord­ and observe the effects. ing to Racfotzkie: For example, student Waldo John J. Magnuson E. Johnson hypothesized that 'ames F. Kitcbell succeeded Magnuson in 2001, tbe same year Tlie tanks came in a box with some changing the alkalinity of a tb at Artbur Hasler died, and tbe program is as vital as ever to instructions, and we put them on botb Wisconsin's bistory and future. boggy brown-water lake by and went diving in 30 to 40 feet of adding lime would make the water in the dark. We needed a light, so we attached a handle to a water clearer, allowing sunlight at greater depths, thereby photo flood lamp, taped it up to make it waterproof, hooked it to our increasing plant growth, dissolved oxygen, and fish popula­ generator, and sent the diver down. We didn't realize that the bulb tions. In the early 1950s, Hasler arranged with Notre Dame might be crushed by the water pressure, and sure enough, one night University to use a pair of wilderness lakes called Peter and the bulb imploded. Up in the boat, the generator suddenly slowed Paul Lakes, owned by Notre Dame on the Upper Peninsula because it was sending 110 volts down to where our diver Ralph of Michigan. The researchers filled in the narrows connecting Nursall had been holding the light looking for perch. Nursall came the nearly identical lakes. Peter Lake became the experimen­ to the surface quickly, and we got him out ot the water. He was tal site, to which they added lime. Paul Lake served as a con­ okay, but we switched to more sturdy lamps after that. trol and was left untouched. The experiment supported Johnson's hypothesis, but more important, became a mile­ By far the majority of experiments went more smoothly for stone in Wisconsin limnology, upon which many subsequent Hasler's students. But the spirit with which these investigators experiments were at least partially modeled. It convinced embraced their work gives a sense of the vigor that Hasler skeptics that one could perform a controlled experiment in brought to his position at Wisconsin. Egerton reports in the natural world. Breaking New Waters that Hasler connected with his gradu­ like Birge and Juday, Hasler was a force for growth ate students as Birge and Juday never had. He held weekly because of his abilities for organizing, finding funds, and deal­ seminars with guest speakers—experts from around the world. ing with political realities. His arrangement with Notre Dame The students took turns presenting topics, as if at profession­ is a good example. He made maximum use of funding sources al meetings, and under Hasler's stern glare, quickly learned such as National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Atomic

SUMMER 2003 S WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

Prior to tbe 15tb International Congress on Limnology, Profs. Robert A. Ragotzkie (left), local cbairman, and Artbur D. Hasler (rigbt), execu­ tive cbair of tbe congress, inspect yellow lotuses on Mendota Bay near tbe willows.

Energy Commission (AEC) during post-war years that were students, while others are maintained for equipment storage. boom times for science in general. In 1962 Hasler directed Hasler broke away from some ofthe practices of Birge and the building of a new limnology laboratory west ofthe origi­ Juday, but he held fast to their tradition of promoting inter­ nal lab on the shore of Lake Mendota. Jutting over the lake, disciplinary mix as a vital element ofthe program. He would it houses offices, labs, a library, a boat sUp, and wet sample bring people together from every field and from around the processing rooms, and today remains the headquarters for world, get them talking, and see new ideas being sparked and Wisconsin's programs. people cooperating to bring them to fruition. To his students Hasler and his colleagues revived Trout Lake Station, he emphasized the importance of adaptability. At the 1983 which had languished during the years of World War II. conference on the History of Limnology in Wisconsin, Hasler Research resumed in the 1950s and outgrew its prewar facil­ stated: ities. In the mid-1960s, Hasler obtained funding for a large new four-season laboratory on the south shore of the lake. Tlie best thing you can do in your earliest stages is to give yourself One winter, William Schmitz, Hasler's graduate student who the kind of training that isn't final. Get the basics, so you can tack­ oversaw the building of the new lab, found a way to move le anything in a systematic, intelligent way with the curiosity, the seven ofthe original buildings across the lake on the ice, from motivation, and the inspiration to learn it. ... 7 think it's a great the old site to the new one. Today, some ofthe old labs house shame if anyone starts with any subject in science today with the w SUMMER 2003 'ISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

idea that he's going to be doing that all graduated from the University his life. of Minnesota with bachelor's and master's degrees in fish­ Robert Ragotzkie considers the eries. He earned a doctorate in interdisciplinary richness to be a zoology and oceanography at hallmark of Hasler's program and the University of British is himself a product of it. He Columbia in 1961. His profes­ received a joint degree in zoology sional interests include fish and and meteorology, moved to Geor­ fisheries ecology and the histo­ gia in 1953 for post-doctorate ry of his field. work, and returned to the UW in "In fimnology, we five and 1959 as a faculty member in mete­ work every day with our histo­ orology. But he continued research ry," Magnuson said in an in limnology and later directed the interview. Sea Grant Program, which stimu­ To Magnuson, that means lates research and outreach educa­ taking the best of the past and tion on the Great Lakes. Of carrying it forward in new pro­ Hasler's program, he said: grams, and that is one way to characterize his leadership in You need help to do Geld research, limnology, which began in and Hasler's students all helped each 1978 when Hasler retired. other. We were an ad hoc team and While adding new elements to we became friends. The result was, the programs, Magnuson you didn't learn only about your own maintained the key traditions bug. You learned a lot about other and best habits of his predeces­ problems by helping others with their sors. In 2001 a hundred or work. Limnology at Wisconsin more limnologists gathered to became dominant because of those celebrate his career, to pay cooperative efforts. tribute at his retirement, and to roast him. At that gathering, Hasler, like Birge, was at the former doctoral student Steve helm in limnology for about four Jttfc: Brandt noted that Magnuson, decades. Both men were highly pro­ fike Hasler, befieved in chal­ lenging students to fend for ductive, fiercely intelligent individu­ WHS Archives WHi(X3)3S989 als with forceful personalities, and A trap from tbe early days of limnological study. themselves. they drove prolific programs of "At professional confer­ research, UnUke his predecessors, however, Hasler planned for ences,John would introduce you to an esteemed scientist and an orderly transition. In 1978 he retired from teaching and then abandon you," Brandt recaUed as his colleagues directing the limnology lab. Even at the end of his career, laughed. "It built character." Hasler demonstrated his penchant for broadening his program. Bringing students and scientists together has been a prior­ After a careful search, Hasler picked Magnuson, a midwestern- ity for Magnuson. Bringing people and resources together er turned oceanographer who at the time was in Hawaii study­ and creating new interactions and synthesis is an urgent pri­ ing the physiology and behavior of tuna. When Arthur Hasler ority for any program director. A defining moment in that died in March 2001, John Magnuson had been firmly estab­ endeavor was the estabfishment ofthe Center for Limnology lished as the head ofthe program for over two decades. in 1982. It had been one of Hasler's goals, and Magnuson made it happen. He puUed the research programs and the The Third Generation two lake labs into a new institution within the university and Magnuson was born and raised in northern Ilfinois and made possible a dynamic program for fimnology on campus.

SUMMER 2003 S WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

WHS Archives WHi(D483)S99S Trout Lake Station offered a curious blend ofnev) and old equipment.

Magnuson articulated its meaning, "This change opened the expanded geographically to include floodplain river ecology, way for the significant growth in faculty, program, and facifi- undertaken by Emily Stanley, who views lakes and streams ties during flie 1980s and 1990s." conceptually as ends of a continuum. Because of increasing That growth has been dramatic. When the Center was human impacts on nature, fimnology has brought in social formed, it was staffed by Magnuson and James F. Kitchell, scientists to study how people—through pofitics, economics, then the associate director for the Mendota Lake lab. Today, and fifestyles—affect and relate to aquatic ecosystems. there are four resident faculty members at the lab and twen­ Technology has been another area of major changes since ty-three other workers, including administrative and research the Center was formed. Both labs house state-of-the-art staff. Up at Trout Lake, Tim Kratz now directs the laborato­ equipment. In the northeastern lakes, this includes a system ry, where space has doubled since the Center was formed, as of remote sensors—fittle robots on buoys that make regular has the number of resident researchers. Four scientists and six trips to the bottom ofthe lake to record data such as temper­ other staffmembers now work year round at the station. ature, dissolved oxygen, and organic carbon levels—sending The interdiscipfinary tradition continues to thrive. Now the data back to the lab in continuous radio transmissions. researchers are augmenting lab work with statistical analysis Researchers also use satelfite and acoustic remote sensing and ecosystem modeling, a major growth area. The field has technology to study Wisconsin's waters. m SPRING 2003 The Author As they did under Birge reproduce in floodplains. and Juday, and then Hasler, "The flood is a property of ^ ^%^ Scott Spoolman, a Wisconsin native, is research programs have grovMi a river system that is essential ^^r JI a freelance writer. He received a master's richer and more diverse within PV "^P ^8B9 degree in journalism, concentrating on sci- to its functioning, its produc­ the Center for Limnology. l-B fl ence writing, from the University of Min- tivity, and the exchanges that Wisconsin became one of the 2j[ ~ ~ w '^^^°^^ ''^ 1983. He lives in Madison, and make the system work," Mag­ largest of twenty-four sites in |^^\^ ^^^M ^^1^ 1^'^ virector of the Trout Lake Station; CarlJ. it, as Hasler did. Now we ask, what can we do about it? We try Watras, Research Supervisor, Trout Lake Station; and Hath­ to hire people who complement each other in experience and away Hasler. expertise to do basic research. And we work with management Several pubfications were extremely helpful including A people in business and government to apply what we find toward Textbook of Limnology, third edition, by Gerald A. Cole, solving problems. pubfished by Waveland Press in 1983; Focus on Field Sta­ tions, a buUetin ofthe Ecological Society of America, from In the 1980s Wisconsin fimnologists used the analogy of January 1999; Limnology in North America, edited D. G. "breaking new waters" to describe their endeavors. These Frey and pubfished by the University ofWisconsin Press in days, fimnology itself might be thought of as a flooding river, 1963. Alexander J. Home and Charles R. Goldman's Lim­ expanding in many directions. The analogy has its fimita- nology, second edition, pubfished by McGraw-HiU, Inc., in tions. Unfike a flooding river, fimnology is not an uncon- 1994 was also helpful as were John J. Magnuson's work, troUed destructive force, but rather a carefuUy planned and "Lakes and rivers" in the Encyclopedia of Global Change coordinated set of programs. However, as Magnuson points pubfished byjohn Wiley & Sons; and G. C. Seller's E. A. out, the flood can be a healthy component of a large flood- Birge: A Memoir, pubfished by the University ofWisconsin plain river system. It augments the interactions between land Press in 1956. and water and stimulates organic and inorganic cycles. Fish

SUMMER 2003 MacQuarrie and Leopold Excerpt from Gordon MacQuarrie: The Story of an Old Duck Hunter By Keith Crowley

The Wisconsin Historical Society Press is proud to announce tbe publication ofthe first full-length biography of one oi Wisconsin s ia\orite writers, Gordon MacQuarrie, best kmmn foi his Old Duck Hunters stories. Author Michael Mcintosh niites m his foreword to this new volume: ''Gordon MacQiiaiiie \\as one ofthe most influential writers of his time—so much so that he shaped an entire generation of wiiteis who die just now emerging in the mold that he cre­ ated " This exceipt deals with MacQuarrie's contribution to the consenation and wildlife management movement.

11 Apiil 193f) Gordon MacQuarrie left the Superior E\ ening Telegram for the bigger, greener pastures of Mil\\aukee, \\here he became the first outdoor editor I f the ^hh\aukee Journal. When MacQuarrie began It the Journal on Apiil 19 he didn't have an official tide, but he \\as 111 effect becoming the first full-time professional out- dooi \\iitei 111 the nation. Other men dabbled in outdoor ne\vs stones, but MacQuarrie was the first on record to spec lalize in the previously neglected field. Men like Jay ''Diiis^" Bailing of the Des Moines Register devoted pait of their time to conservation and sporting stories, but their scope remained broad. e?> ^ MacQuarrie focused on the out­ door life by mandate from the JournaVs management, and he turned this position into one ofthe most coveted writing jobs in the -V f country. . . . Soon after MacQuarrie arrived in

Tbis pen and ink sketch ran with Mac­ Quarrie's first column in the Milwaukee Journal, April 19, 1936, and was the ^'^,^ model for the MacQuarrie Foundation Medallion. WHi (X3)44394 '^^••

Milwaukee in 1936^ he developed a per­ continually fascinated MacQuarrie- He sonal relationship with Aldo Leopold. visited Leopold at the shack several times With Leopold's assistance MacQuarrie and wrote columns for the Journal tackled the issues of wildlife manage­ explaining Leopold's work- ment from a scientific viewpoint- He The results of Leopold's grand exper­ joined Leopold in advocating numerous iment were published after his death in policies not generally accepted by the 1948- The treatise, A Sand County ordinary sportsmen and sportswomen of Almanac and Sketches Here and There, the state- has since become the primer for modern While MacQuarrie was no scientist^ conservationists- It became an instant hit he was deeply interested in the direction upon its publication in 1949, and it has Leopold's work was taking- - - - In never gone out of print- MacQuarrie's Leopold^ MacQuarrie had an open line copy of the Almanac was well worn and to the very latest information about sub­ dog-eared- He read it many times in his jects he held very dear—and no less own search for a sense of fulfillment- In importantly^ to subjects he was obligated November 1949, after MacQuarrie had to cover as the outdoor editor of the Mil­ completely digested the book, he issued waukee Journal. In the late '30s and this proclamation tojournal readers: throughout the '40s^ MacQjjarrie and Leopold^ who was then teaching in A Sand County Almanac is a modern Photo by Milwaukee Journsl/Stsff. September 1945. ©2002 Madison^ communicated frequently- Journal Sentinel Inc. Reproduced with permission. bible of conseiva6on. Everyone in Wis­ They talked ofthe ever-changing face of MacQuarrie on assignment near consin with any serious interest in the Solon Springs,Wisconsin. modern conservation and of Leopold's future of Wisconsin's soil^ woods^ fields conservation principles^ which directly conflicted with the beliefs and waters^ will want to own a copy of this book^ the fmal word from of Wisconsin's sportsmen- MacQuarrie set about to learn from one ofthe greatest men ever to teach at the university ofWisconsin. ^ the master and to disseminate this information to his statewide audience- After all^ Leopold's research and opinions had a direct MacQuarrie obtained several exclusive interviews with effect on Wisconsin's sportsmen- Leopold for the Milwaukee Journal from 1936 through the By the early 1940s Leopold had become a key player not only 1940s- And his appreciation ofthe man was never more obvious within the research and education community^ but also within the than in a feature article for Outdoor America magazine, ^^Here political arena- In 1942 Wisconsin Governor Julius Heil invited Come the Biologists," published after MacQuarrie's death- In it Leopold to serve on the State Conservation Commission; shortly he calls Leopold ^^the greatest news tipster of my experience" and thereafter he chaired the Committee on Natural Resources- pays homage to the scientists and the science that Leopold While Leopold did not always agree with the conclusions and helped create-^ methods of either body^ his very presence gave these political He also undoubtedly spoke to Leopold off the record on many organizations scientific credibility- occasions- MacQuarrie and Leopold hunted waterfowl together Leopold's position at the University ofWisconsin gave him the in the Mississippi River bottoms- They took several nature walks opportunity and the resources to implement his new philosophy at Leopold's shack, of which MacQuarrie once wrote, ^^A sports­ at the ^^shack/' a piece of dormant farmland the Leopold family man, sitting with Leopold, can get a new pair of eyes for seeing had purchased to use as a retreat and laboratory- Leopold's here-"^ In a private memo dated January 11, 1939, MacQuarrie attempts to reestablish the native ecosystem on this plot of ground scolded Leopold for not providing more information to the news- WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

papers—particularly the Milwaukee Journal. MacQuarrie came off the fence in hisjournal He wrote Leopold that "Fact is whenever I column. Early in the month MacQuarrie was get something from you or your students it asked to join the state's Deer Committee as gets pretty sympathetic scrutiny. ... I like the they toured northern Wisconsin to assess the authenticity all of your work has. It ought to damage. For three days the group tramped be in the paper, this paper and other papers. through deeryards and cutovers, barely But my concern is this paper."* believing the carnage they saw. Due to deep During a particularly turbulent time in snow and frigid weather, the deer were dying 1943, when Wisconsin deer populations had in droves, and the forest was being denuded grown to serious overabundance, MacQuar­ of anything mildly resembling feed. Mac­ rie got Leopold to express his true sentiments Quarrie knew it would be hard to explain the about wildlife management for the record. devastation to his readers; in his nextjournal "The real problem is not how we shall handle column he simply said the biologists "will the deer in this emergency," Leopold said. never be believed by men and women who Photo by Milwaukee Jouma/ZStaff, 1945. © 2002 "The real problem is one of human manage- Journal Sentinel Inc., reproduced with permission, did not have the chance to get out there and ment "^ MacQuarrie was a stickler when it came gee it with their own eyes." Wisconsin Con- to equipment. He was continually During the early 1940s Wisconsin's cher­ servation Commissioner Virgil Dickinson attending to his sizable collection of ished deer herd had grown to unsafe levels in outdoors paraphernalia, or "the sinews said of the crisis, "Whatever we do about it the face of mild winters and the absence of of war" as he called it. Whether they [the state's sportsmen] will crucify us."^ replacing worn decoy cords, mending significant hunting pressure (from humans Before that trip MacQuarrie had allowed a broken fly rod tip, oiling a reel, and from the much reviled wolves) during the or cleaning his well-worn old Leopold and his gang numerous occasions to first years of World War IL Many Wiscon- doublegun, he considered express themselves in \h.t Journal. After wit­ "puttering" a favorite pastime. sinites viewed this unprecedented growth in nessing the devastation, he wholeheartedly the herd as a boon, but MacQuarrie, with his ever-widening bio­ supported the biologists and stopped pulling his punches. logical perspective, saw that without dedicated management the Leopold and fellow biologist William Feeney contended that bottom would drop out if Wisconsin was subjected to a harsh 200,000 does should be eliminated from the state's deer herd to winter. It was. reduce the mass starvation. MacQuarrie agreed and challenged By March 1943 the deer crisis had reached critical mass, and his readers to support the experts.

The Wisconsin Historical Society John Kerrigan, Dubuque, lA Vice-President: Edwin P. Wiley, Milwaukee Ellen D. Langill, Waukesha Treasurer Rhona E. Vogel, Brookfield Director Robert B. Thomasgard, Jr. Genevieve G. McBride, Milwaukee Secretary. John D. Singer, Madison Officers Judy Nagel, DePere Asst. Treasurer & Asst. Secretary: W. Pharis Horton, Janice M. Rice, Stoughton Madison President Patricia A. Boge Fred A. Risser, Madison Hartley B. Barker, Scottsdale, AZ. President Elect: Mark L. Gajewski John M. Russell, Menomonie Treasurer Anne M. West Thomas H. Barland, Eau Claire (emeritus) John Schroeder, Milwaukee Secretary. Robert B. Thomasgard Patricia A. Boge, La Crosse Dale Schultz, Richland Center Robert M. Bolz, Madison Board of Curators Gerald D. Viste, Wausau Daniel W. Erdman, Madison Anne M. West, Milwaukee Ruth Barker, Ephraim James D. Ericson, Milwaukee Carlyle H. "Hank" Whipple, Madison Thomas H. Barland, Eau Claire Rockne G. Flowers, Madison Murray D. "Chip" Beckford, Cascade Ex-ofiicio Board of Curators John J. Frautschi, Madison Patricia A. Boge, La Crosse Delores C. Ducklow, President, FRIENDS ofthe Mark L. Gajewski, Madison Mary F. Buestrin, Mequon Society Gary P. Grunau, Milwaukee Thomas E. Caestecker, Green Lake John Grek, President, Wisconsin Council for Richard H. Holscher, Lake Tomahawk John M. Cooper, Jr., Madison Local History Ralph C. Inbusch, Jr., Fox Point William J. Cronon, Madison Roy C. LaBudde, President, Wisconsin Historical W. Robert Koch, Madison Craig Culver, Prairie du Sac Foundation Paul Meissner, Milwaukee Laurie Davidson, Marinette David W. Olien, Senior Vice President, University of George H. Miller, Ripon (emeritus) Ness Flores, Waukesha Wisconsin System Jodi Peck, Fox Point Stephen J. Freese, Dodgeville Peggy A. Rosenzweig, Wauwatosa Mark L. Gajewski, Madison Walter S. Rugland, Appleton Charles E. Haas, La Crosse The Wisconsin Historical Foundation Richard L. Schmidt, West Bend Beverly A. Harrington, Oshkosh President: Roy C. LaBudde, Milwaukee Robert B. Thomasgard, Madison Fannie E. Hicklin, Madison Vice-President: Bruce T. Block, Milwaukee Carol T. Toussaint, Madison (emerita) Gregory Huber, Wausau Vice-President: Margaret B. Humleker, Fond du Lac Robert S. Zigman, Milwaukee Margaret Humleker, Fond du Lac Vice-President: Sheldon B. Lubar, Milwaukee g~ SUMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

This position did not sit well with readers. "Bucks only" had suggested that Leopold would not be satisfied until no deer been the popular sentiment for many years in Wisconsin, and remained in Wisconsin.'° MacQuarrie bristled at the implica­ many of MacQuarrie's readers did not believe the situation war­ tion, then and later. The last of MacQuarrie's freelance work ranted overhauling the deer published was "Here Come the hunting laws. MacQuarrie con­ The Author Biologists" in 1960. In that tinued to defend the experts, For more than fifteen years, Keith Crow­ essay MacQuarrie recalled the saying, 'John Q Public wants ley has been tramping the woods and poor treatment heaped on his information . . . sugar-coat­ waters of northwest Wisconsin. His free­ Leopold: ed. .. . And he wants to sit there lance writing has appeared in such publica­ tions as Sporting Classics, Wisconsin in the evening under the reading Leopold originated the concept of Outdoor Journal, Wisconsin Sportsman, lamp and mebbe add a hunch or Minnesota Sportsman, Rocky Mountain "the land ethic." He said a great two of his own to the general Game & Fish, and Florida Game & Fish. He many things now quoted widely picture. The time for hunches in resides in Hudson, Wisconsin, with his wife and sons, but spends today, hut let it not he forgotten the management of Wisconsin's an inordinate amount of time at his retreat on the Eau Claire Lakes. that in his day he was uphraid- deer herd is over."' ed—even reviled—hy those MacQuarrie took a fair amount of heat on the issue. It was assorted ignorami whose knowledge of wildlife ended with what the first time in his career that his written opinion did not gel with grampaw told them.'' the mainstream public's. But MacQuarrie was no shirker, and he stuck to his guns throughout the crisis. Eventually the antiman­ Throughout his life MacQuarrie had a great deal of faith in agement movement withered, but throughout MacQuarrie's people's ability to handle whatever outdoor crisis reared its head. tenure at thejournal some John Q Publics still clung tenacious­ This faith was common to his generation. Such great technolog­ ly to the antimanagement vine. ical and scientific strides had been made in so many facets of life From that point on MacQuarrie repeatedly and personally that many Americans developed a simplified view of life's riddles. defended the fish and game managers in his/oumai column. He All things, they assumed, would be figured out—all problems used his newspaper pieces to provide the latest scientific theories solved in due time. ISMI and practices to readers who sometimes did not appreciate the 1- Gordon MacQuarrie, "Right Off file Reel," Milwaukee Journal, October 20, 1949. 2- Gordon MacQuarrie, "Here Come the Biologists," draft, Gordon MacQuarrie Papers, Wis­ full scope of the wildlife and fisheries situations. In 1949, when consin Historical Society Archives. the deer population again grew to unsafe levels, Wisconsin 3- Gordon MacQuarrie, "Right Off the Reel." Milwaukee Journal, October 20, 1940. 4- Gordon MacQuarrie, memo to Leopold, January 11, 1939, Aldo Leopold Archives, Universi­ sportsmen and "nature-lovers," as MacQuarrie called them, ty of Wisconsin-Madison. 5- Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold, His Life and Work, {Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, demanded that the Conservation Department artificially feed the 1988): 444. 6- Gordon MacQuarrie, "Right Off the Reel," Milwaukee Journal, March 23, 1943. deer. MacQuarrie called the practice of deer feeding "money 7- Gordon MacQuarrie, "Right Off the Reel," Milwaukee Journal, March 28, 1943. wasted" and advocated managing the herd, not feeding it.^ ^- Gordon MacQuarrie, "Right Off the Reel," Milwaukee Journal, February 8, 1949. 9- Gordon MacQuarrie, "Here Come the Biologists." He could just as easily have used his column to lambaste the 10- Meine, p. 489 11- Gordon MacQuarrie, "Here Come the Biologists." scientists and government agencies for their failings, as many of his contemporaries did, but he was beyond such tactics. In the Cork bluebill decoy from MacQuar­ beginning, however, the experts, Leopold included, were dis­ rie's set. Carved by Ollie Drahn of trustful of newspapermen in general. They had been raked over Oshkosh, Wisconsin, ca. 1940. Photo by Keith Crowley. the coals by journalists before, and for the newcomer MacQuar­ rie it was an uphill battle. MacQuarrie had to convince Leopold of his noble intentions. "It took just about one year," MacQuar­ rie wrote, "for this newspaper reporter to convince Aldo Leopold that ... I would not brutalize the facts. "^ MacQuarrie chose ordon MacQuarrie: The Story of an Old Duckhunter is instead to clearly explain the scientific position to the oft-befud­ available through local bookstores. Members ofthe Wis­ dled masses. It became a career-long trend in his columns. G consin Historical Society can receive a 10 percent discount by During the 1940s' deer crisis in Wisconsin, Leopold was sub­ identifying themselves as such and ordering the book by call­ jected to harsh criticism from many segments of the Wisconsin ing (800) 621-2736. Hardcover $34.95 ISBN 0-87020-343-6; outdoor society. Even some within the Conservation Department Paper $22.95 ISBN 0-87020-344-4.

SUMMER 2003 "g UW Department of Wildlife Ecology TR t-\ J

Remembering the Riley Game Cooperative

By Bob Silbernagel and Janet Silbernagel

our years before Aldo tinned to be involved for at least Leopold acquired the seventeen years- They were farm along the Wis­ aided by a law that had just consin River that been passed by the Wisconsin becamFe incubator and inspira­ legislature that authorized the tion for A Sand County creation of shooting preserves^ Almanac, the great naturalist the planting of game birds on developed an interest in another those preserves^ and the length­ swath of southern Wisconsin ening of hunting seasons on real estate- This land^ however^ them- Leopold did not purchase- He The Riley Game Coopera­ simply wanted a place to hunt tive was centered in the small birds and test his game-manage­ community of Riley^ tucked into ment theories- the steep hills that mark the ter­ One Sunday morning in the minal moraine country of summer of 1931^ while explor­ southwestern Dane County- It is ing the dairy country southwest Aldo Leopold Foundation Archives ^^.Q^,- gq^^| distance between of Madison^ he stopped at the Aldo Leopold vAth a favorite dog on unidentified Mount Horeb and Verona, farm of Reuben Paulson and property believed to be on the Riley Game Cooperative. north of Highway 18- In 1931 asked for a drink of water- The two men fell to talking^ and Riley included a post office, general store, and railroad water something surprising transpired- ^^He needed relief from tres­ stop- There were perhaps a dozen houses close by the railroad passers who each year poached his birds despite his signs/' stop and almost as many farms within a radius of a couple Leopold wrote in 1940 in iY^tJoumai ofWildlife Management. miles- ''''l needed a place to try management as a means of building up One of those farms became the home—during the 1960s something to hunt- We concluded that a group of farmers^ and 1970s—ofthe Silbernagel family, including the authors of working with a group of town sportsmen^ offered the best this article- Although we reaped the benefits of the conserva­ defense against trespass^ and also the best chance for building tion work begun three decades before—hunted pheasant and up game- Thus was Riley born-'^^ squirrels on the farm; witnessed ducks and geese gliding into By Riley^ Leopold meant the Riley Game Cooperative^ the Sugar River marsh; saw rabbits, fox, and even an occa­ which he and Paulson formed in 1931 and in which they con- sional deer near the cover of the fencerow plantings that WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

WLt-r GMIt coomMwt

AftwrQ Fatr lueattiei' FsuIWeofher fan ond Spring Winter = narsh H Everqreen PJenrahon

^ Grazed Waodi ^ Comul Boq

^ UnqniedMncb €t» 6ush Willows

UW Department ofWildlife Ecology Aldo leopoid was an inveterate map maker, and this undated map of the Riley Game Cooperative is likely from his hand.

Leopold had helped engineer—we knew nothing of the Riley But it was the hand-drawn maps that grabbed our atten­ Game Cooperative growing up. We learned of it in For the tion. It's been more than fifteen years since our parents sold the Health of the Land, a 1999 book of Leopold essays not previ­ Riley farm, but the Leopold maps refresh our recollections and ously published in book form. It included two articles about memories ofthe landscape. Riley, There, That's the Sugar River slough. Bob and brother Those articles led us to dig deeper. We found that the coop­ Carl floated a leaky dingy on it, searching the murky waters for erative, despite its longevity and its use by Leopold as a turtles, crawdads, and carp. And there are the railroad tracks research laboratory for his students at the University ofWis­ (today the Military Ridge Bike Trail), The tracks marked the consin, was largely unheralded. Leopold wrote a few articles southern end of the Sugar River marsh and our property. We about it, and so have others since his death. But it did not slogged through the knee-deep muck of that marsh, swatting achieve the same sort of conservation celebrity that attached to black flies and pushing heifers back to their pasture. his Wisconsin River farm and the shack upon it after the pub­ And here. That shaded zone the map describes as grazed lication ofA Sand County Almanac. timber on the J, L, Brannan farm is surely the same wood Still, Leopold did not ignore Riley. He left a stack of records patch on the Silbernagel farm where shag-bark hickory trees about the Riley project, many of them in the archives at the mingled with oaks and elms. Horses and youngsters found University ofWisconsin. Among the things we discovered were summer comfort in their shade and snatched fruit off a wild correspondence between Leopold and Paulson about the apple tree. Along the fencerow beside the woods, we gathered oi^anization ofthe cooperative, annual reports about the suc­ hickory nuts and picked wild plums and grapes. cess ofthe hunts, and records of bird plantings.^ West beyond the crest ofthe hill, the woods were a different 0" SUMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

Joel Heiman graphic The community of Riley lies in the southvMstempart of Dane County along Sugar River (identified as Sugar Creek on what is believed to be Leopold's map).

world. Stinging netfles and blackberry brambles clutched at just three farms to eleven, covering more than 1,700 acres, and our legs. Sumac and poison ivy obscured trails. Raccoon, they record the increasing success of the conservation pro­ muskrat, and deer hid in the thick cover. It was a deep wilder­ grams. But even in the secretarial style of his annual reports, ness, at least for young explorers. Leopold could not keep his humor or opinions entirely in Here, on another map, is our old cornfield just north ofthe check. This is from a 1940 newsletter to the Riley Game Coop­ marsh, where we hunted pheasants and raced snowmobiles erative members: "There are several stray cats in the area when winter snow lay deep enough. Nearby is the pasture which won't do our nesting birds any good. Members are where we galloped our horses and pastured the cows. And encouraged to invite these cats either to come back home, or to there, east ofthe farmhouse, is the hilltop hay meadow where get undei^round where all cats behave," a hot-air balloon unexpectedly dropped out ofthe sky one crisp There are other stories, only glimpsed in the notes and autumn morning. Frightened horses raced for the cover ofthe newsletters. The low bird kill in 1945 had more to do with a woods. shortage of gasoline and rubber than a shortage of pheasants, A Cooper's hawk took a hen pheasant near Ken Cook's feeder hile the documents from the Leopold archives elic­ on February 1, 1941, Andjohn Riley won the annual contest it nostalgic and sentimental memories for us, they for the biggest pheasant ofthe season in 1945, W are not written in the lyrical style of his Sand We decided to follow up on this last item sincejohn Riley is County essays. They are more stenographic, not just a name on the old documents. The Riley community "Summary of Winter Feeding at Riley, 1936-37," gets its moniker from his great-grandfather, Richard, who "Pheasants Killed on Riley Preseive—1938," (A total of 65), homesteaded there. And John Riley now lives about fifteen "Riley Quail Census—1936-37," miles from Riley in Verona, They chronicle the rapid growth of the cooperative, from We called to test his memo ry.

SUMMER 2003 M WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

"I remember that pheasant. one who never abandoned his It was a snowy day," Riley said, teaching role, even when out on "I turned seventeen on Christ­ a hunt, "He'd tell you about mas, and it was right after that," anything you wanted to know," December 31, according to John said, "He'd just take a stick Leopold's newsletter, "I was and draw things out for you on poking around in the woods the ground. Every year, he'd near Paulson Road, I was by come out with two or three stu­ myself I didn't have a dog or dents from his class. They'd fix anything. When the rooster fences and clear unwanted went up I winged him, I had to plants from along the track him in the snow into the hedgerows," thicket. How big did they say it Gene Roark is a few years was?" younger than John Riley, but The newsletter listed it at he, too, remembers the later 1,500 grams, years ofthe Riley Cooperative, "That's right, they measured when his father was a town

everything in grams," John Joel Heiman photo member of the group, A friend recalled. John Riley, vAose great-grand,fa >e name for the of Leopold, the elder Roark For John Riley, memories of community of Riley, hunted on th e Riley Game Cooperative and apparentiy met him when both remembers Aldo leopo Id and much more. the Riley Game Cooperative were on the faculty at the Uni­ are bright and pleasant: "Every year they had a big picnic in versity ofWisconsin,* the spring. All ofthe farmers and their families would turn out, "I especially recall one hunt, with my dad and Leopold, and all ofthe town members. It was a big thing, I remember when after I'd missed a hen Leopold told me, very soflly, that one year we had it down at Paulson's farm, and we played I was 'shooting from the hip,'" Roark said, "I felt humiliated, baseball in a big pasture. That's all covered with brush now," mosfly because I knew he was right," But Roark extracted a bit Each year as well, the town members would host a banquet of revenge later in the day when Leopold's bird dog, a short- at a nice restaurant or club in Madison, The farmers and their hair that Leopold was very proud of, locked on point on a sons would attend, "Everybody was all dressed up. It was quite clump of marsh grass, "I felt I'd gotten even," Roark remem­ a deal for us farmers," Riley remembered with a chuckle, bered, "when a big yellow cat erupted from the grass and both John also remembered Aldo Leopold as "just the the shorthair and Leopold looked as embarrassed as I'd felt,"^ greatest man you'd probably ever want to be around," some- For the farmers likejohn Riley and his dad, Wes, the Riley

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Game Cooperative wasn't a part-time effort. It became part oftheir everyday life, "Every farm had a feeding station on it for the birds," Riley said, "We furnished the ear corn. The town members would buy other feed for them. And we covered the feeders with cornstalks," Young­ sters likejohn were enlisted as foot soldiers in Leopold's conservation army: "I used to have a copy of a book , , , a ledger , , , where I kept track of how many pheasants and other birds we saw on our farm. One year we had 160-some birds,"^ John was just a toddler when the Riley Game Cooperative was founded, so he has no personal recollection ofthe natural conditions— the quality of habitat and game availability— prior to the cooperative. But, based on what his father and others have told him, it was poor. Gene Roark also relied on the assessment of others and reached a similar conclusion: "Heavy grazing and erosion had reduced cover to bits and pieces, and game of any kind was scarce. Pheasants were nonexistent,"' Leopold described the situation this way: "Three years ago, when we first met, to flush a rabbit was the biggest adventure one might hope to fall upon in a day's hike on the Paulson farm," And this: "Like other outdoorsmen, both

of us had listened patienfly to the ikir words of UW Department ofWildlife Ecology the prophets of conservation, predicting the Reuben Paulson, cofounder ofthe Riley Game Cooperative, with early restoration of outdoor Wisconsin, We both a pheasant about to be released, presumably on his property. had noticed, though, that as prophecies became thicker and thicker, open seasons for hunting became shorter ever, that while the new law restricted shooting ofthe domes­ and shorter, and wild life scarcer and scarcer," tically raised pheasants, it had applications to wild birds as well, "We saw in this a chance to build up a wild population, ut assistance came from an unlikely source: the Wis­ and to do our shooting on those wild birds, releasing sufficient consin legislature, "Now it so happens that in the same tame ones to satisfy the requirements of the law," Leopold Bwinter of our discontent, , , there emerged, as out of a said,^ cloud, all duly enacted, the 'Wisconsin Shooting Preserve With that in mind, the Riley group applied for and obtained Law,"' Leopold wrote. That law allowed land owners or those a shooting-preserve license, initially encompassing three farms who controlled land to plant pheasants on the property and in the area, and released twenty-five pheasant that first year. shoot three-quarters ofthe number of planted birds in an open According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources fall season. Furthermore, the law prohibited trespassing on the (DNR), there are approximately fifly licensed shooting pre­ property in question by people other than those involved in the serves in the state now; the number fluctuates some as the shooting preserve. licenses for the preserves come up for renewal eachjune 30, Members ofthe Riley Cooperative were interested in many The shooting preserves are used primarily as hunting clubs or game birds, not just pheasants "and still less in shooting pheas­ business retreats. They differ from game farms, of which there ants recentiy let out of a coop," Leopold said. The co-operative are about nine hundred licensed in Wisconsin today. The members, no doubt led by Leopold, quickly flgured out, how- game farms can raise game birds and release them year-round

SUMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

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UW Department ofWildlife Ecology The railroad tracks as they appeared running near the commu- nity in the 1930s. Today the tracks are gone, and the rade is part of the Military Ridge State Trail. for hunters. The shooting preserves—unlike in Leopold's day— ers to join the cooperative—to voluntarily add to their work­ cannot raise birds. They can only buy them and release adult loads, give up part of their livestock feed, and eliminate por­ birds for hunting from September through February,^ tions of their precious pastureland. The Riley Game DNR records on the shooting preserves only go back to the Cooperative began with just three ikun members and five town 1970s, not to the days ofthe Riley Preserve, But, according to members. According to the initial bylaws and letters from a letter Leopold wrote in September 1932, the Riley Coopera­ Leopold to Paulson, the farmers supplied land and feed for the tive obtained "Shooting Preserve License No, 4" on July 25, pheasants, while town members supplied money—$20 each, 1932,'° The Riley Game Cooperative was something much annually, in the first years—to purchase birds or eggs, to reim­ more than a gathering of sportsmen who liked to hunt birds. It burse fermers for part oftheir corn, to provide signs to post the became, through the direction of naturalist Leopold and boundaries of the cooperative, and to cover the costs of the farmer Reuben Paulson, a community endeavor. annual banquet for the members. Both groups provided labor It's tough from a perspective seven decades later, to grasp to build winter feeders for the pheasants and plant pine trees how difficult life in rural Wisconsin was at that time. Farming and brush for cover. They aU kept eyes out for trespassers and was only beginning to be mechanized, and dairy farming in helped count birds. particular required long hours of tedious work, A sustained And, of course, they hunted. Numerical records of those drought made farming even more difficult than normal. And, hunts are listed in the annual newsletters that Leopold dutiful­ of course, money was scarce. When the Riley Cooperative ly wrote and mailed to aU ofthe members ofthe cooperative. began, there were as yet no agricultural support programs to But they don't capture the pleasure that members took in hunt­ help farmers ride out the tough times. ing birds in places where there had been little wildlife before. Yet somehow, Leopold and Paulson convinced other farm­ That pleasure is reflected in stories recounted by the likes of

SUMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

Around fifty licensed shooting preserves currently exist in the state.

John Riley and Gene Roark, who grew up hunting on the cooperative, and by Leopold's own, more hterary accounts. ^•^ ^^xJ\^:SS'' "To kill one's first cock on one's own grounds is a memorable ^.^^f^;^j:r;. c^-^n.o.^* experience," he declared. ..^°.^!^sro^.r^>*^-"^i^S^^^ ' But it's clear from the archive record and individual stories that the cooperative also became more than just a group of hunters. It quickly developed into a communal affair that involved not only the men who hunted, but also youngsters and farm wives. Young people took feed to the pheasant feeding sta­ tions during the winter and made daily logs ofthe pheasants, 10 quail, prairie chickens, Hungarian partridges, rabbits, and foxes ,.. i-l^ they spotted. Reuben Paulson's wife was official keeper of the scales. When cooperative members shot a pheasant, they were

laG*-- ,^50T^ to take it to Mrs. Paulson to have it weighed and recorded. •Cx.'^ There were gatherings of the farm and town members to ,&^^ eo-s^ build the brush shelters that were to provide winter shelter for s^-- ,^xt^^ a%i the birds and feeders where farmers or their sons could set out QOtl^ la*^ diets'" ^ corn. "None of us for years had so enjoyed our winter Sun­ ,ia. days," Leopold wrote of those gatherings.^^ Although Leopold and Paulson sought to keep the size of Scc-*^ the cooperative small, so that all those involved would always UW Department ofWildlife Ecology know each other, it expanded rapidly on the farm side. By the late 1930s there were eleven farm members and more than This letter from Leopold to Paulson dated September 3-. 1931, out­ lines the purposes and lists the original membership ofthe Riley 1,700 acres involved; this, despite the fact that Leopold some­ Game Cooperative. times hectored the farm members to do more conservation

SUMMER 2003 m WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

Joel Heiman photo Recent view of the Riley Game Cooperative area from Highway J south of Riley. At the center of the photo in the distance is a pine plantation on the comer ofthe Paulson property. work. In a 1935 newsletter he urged each farmer that year to Leopold offered the trees to any and aU takers. Still, neither provide "at least one new cover area fenced against grazing" drought nor depression, war nor postwar boom brought the and "at least one food patch (or equivalent in shocked corn left demise of the Riley Cooperative, In 1948, just a few months in the field over winter)," before his death, Leopold despaired at the high cost of pheas­ In 1937 the cooperative expanded in a new direction. That ants to plant and the poor growing seasons the past three years. year, Leopold began using it as an outdoor classroom and He wondered "whether the Riley enterprise should continue," research facility for his classes at the University ofWisconsin, He was quickly reassured that the majority of Riley members "If you see a smaU army coming across your fields, it isn't the wanted it to • irry • Germans," he warned the cooperative members in a 1940 newsletter, "It's just Professor Leopold's class in wildlife ecolo­ he cooperative changed the Riley landscape in a gy, learning how farmers, town sportsmen, and birds aU find number of ways. For example, there were regular 'Lebensraum' at Riley," Tplantings of pheasants, carefully catalogued each When war came, the Riley Cooperative did not forget those year. But other game species, including quail, Hungarian par­ who went abroad, Leopold provided extra copies of his tridge, ruffed grouse, and prairie chicken began to appear spo­ newsletter to all Riley members so they could send them to radically as cover improved. And cover improved largely sons in the military "whose hunting this year was not of the under Leopold's guidance. To overcome chronic overgrazing Riley variety," The war also drained the cooperative of man­ of most ofthe area, yet not seriously affect the fermers' abiUty power. In 1942 there were not enough people to plant aU the to take care oftheir cows and hogs, Leopold concentrated on Norway pines the cooperative had ordered. In his newsletter. what he called "foul-weather i •'It consists of cattail be m SUMMER 2003 'ISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

too soft for cattie to enter, bush wil­ low along streams and railroad tracks, and grape tangles or plum thickets in fencerows,"'^ The members of the cooperative also developed plantings of evergreen trees, mostiy red and Norway pine, fenced off from cattie. They learned from painfiil experi­ ence, A severe drought in 1934 and 1936 cost them many of the plant­ ings, and inadequate fences allowed animals to get in and destroy others. But they tried again, with assistance fi"om the University ofWisconsin stu­ dents and depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps crews. By 1939, when another drought hit, most ofthe plantings survived,'* Much of that work is evident today, Warren E^o, who has lived in the area since the 1960s, stiU picks wild plums along the Military Ridge Trail west of Riley each autumn. Grape tangles and other brush are stiU plentiful along many of the fencerows. The evergreen stands are the most noticeable. The red pines are now approaching seventy years old, and they tower thirty feet high and more. But the old stands are breaking up. Deciduous trees such as black cherry and box elder are creep­ ing in under the pine canopies, preparing to replace the older ever­ greens,'^ Those plantings were what attract­ ed many ofthe farmers to the cooper­ ative and kept them involved, "I know Dad really Uked the plantings, the bushes along the fencerows and

the stands of evergreens," Riley Joel Heiman photo said,'^ Over the years, the success of Original Riley Game Cooperative fence line along Paulson property. those plantings and ofthe game man­ agement efforts would help convince others to join. For ed on the Brannan farm. instance, J, L, Brannan, who rented what would become the The Riley Game Cooperative continued, largely through Silbernagel ikun, was not listed as a farm member in any ofthe the will of Aldo Leopold, up until his death. The archives con­ early Riley documents. By the late 1930s he was included in tain Leopold's flnal "Riley News Letter," dated April 8, 1948, the list of members, however, and pheasant kills were record- barely two weeks before he died of a heart attack while fight-

SUMMER 2003 Q WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

ing a brush fire on a neighbor's said,2' In tiie late 1980s Roark farm next to his beloved Wis­ attempted a different means of consin River farm. That final preserving Riley, urging the newsletter is briefer than earUer Dane County Commissioners to ones, but it still contains a consider much ofthe old Riley wealth of information: Twenty- Cooperative farmland for land four hens and five cocks were protection. His one-man cru­ released in 1947, aU with alu­ sade met with little initial suc­ minum leg bands. Only ten cess. But in the twenty-first birds were killed in 1947, the century, it could reap big lowest number since 1933, Jay rewards, perhaps aided by a gift Henderson applied for five hun­ to the Dane County Parks dred red pine and white spruce i,y Department to be in the Town trees to use as windbreaks. New of Verona or Riley area, state regulations for shooting Jim MueUer, who retired in preserves required aU birds to be early 2002 as a Dane County turned loose using the "genfle Parks Department planner said release system"—placing cages a variation of Roark's proposal with open doors in the release was adopted into the county's area and aUowing the pheasants parks and open space plan in to wander out as they chose," 2001,22 Since tiien, tiie Depart­ "Up until he died he kept it ment of Landscape Architecture going," John Riley said, "After at the UW, where Janet Silber­ that it just fizzled. He was the nagel teaches, has partnered only one from town who really with the Dane County Parks, worked to keep it going,"'^ Natural Heritage Land Trust, Roark says that remnants ofthe and local landowners to study cooperative continued until the the landscape ecology and land early 1960s, "I don't know when UW Department of Widlife Ecology use of tile Riley area, and to sug­ Riley ceased to be Ucensed as a R. J. Paulson with white spruce planted in Riley area, believed gest conservation strategies that preserve, but as best I can tell, to be in 193

ET SUMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY rabbitSj and coyotes. Ducks and geese still thrive around the creek and in the marsh. The tracks mark some changes^ not only from Leopold^s day^ but also from when the authors grew up, Then^ wild turkeys were unheard of Red foxes were common^ but coy­ otes were a rarity. Now coyotes are becoming the dominant predators. But perhaps more than anything^ the Riley Coop­ erative remains a living monument to Leopold^s belief that conservationists can work with local landowners to preserve and restore the natural world. The Riley Cooperative^ he wrote^ '^aims to prove that the down­ ward trend of wildlife in the dairy belt can be reversed by the combined efforts of farmers and sportsmen^ without large expenditures either of cash or land,"^^ It is a pragmaticj letVget-down-to-work statement of Leopold^s ideas for the Riley Cooperative, But those ideas did not stray from his basic principles of people and landj as expressed in his foreword to A Sand CountyAkne^nec: "We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land UW Deparlmenl of Wildlife Eooloyy as a community to which we belongs we may begin to Releasing a trappedpheasam after banding use it with love and respect"^^ ^i'i The Authors ^Aldo Leopold, "Hisloiy of lhe Riley Game Cooperalive, 1931-1939" in Fouhe Heallh •jf ike Land- Previons'tf UyipiSltshed ESsa^fs nr/d Other WrUmgs (Wa^liiiigloii, D C • Island Janet Silbernagel is a member of the PreM, 1999), 17^ Origiiially published in lhe .'onma^^H'ciy^c/^ iV/ai^^m^>U, 1940 ^Riley Game Cooperative records, Aldo Leopold Archives, University of Wisconsin, faculty of Landscape Architecture and the Deparlmenl of Wildlife Ecology Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmen­ ^Telephone interview wilh John Riley, December 2001 •telephone interview wilh Gene Roark, January 2002 tal Studies at the University of Wisconsin- ^Gene Roark, '^llie Riley Game Co-op," Dane Counly Conservation League newsletter, Jan­ Madison. She teaches a regional design uary 19S7 and conservation studio, along with ^John Riley interview ^Roark, '^llie Riley Game Co-op" research methods and geographic infor­ ^Quotations fiom Aldo Leopold, '^Hel ping Ourselves' Being the Adventures of a Fanner and mation systems. Janet studies the ecology a Sportsman Who Produced Their Own Shooting Ground," Forlhe Hedtih of lhe Land. 33- 40 Originally published in Field & Slreum., 1934 of cultural landscapes. Her work generally telephone interview wilh Shirley Zwolanek, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, has direct applications to conservation or ecological design. July 2002 Currently she has a public design project underway in Middle- lOLetiei fioin Aldo Leopold lo Mr Paul ICelleler, whose tide is given only as 'Tlirector of Conservation, Madison, Wisconsin" The lelter vk daled September 20, 1932, and in it ton to reveal nature in an urban setting and is designing an exhi­ Leopold amends the boundaries of the Riley Shooting Preserve Riley Game Cooperative bition about cultivation along Wisconsin's Lake Superior region. records, Aldo Leopold Archives, University ofWisconsin llLeopold, '^Helping Ourselves," 39,35 ^^Riley Game Cooperative records Bob Silbernagel and his wife, Judy, 1'^ Leopold, "Hislory ofthe Riley Game Cooperative," iSl S2 I'llbid abandoned their home state ofWisconsin l^Visit lo Riley area witii Wanen foo, December 2001 for the mountains of Colorado thirty years ^^John Riley interview ^^Riley Game Cooperative records ago but return annually to visit the Mount ^^John Riley interview Horeb and Madison areas. After studying l^oark, '^llie Riley Game Co-op " ^John Riley interview journalism at the University of Wisconsin, 2lRoark, '^llie Riley Game Co-op " ^Telephone interview wilh Jim Mueller, January 2002 Bob began his journalism career in Vail, ^^Leopold, '^History of lhe Riley Game Cooperative, ISO Colorado. He has been the editorial page ^AldoLeopold,A ^andConyiTf A'tmayme nr/dSkelchesHere ayidThere (New York' Oxford editor for The Daily Sentinel in Grand Universily Press, 1949) Junction, Colorado, for the past eight years. He is the author of Stalking the Dinosaur Hunters of Western Colorado, published by the Museum of Western Colorado and several historical magazine artides.

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77ie Wisconsin Heights battleground, just BAeen y ., • ipjles north of Blue Mounds, was the site of Black i--K'.'s-=^ '•;•''' Hawk's final military success. J

-• hives (X3)51480 ••

V- . By Robert A. Birmingham

n the spring of 1832 a terrifying series of alarms spread like prairie fire throughout the lead mining region of northwestern Illinois and present-day Mocauh southwestern Wisconsin. A large force of Native AmericansI , led by the Sauk warrior Black Hawk, was headed in that direction with the intent of attacking and :','/ driving out settlers. Word of impending danger had already reached the tiny mining settlement of Blue Mounds, in what is now Dane County, Wisconsin, and work on a log fort was well underway. The setders—min­ ers and farmers—feared not only Black Hawk but a gen­ eral uprising of the neighboring Ho-Ghunk people. Tension _j-;. " between the setders and . ; . Native Americans had been building for some time in the region, and during those spring - months lead miner Henry Dodge headed • a newly formed militia regiment of the Michi­ gan Territory, whose members served under the general command

of federal military WHS Archives (X3)39201 authorities.' Those Ebenezer Brigham, founder of who personally wit­ Blue Mounds and "squire" to the nessed Black Hawk's small mining community. movement through the Michigan Territory would recount the days of fearful tension, in both spoken and written word, diroughout dieir lives. Their descriptions of diat spring of 1832 would provide the documents that twenti­ eth-century students would rely upon to learn about fron­ tier life in Wisconsin. But not all stories are told in words. By the act of con­ structing and living in the fort for many months, the resi­ dents of Blue Mounds left an additional record of their lives in the very dirt upon which the fort rested, and by the objects of work and play that they used every day. This record was unearthed, literally, more than 150 years later by both professional and volunteer archaeologists. Their combined curiosity and efforts would result in a broader, more accurate understanding of life in a frontier commu­ nity, and the opportunity for future exploration. No mat- WISCONSIN MACAZINE OF HISTORY

l?r how ih? ;^ry I; IcJd, howj^sr. It b?^lii; vlth "ih? Blu ? fr.mlly wa; that of Esau Johnion, a l?ad mln? operator who Moimd;." owrL?d land. Including a fr.rm and a l?ad 3n?ll?r ii?xt lo Brljham'; place. Johnion'; written r?ccJl?cllorL; of th? Blacl. '^ABeaccntcthe Travels. Thirty Mile: Distant" Hawl. War, penned wh? n h? wa; In hi; ? l^hU?;, cl?arly ?xag^r- Th?i? 31? msny fJiyao.1 deKilpUon; of "th? Blu? Mound;,'' al? many ihlnj;. Including hi; rol? at ih? fort. Hi; m?morl?;, and ill? d?r[Hly wood?d tvln lull; wlios pes].; sis ^latJ? from lldr- ihos of many olh?r;, ar? ih? baa; for much of ih? hiilory writ­ ly mil?; sway. T1I?H d?3:ilpllor[; appear In official do cum? nl; ten about Wtco nan'; frontier life. from ill? ?arly ^ar; of IIL? l?rnlory, tticlndln^ tli? lyrical proH of H?r[ry Silioolcrafl^ wlio lour?d ill? fead FrcmMine; tc Militia r?^lon til? ^ar tefor? Bbcl. Hawl.'; uprianj Upon hearing that Bbcl. Hawl. and hi; 1,200 follo'-er;had crosed the Mlsl;appl Elver In early April, Hitler; throughout the lead-mlnlnj re^n hastily con- ?^?(^ >'1WJ ^X'll md >HWJ 'i^^. Nun/^!- ;lrucled fort;, ;loc]3.de;, and cts bioolts of limpid wif^i liw^is^ ;lrorLjliold; lo protect them from Ih^ pSilns^ \ni Sndi 'h^H \v\y anUclpaled Indian atlacl^. Oom- ^ilh^ inlo Ih^ Wi^omn^ Rodi panle; of Hveral hundred SSVf!^ O! Ih^ MlElalfpl. . . . mounted mllltia or ran^r;, Th^ sme sholar; have TIL? anall Blu? Mound; community conSi^d of Sn^ m?n ;peculaled that although Blacl. Hawl.'; move wa; lo reclaim ht andHV?ra] fr.mill?;, many ?mpJo^d by Brl^liam. On? fr.mlly, village, he may have hoped lo ;parl. a general upriang. The Dll- lliat of William Aubr?y, BrljlLam'; lLlr?d hand, h^d vltlL th? nol; and fowa-Mlchlgan mllltia, a; well a; foderal troop;, were urLmam?d Brljham, laknj car? of hi; houH. Anolh?r frontl?r ordered lo return Blacl. Hawl.lo the we;tade ofthe Mlsl;appl m SUMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

Pat Goitein A construction pattern identical to Fort Blue Mounds was found during excavation of the Apple River Fort, another Black Hawk War fort built by settlers near present-day Elizabeth, Illinois. It has been reconstructed, and visitors are welcome.

River "dead or alive." Under these circumstances, it is no won­ less in the narratives as well. One ofthe longest lists of male res­ der that on May 14 the Illinois Militia rebuffed Black Hawk's bid idents is in the narrative written by H. A. Tenney in the Wiscon­ for communication and skirmished with members of his band on sin Historical Collections. He lists twenty men, several of whom May 14. Fear of immediate attack from the area Ho-Chunk may played prominent roles in 1832, but many of them simply sought have played some role in motivating the completion of Fort Blue out the protection of the fort. Their names include McCraney, Mounds in just two weeks' time. Several dozen frightened set­ Kellogg, Lycan, Ferrall, Bower, Keith, Houghton, Collins, and tlers—men, women, and children—from the surrounding coun­ Broch.* tryside moved to the fort. Eyewitness and later historical accounts described a fairly The names ofthe people who moved into the fort vary with large log fort. Edward Beouchard, a fur trader and miner, pub­ the documents that list them. Not surprisingly, few narratives lished his description ofthe fort in William Smith's 1854 History mention women by name, although their presence there was ofWisconsin, stating that the 16- to 17-foot high log stockade mentioned. And the children who lived there often went name- was 150 feet in length with two corner blockhouses, 20 feet square.^ He wrote that within the stockade stood a log barracks and a storehouse that was 20 by 30 feet in size. In his remem­ brances, Essau Johnson also described a rather large structure encompassing a half-acre with two large, two-storied blockhous­ es, measuring 26 by 30 feet.^ Johnson added that he, his wife Sally, and a newborn infant child moved into one blockhouse, while Brigham took the other blockhouse along with some of his workers.

Bottom, left: A U.S. Army button from a soldier's uniform provides proof of a military presence at Blue Mounds. Photo, left: Archaeol­ ogists found both the honey-colored French gunflint, at left, and a broken lead gunflint patch, at right. Researchers also found lead patches similar to the Fort Blue Mounds specimen during excavations at the site of a federal garrison. Fort Crawford Photos by Joel Heiman in Prairie du Chien.

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Brigham brought his account book listing orders and goods supplied to the settlers ofthe Blue Mounds area as part of his mer­ Ft. Blue Mounds & the Black Hawk War, 1832 cantile business. On the back of book, Brigham kept a brief diary of the dramatic events that took place at the fort.'' Elsewhere in the book he provided information about where to contact his next of kin. Henry Dodge, as the leader of • ((route unclear) the Michigan Territory MUitia, Ft. Koshkonong came to Blue Mounds to empha­ size the fort's strategic impor­ tance. As the closest fortification of any kind to Black Hawk's traU, it would serve as a depot for pro­ visions for the troops, and its pro­ tection was critical. The men of Blue Mounds formed a company ofthe Iowa (County) regiment of the Michigan Territorial MUitia on May 20, and Dodge himself began to drUl them. They also Battle elected their first company Black Hawk's route, 1832 leader. Captain John Sherman.^ State/Territorial boundary, 1832 Among the miners, there were

no small arms and only a few 25 miles J rifles and shotguns. The company 25 kilometers petitioned Dodge for guns, and Map by Amelia Janes according to Johnson, Dodge Black Hawk's route through Illinois and Wisconsin affected sent the men to Galena, Illinois, many ofthe new communities. The Sauk leader brought his peo­ where they came away with just a ple safely through the lead region of present-day south central blunderbuss and a six-pounder. Wisconsin, but met with defeat at Bad Axe when trying to cross Indeed, quartermaster accounts the Mississippi River. from Fort Defiance south of Mineral Point indicate that a swivel he and Brigham eventually had to go to the federal stronghold. gun, which is a small mobile canon that can be mounted on Fort Winnebago, located in present-day Portage, forty mUes stockade wall or ship's deck, was signed out to Fort Blue from Blue Mounds, where they secured a wagonload of used Mounds. The same record shows that a dozen or so U.S. mus­ muskets that required repairs. kets and accoutrements had been distributed to Fort Jackson in Fort Blue Mound's strategic position made it the focus of Mineral Point for use by the mounted mUitia assigned to Fort frantic activity. Uncertain of the intentions of the Ho-Chunk Blue Mounds,^ but mounted mUitia spent little time at the fort bands in the district and fearing that they might side with Black itself since their job was to patrol the area, so few of these arms Hawk, a council was held at Blue Mounds on May 28 with the actually came to the fort. Repeated requests to Dodge for arms principal chiefs ofthe Wisconsin River area." Two days earlier and provisions for the fort went unheeded, prompting Ebenezer a similar council had been held with other Ho-Chunk leaders at Brigham to write in his diary for June 23 that Dodge "appears to Lake Mendota. Those Ho-Chunk who attended the councils bear mali[ce] against [us] for no cause."'" Accordingto Johnson, assured the Americans oftheir peaceful intentions. Around the g SUMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

WHS Archives Name File The abduction of Rachel and Silma Hall filled the lead region vAth terror, but Potavmtomi, Sauk, and Ho-Chunk people, all playing different role's, brought the girls to the safety of Fort Blue Mounds, with the assistance of Edward Beouchard. same time a mounted carrier brought news to the fort of an attempted to appease the enraged chiefs and warriors with hors­ attack on a settler's homestead near the Fox River in Illinois. es and other gifts, the friction between the Ho-Ghunk and Amer­ Potawatomi warriors had murdered several people and abduct­ icans exploded into violence a few days later. Onjune 6 William ed two teenage girls, Rachael and Silvia Hall, who were turned Aubrey and Jefferson Smith, another of Brigham's workers, left over to some Sauk in the war party.'^ the fort on horseback to get fresh water from the spring next to Edward Beouchard, the fur trader, acted on behalf of the fed­ the Brigham establishment. There they were surprised by a small eral government and rode to the Ho-Ghunk encampment on the party of Native Americans who shot and killed Aubrey. Pan­ Blue Mounds, northeast ofthe Brigham residence. There he met icked, Smith dropped his gun, left his horse, and ran to the fort, with principal chief Wa-kon-kaw, who in turn went to the chiefs blood flowing from his nose from fright and exertion.'^ ofthe Four Lakes area, at present-day Madison. Within a few The settlers of Fort Blue Mounds surmised that the attackers days. Captain Sherman received word from the Ho-Ghunk that were not Black Hawk's warriors, but those ofthe band ofthe Ho- the release of the sisters had been secured, and that they would Ghunk encamped nearby on the Blue Mounds. Black Hawk was be released to the Americans. But the Ho-Ghunk also passed on forty miles away, near Lake Kegonsa. One statement made by a frightening news: Sauk war parties were on the way "to attack militia member at the time of the incident said that the attack this place."i3 was precipitated by a Ho-Ghunk man who had a verbal alterca­ A group of Ho-Ghunk, including several principal chiefs, tion with Aubrey's wife, during which he threatened to kill her delivered the hostages onjune 1 to Fort Blue Mounds, where the husband." Indeed, Ho-Ghunk leaders confirmed, after the war's women took care ofthe girls, who were haggard but otherwise end, that one oftheir own had killed Aubrey and that several had healthy.'* Dodge and a company of men came to the fort to take "raised the hatchet" against the Americans.'^ custody of the girls but, deeply suspicious of the alacrity with After Aubrey's death, riders from the fort, led by a mounted which the release ofthe Halls was obtained, took hostage the Ho- company sent by Dodge, followed a trail to the recently aban­ Ghunk party itself in a misguided attempt to guarantee peaceful doned Ho-Ghunk camp and then to the Wisconsin River, where behavior of area Ho-Ghunk.'^ Although the party was soon the search was suspended. According to Johnson, Aubrey was released after another council, and Indian Agent Henry Gratiot buried on a high piece of prairie northeast ofthe fort, "where it

SUMMER 2003 H WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY would be a nice place for a bury­ /f for the military. In mid-July, thir­ U^T^-^' dj7:ri- I/i J-A- ^^^/^' >^' ing ground."'^ Anxiety increased ty-six wagonloads of supplies, at the fort through June as gathered from depots at Mineral reports were received of other Point and Dixon's Ferry in Illi­ attacks and small but bloody bat­ nois, were assembled at the fort. • ; 4 ^^€-e tles in the lead mining district.^° They were to be sent east in relief "'^ /^.j/i /Jil;/<_^ Then onjune 20, a large Sauk to Atkinson's troops as they pur­ war party struck close by, killing sued and ultimately destroyed two men on patrol, Emerson Black Hawk's band and then cap­ Green and George Force. The tured the Sauk leader himself in ,/,i-iivCiO" / ^<-«'»t-, two had ridden out to investigate August.2* strange noises heard the previous WHS Archives Wis Mss AM When the soldiers left in their night. Several miles east of the Ebenezer Brigham's account book documents the everyday final pursuit, a welcome calm fort, the riders encountered Black life of the "Eort Establishment." descended on the people of the Hawk's warriors, who had appar­ fort as the war passed them by. ently been guided to Blue The Blue Mounds company of Mounds by sympathetic Ho- the Iowa County Michigan mili­ Ghunk.2' Force was killed tia was mustered out of service of instantly, but Green made for the the United States by command of fort. Within view of the fort's General Atkinson on August 20, inhabitants, Green had his horse 1832, and the lead miners and shot out from under him, and he settlers returned to their homes. was quickly surrounded. Esau Johnson wrote that he Several eyewitness accounts returned to his place to find his indicate that Green's body had buildings and lead furnace dis­ been horribly mutilated. The sembled and burned, presumably remains were buried at the fort.^^ by Native Americans. He and his Force's body, however, lay on family returned to the fort to live the prairie for four days, the set­ for awhile as he rebuilt his tlers too frightened by the nature home.^^ Brigham stayed in the of Green's death to travel any community that he had founded, distance to retrieve it. An entry watching it grow. New arrivals dated June 23 in Brigham's brief recalled the establishment of a diary of events concluded, "our post office at "Squire Brigham's," situation is a delicate one. ... I his many cows and "large, excel­ expect an attack from the Indi­ lent garden," and "the farming ans. We cannot stand a siege." and mining hands" who contin­ Dodge and his rangers discov­ ued to board at his home.^^ ered the remains of George ^ "Squire" Brigham apparently Force, also mutilated, and buried was flourishing, both as a farmer him on June 24 alongside the Photo by Joei Heiman and a lead miner, but Joseph main trail about two miles east of Although in shards, the ceramics found at Blue Mounds still Shafer in his Domesday Book have a tale to tell. The common blue and white colors and Blue Mounds. Dodge left men familiar patterns were a mark of civility on the frontier. The describes a community that pur­ for a time to provide security for detail shows the word, "warranted," a sign of authenticity. sued neither mining or farming. the fort.^^ "There was mining activity about Blue Mounds, and a few other Although Brigham expected a direct attack upon the fort, the points, but not enough to interfere with the agricultural utiliza­ only violence was upon those who left its safety. No longer a tar­ tion ofthe land. But the farms were comparatively undeveloped, get, Fort Blue Mounds functioned primarily as a supply center only 2 having as much as 100 acres improved." m SUMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

WHS Archives [X3>4iy73 Above: Dedication at Fott Bltte Mounds. The plaque dedicated on that S^tember day in 19^0 was the fin t historic marker erected by the Society^ arid the ceremony as well as the plaque itself reflected the effort of an energetic liindmarks committee and a new era of public outreach pioneered by director Rueben Gold Thvjaites. Right: The historical marker at the site of Fort Blue Mounds

No account clearly describes the use of the fort after the spring of 1832. It was apparently dismantled^ its timber likely used to fuel the lead furnaces. The fort and the role that it played in the Black Hawk War^ was not forgotten completely^ however. In 1910 the heirs of Ebenezer Brigham donated a quarter acre of land from the original fort site to the Wisconsin Historical Soci­ ety^ which dedicated a bronze commemorative plaque at the site during a well-attended public ceremony. At the time ofthe marker dedicarion^ the swales and depres­ sions marking the site of Fort Blue Mounds were still visible^ allowing the installarion of four cement pillars to distinguish the property from surrounding farmland. But time passed^ and plows ^1 eventually obliterated these markings^ knocking down the Robert Birmingliam cement pillars that gave some indicarion where the original fort State Archaeologist (OSA) initiated a project to define the site walls might be. In the 1990s all that could be seen of Fort Blue area and eventually to preserve it. Taking advantage of great Mounds was a small^ disintegrating cement marker with a public interest in archaeology and Wisconsin history in general^ bronze plaque in a middle of farm field. the OSA enlisted help from the Charles E, Brown Archaeologi­ cal Society^ a large group of nonprofessionals. Many others also The New Volunteers donated their rime and skills^ including Boy Scout troop mem­ In the spring of 1991^ one hundred and fifty-nine years after bers complering archaeology merit badge requirements. Between the volunteer miliria left Fort Blue Mounds^ another large group 1991 and 2000^ more than fifty different volunteers worked on of volunteers converged on the site^ this rime to locate and docu­ summer weekends^ and^ though slower than a typical archaeo­ ment the remains of the fort. Worried that development in the logical investigation^ the project successfully accommodated vol­ rapidly growing rural area might damage the remains of Fort unteer schedules^ demands of additional training and oversight^ Blue Mounds^ the Wisconsin Historical Society's Office of the and the inevitable impact ofWisconsin summer weather.

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Drawing by IVIarl< Heinrichs based on a drawing by IVIil

Preliminary sketch of Fort Blue Mounds.

Personal motivations differed. Most were drawn to the proj­ a quarter acre, so—if true—the land on which the fort rested had ect by the excitement associated with unearthing important his­ to extend onto surrounding farm fields. Three strategies were torical artifacts. One individual, however, sought a personal used to search for the fort's boundaries. First, with the coopera­ connection to history. Howard Houghton is a direct descendant tion of the landowner, the surface of surrounding farm lands was of William Houghton, one of the Brigham's "hands." Howard systemically searched for artifacts that would mark locations of provided much information about his great-great-grandfather, fort activities and structures. The survey included the use of a including that William Houghton was a blacksmith. Howard metal detector and the excavation of small test trenches in an spent many hours alongside his wife screening for artifacts that effort to bisect the walls of the fort. Second, the Society property his relative might actually have used or made. was gridded off into five-foot squares, and a selection of these units were carefully excavated by using shovels, trowels, screens, Finding the Fort and other archaeological tools. Last, once preliminary informa­ The first task was to determine the exact location of the prop­ tion had been gathered, local contractors rapidly removed the erty donated to the Wisconsin Historical Society in 1910. On it top ten inches of soil in selected areas that had already been dis­ would be the remains ofthe fort. The historic marker was still on turbed by plowing to further uncover the remains of structures. this land, but was it near the actual fort site? The deed to the Archaeologists use this last method judiciously since it necessari­ property had no reference to location. Volunteer Terry Genske, ly leads to the loss or destruction of potentially important artifacts a civil engineer, reasoned that the bases of the broken cement in the plowed topsoil. More sophisticated remote sensing tech­ pillars that once marked the Society land could be found in the nology was employed but with limited success, due to the geolo­ ground using a metal detector because they had iron reinforcing gy and soil characteristics of the hill. rods. Genske, who often has to search for property markers as a The land outside the Society's quarter acre yielded few related part of his job, then quickly located the bases of the markers, artifacts but excavators quickly uncovered straight dark soil dis­ reestablishing the quarter acre of Society land. coloration on the Society property that was several feet deep and The next—and much greater—task was to locate the buried one foot wide, indicating a filled-in trench that once supported remains of the fort on the small parcel of land. Historical the vertical logs forming the stockade or outer wall of the fort. In accounts indicated that the size of the fort was much larger than several places, the rounded ends of the individual oak logs were

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.•:--/;^-^"-^^v:r -., •-^^sjj.-'- :3Tij. Bobbie Mslone An archaeologist models correct technique for these children, while the State Archaeologist (and turiter of this article) looks on. The students were there to pose for the coiner of WHS Press book, Digging and Discovery; Wisconsin Archaeology. srill there- Approximately five feet beyond the stockade^ another dirt floor of one structure- The lack of a wall trench in the two deep and wider dark stain was found to parallel the wall^ a filled- corners ofthe fort suggests that blockhouses^ unlike the stockade in defensive ditch that encircled the fort- Tracking the orientarion walls^ were built using horizontal log construcrion^ like log cabins- of the stockade line and defensive ditch led to a huge surprise: The size ofthe blockhouses at Blue Mounds could not be deter­ Fort Blue Mounds was much smaller than the historical record^ mined by the limited excavarions but the gaps in the stockade even eyewitness accounts^ led us to believe- In fact it was enrirely could have accommodated the fairly large structures described in contained within the Society's quarter acre- The deed to the the historical accounts- Although no specific size for the dwellings property refers only to a ^^block house/' a term often used for both in the fort can be determined^ only two walled areas for twenty or the fort as a whole and the main building- Volunteer researchers more people^ including children^ reinforces the belief that the discovered that the stockade—that is^ the outer wall—was rectan­ close quarters ofthe fort^ during rimes of both terror and anxious gular^ measuring bb feet by 45 feet- It was built of individual oak logs placed verrically in a ^Vall- wairing^ must have been a challenge- trench'' one foot wide and approximately two feet deep- The sur­ Unearthing the Past rounding defensive ditch ranged from four to seven feet wide and Several thousand arrifacts were recovered^ deposited during four feet deep- Gaps in the southeast and northwest corners ofthe both the four-month occuparion and after the lead miners stockade represented the presence ofthe two blockhouses- In the returned to their normal lives- A major category of arrifacts are limited excavarion^ archaeologists found no structural evidence of related to military activiries^ and several hundred lead musket the blockhouses^ although a large^ shallow dark stain found run­ balls and shot pellets of various sizes were recovered primarily ning perpendicular to the southeast corner ofthe fort may be the from the interior ofthe fort- Although many ofthe musket balls

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Photos by Joel Heiman Above: Three pieces of lead found at the Fort Blue Mounds site show the progress from mines to militia. The block at left is raw lead; a musket ball or bullet is lower left; and the piece at the right is sprue, the waste product from the processing. Left: Local animals offered more than food for physical sustenance. The domino shown here is carved from animal bone, and it and clay marbles found at the site allowed the settlers some amusement while living in close conditions. Army issued weapons as Johnson said, and U.S. army regulars as documented after the Battle of Wisconsin Heights. The button from U.S. army soldier's uni­ and shot may have been standard military issue, the fort's inhab­ form, though not a gun-related object, further indicates a mili­ itants also cast ammunition in molds for themselves with lead tary presence at the site at some point. taken from the adjacent mine. Some ofthe most common objects Domestic activities at the fort site are represented by hun­ found in the fort interior were small chunks of melted lead, the dreds of broken pieces of ceramic tableware and a smaller num­ by-products from the casting. Several fragments of castings with ber of bone-handled knives and forks and metal spoons. lead shot attached, called "sprue," as well as unprocessed lead Although only fragments, the ceramic shards are easily recog­ cubes were unearthed. nized as English imports colorfully decorated by a variety of Other gun-related objects found were gunflints and one half methods referred to as transfer print, edge-decorated, annular, of a broken lead gunflint patch. They were most likely left by the and hand-painted. Those found at Fort Blue Mounds thus far federal soldiers, rather than the local militia because most of the differ from other sites in that the range of styles is narrower. This flints at Fort Blue Mounds were the honey-colored French flints may reflect lower economic status of the Blue Mounds commu­ that the U.S. military preferred and purchased in quantity. Civil­ nity, its remoteness from distribution centers, or most likely, that ians tended to use black, British-made flints. But the broken lead life at the fort was perceived as temporary and immediate, and gunflint patch? It would be a logical assumption that, because it not all available items were brought there. was made of lead, it was a local product, but that logic would Analysis of ceramics also confirms that the site was used after prove faulty. Only the military commonly used the mass-pro­ the Black Hawk war. Makers' marks on two nearly complete duced lead patches because soldiers were likely to have to fire dishes discovered in the fill of the defensive ditch indicate that their guns continuously. Leather patches were much more com­ they were manufactured in the late 1840s. Ironically, one of the mon on the frontier, when gunshots were more occasional and dishes was a commemorative plate for another American con­ there was little risk of burning through them. The presence of flict, the Texas Revolution of 1836. The discovery does not indi­ these two types of military artifacts confirms the presence of U.S. cate that the structure continued to be used as a fort, but rather

^ SPRING 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY that it continued to exist in the com­ The Author Wisconsin history. Future research munity of Blue Mounds, may also relocate the graves of Lt Animal bone found during the Robert Birmingham joined the Emerson Green^ Pvt William excavations^ combined with the his­ Wisconsin Historical Society in 1986 Aubrey^ and Pvt George Force so and has been the Wisconsin State torical record^ shows that the settlers that they can be appropriately Archaeologist since 1989. He earned subsisted on a narrow range of marked as resting places of some of both bachelor's and master's domesticated and wild foods. The degrees in Anthropology from the the first American military casual­ settlers ate pork and venison with University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. ties of what is now Wisconsin, )^ifA minor amounts of beef and poultry, He is senior editor of the special vol­ ume of ThB Wisconsm Archeologist called Wisconsin 1 Alice E Smilh The Histoiy •yf Wiscoi\sin- Vol I OatSj corn^ and garden crops were From £>:plonxnon to Statehood (Msdisun, WL Slale planted^ although^ like huntings Archeology and the senior author of the new book Indian Hislifiical Si-dely iff Wiscifiisin, 1973) Sifineiffihe Mounds of Wisconsin published by the University of Wis­ miners were wifrldng and living ifn lands ihal lhe Hif these activities were disrupted by the Chunk slill claimed consin Press. In 2000 he received the Increase Lapham war, Brigham^s account books indi­ ^ Jifseph Shafer, TTi? Wisconsin Domesdixy Book Research Medal from the Wisconsin Archeological ladisifn, Wl' Wis&jnsin Hisicfrical Scdeiy 1932) 39 cate that potatoes^ flour^ and supple­ f Allen Ruff and Tixy Will, Fo/w^td! A History of Society. Dime- the C/xpitu! Coimry (Cambridge, Wl' Wc-ud mentary store-bought goods such as henge Press, 2C«)) 37 38 * H A Tenney, "Early Times in Wlsccnsin,'* in Col­ sugar^ saltj coffee^ and tea were important to the people of Blue lections of the SUfte Histonc/ilSociery ofWisconsin (Madiscn' Wlsccnsin Hlslcrical Scciely) 1'9S ^ Edward Becuchard, "Becuchard^s Narralive,'4nTTif History ofWisconsin inJhree Puits, WLT- Mounds,^ ^ During the war^ lack of food must have been problem toric^l Docun/enl^/y, ^n^ Descriptive, P^rtn, ^ Wilham Smilh (Madiscn, Wl' 1854)209 214 since letters to Dodge included desperate pleas not only for guns^ ^ Essau Jchnscn Papers, IStt) 1SS2, Wlsccnsin Hlslcrical Sc-dely Jchnscn^s reminiscences are emh^Ulshed and ccnfused wilh regard Ic regard chrcnclcgy cf evenis and iherefcre musi be but also for provisions. Other artifacts found at the fort site regarded critically ' Ebenezer Brigham Diary, Ebaiezer Brigham PJJKIS, Wlsccnsin Hlslcrical Scciely included numerous fragments of white clay pipes^ wine and ^ Musler Ecle cf Caplain Sherman^s Ccmpany cf Icwa Mhtia Slaticned al Blue Mcunds Fcrl, whiskey bottle Sj nails (mostly from boxes)^ tools^ clothing buttons^ Wlsccnsin Kslcrical Sciiely ^ Gecrge M Crawfcrd and Ecberl Crawfcrd, eds , li^emoirs of Iowa County (Ncrlhweslem His and one coin—an 1888 American halfpenny found in the defen­ icrical Asscciaticn, 1913) 25 1<^ Brigham Diary; Ellen M Whiiney, ed 7heBliickH^wkW^r-iS3i /^J2 (Springfield'Ilhncis sive ditch. Each provides an insight into the history ofthe fort SiaieHisicricalSciieiy, 1970 1978, iwo vcis) The date of the half penny found at the bottom of a filled-in 11 Blue Mcunds Ccuncil, May 28, 1832, in Whiiney, 7he Bliick H^k W^r, vcl 2, pan 1, 4^7 4^9 defensive ditch^ helps date the filling ofthe trench by returned 12 ^•Becuchard's Narrative,'' 213 1^ Jchn Sherman ic Ifenry Dcdge, May 30, 1832, in Whiiney, The BliickH^k W^r, vcl 2, pan miners. 1, 487 488 1'* "Jchn NfesKrsrrdlh's Nanalive,'4nTTif History ofWisconsin in Three Parts, Historu:^ Doc­ The discovery of each artifact excited the volunteer workers umentary, and Descriptive, Part!!, ed William Smilh (Madiscn, WL 1854) 225; "Becuchard's Nanalive," 214 at the site^ but a few artifacts in particular helped researchers to l^HenryGralicllcHenryAtidnscn, Juried, 1832, in Whiiney,TTifSfiiffeHiiu'fe Mir, vcl 2, pan understand the humanity behind the artifacts, A hand-carved 1,531 532;IfenryGraticllcWnhamaark, Junel2, 1832, in Whiiney, TTif SLiffeH^fe Mir. vcl 2, pan 1, 577 579; Henry Graiici Diary, in Whiiney, The Black Hiwk War, vcl 2, pan 2, bone domino piece and several clay marbles reflected games 1303 played^ perhaps to wile away the hours in the crowded and tense 1^ Ebenezer Brigham Ic JchnH Kinzie, June 15, 1832, in Whiiney, The Bl^ckHawk War, vcl 2, pari 1, €04 €06; "Becuchard's Nanative," 209; Essau Jchnscn Papers fort compound. These artifacts are a reminder of the humanity 1'^ James M Sicde Ic Henry Alkinscn, June 10, 1832, in Whiiney, The Black Hiwk War, vcl 2, pan 1, 566 569 that belongs to history. In successfully connecting the two^ this IS Ccuncil wilh lhe Reck River Winnebagc, Seplemh^r 11, 1832, in Whiiney, The Black Hawk archaeological project met its most basic goal. M^r. vcl 2, pan 2, 1133 1^ Essau Jchnscn Papers ^ On June 14 fcur rren were killed al Spaffcrd's Farm near Hamillcn's diggings al mcdem day But there were other goals as well. The Wisconsin Historical Wicia On June 16 a man was killed and scalped during a bailie en lhe Pecalcnica River Society archaeological investigations sampled only a small part 21 "Becuchard's Nanative,'* 211 212; Brigham Diary; Essau Jchnscn Papers 22 ^•Becuchard's Nanative,'' 212 of the Fort Blue Mounds site^ acquiring enough information to 23 Ifenry Dcdge ic Ifenry Alkinscn, June 30, 1832, in Whiiney, TTifSLnrfeHiiu'fe Miir, vcl 2, pan 2,715 answer some basic questions about the physical layout and con­ 2'' Thayer, Crawfcrd, ed , Hunting a Shadow The Search for Black Hau^k (privalely published, dition ofthe fort. The archaeological information combined with 1981)203 2J Essau Jchnscn Papers historical research provide a clearer window to the past than 26 Tenney, "Early Tirres in Wisccnsin,'* 6'347 what documentary evidence alone could provide. With this 2' Acccunlani Bcifks, Essau Jchnscn Papss information^ the site was listed on the National Register of His­ toric Places in 2002, For Further Study The site of Foit Blue Mounds is not presently open to the public. However, off- Other goals are still unmet Remains of most of the fort site site interpretation, museum exhibit?, and a major archaeological publication are are still hidden and preserved below the surface ofthe hill on planned. Moreover, visitors can stop at a historic maiker in the village of Blue Mounds, within view of the foit site, commemorating the foit and the Black Society property^ awaiting future archaeological and historical Hawk War. Elsewhere, traveler? can follow the Black Hawk trail in Wisconsin research. Perhaps one day^ the fort can be accurately recon- by visiting fliirty-five historic markers associated with the Black Hawk War recenfly erected by local historical organizations in cooperation with the Wis­ structedj bringing to life a tumultuous and important period of consin Historical Sodety.

SPRING 2003 m EDITORS' -^CHOICE Books Even ts Muhimedi. Exhibits Resources Locations

Across This Land: A chapter on the Corn Belt) ofthe lower Great Lakes, Across This Land Regional Geography The second discussion ofWisconsin appears eight chapters of the United States later in the chapter on the upper Great Lakes region. In just vL GEOGRAPHY OF THt UNITED STATES and Canada eleven pages^ Hudson places its early settlement history in the AND CANADA BY JOHN C, HUDSON context of the physical environment^ addresses the "cutover" region^ and the geographical character ofthe Canadian Shield's The Johns- Hopkins- JJmversitj Press, Baltiwore, MD, 2002. Pp. xxi, 474. extension into Wisconsin^ upper Michigan^ and Minnesota, Index, notes, hihliogfUphj, illustra­ Across This Land vjhets the appetite for more extensive read­ tions, maps. ISSN 0-8018^567-0, $29.95, .softcrjuer. ings map study^ and travels. The delicious historical details are interspersed with sweeping generalizations that capture the ohn C, Hudson's essence of each region and sub-region. Unfortunately^ while the T Across This Land is references following each chapter are instructive^ a more exten­ the first book pub­ sive bibliographic essay was not included. Moreover^ some of JOHN C. HUDSON lished since at least the 1970s the i 11 u strati on s^ while interesting in their own right^ fail to to cover the regional^ physi­ enhance the narrative prose. But these are quibbling concerns^ cal^ cultural^ and economic geography of the entire United minor blemishes that do not mar Hudson's impressive accom­ States and Canada, Hudson^ an accomplished historical geogra­ plishment. pher^ harkens back to the ideographic tradition that character­ So why should someone interested in Wisconsin history read ized academic geography through the mid-twentieth century this book? Firsts Wisconsin's history and geography do not exist with a text that provides both a highly informative synthesis and in a vacuum^ and Hudson places the state and its people and enjoyable reading throughout. industries in broad regional context Second^ Hudson covers the The book consists of twenty-seven chapters^ each covering a entire United States and Canada in a single^ affordable book of distinctive sub-region of the ten major regions of the United fewer than 500 pages. Third and most important^ it's such good States and Canada, These chapters pay little attention to state or reading and such a valuable resource that Across This Land is national boundaries; regions are defined instead by physiogra­ an essential book in the personal library of any well-read Amer­ phy^ climate^ and land use. To describe each sub-region^ Hud­ ican or Canadian, son deftly weaves a tapestry combining strands of physical RUSSELL S, KIRBY landscape^ geology and geomorphology^ climate^ settlement pat­ University of Alabama at Birmingham terns^ soils^ economic livelihood^ and historical events. The result is that each chapter can stand on its own^ yet the reader TO OUR READERS cannot resist continuing on to the next, Maps^ landscape pho­ Are there books^ events^ or resources about Wisconsin tographs^ and carefully selected references flesh out the narra­ that you think we should know about? tive descriptions in each regional vignette. And yes^ there is even We'd like to hear from you. a chapter on Hawaii, Write to Reviews Editor^ The regional geography of Wisconsin is described in two Wisconsin Magazine of History chapters. The first^ which discusses the lower Great Lakes Wisconsin Historical Society region^ addresses several significant industries^ including a large 816 State Street, Madison, Wl 53706-1482 portion of the manufacturing belt^ the traditional iron and steel or e-mail Reviews®whs-wisc-edu industry^ and much ofthe nation's automobile industry^ as well Most books featured in Editors' Choice may be purchased as the core of the nation's dairy industry, Hudson succinctly or ordered from the Wisconsin Historical Museum store: describes how each industry has shaped the economic and cul­ (608) 264-6428 or www,Wisconsinhistory,org/shop. They may tural geography of the region and identifies recent changes also be acquired from most major bookstores or on-line retail­ brought on by global competition and free trade agreements. ers. Books from smaller presses should be ordered directly The ethnic heritage of European settlement is briefly described^ from the book's publisher^ whose address may be found on as are the Niagara escarpment^ the Driftless Area^ and the major the Internet or by contacting us at the above address. metropolitan regions (besides Chicago^ which is included in the

SUMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

Planning a ductive use for any plot of land. The cutover, they determined, Wilderness: was far better suited to growing trees than crops. The problem for Regenerating the men like Ely and Lovejoy, the author explains, lay in convincing Great Lakes Cutover the general public of this conclusion. Residents of the cutover Region resisted collective planning and forest regeneration, valuing BY JAMES KATES instead a pioneer lifestyle that favored individual action and con­ :PLANNING| University of Minnesota Press, ceived of farming as the highest form of land use. Kates empha­ Minneapolis, 2001. Pp. xix, 207. Index, sizes the surprising role that writers played in changing public notes, illustrations. r A ISBN0-8166-3579-X, $29.95, opinion. For example, he suggests that the novels of James Oliver \ WILDERNESS hardcover. Gurwood and Harold Titus, two writers and conservationists who Regenerating the Great Lakes Cutover Region t IS hard to imagine the set many of their stories in the cutover, sold to residents of the northwoods landscape of northwoods the vision of the northern Great Lakes as a planned JAMES KATES I, Wisconsin, Michigan, and forest. Here, Kates explores the process of place-making, illustrat­ Minnesota as something other ing how the cutover became a place with not only forests, but also than long stretches of forest speckled with lakes, rivers, small myths and stories about those forests. towns, and fishing resorts. However, to grow trees in an area still However, the extent to which these conservationists convinced occasionally called the "cutover," required conscious planning the cutover's residents of the need for reforestation remains and place-making. The cutover—an area of forty-five counties unclear. For most ofthe book, Kates remains in the realm of ideas. across three states that share several natural and cultural charac­ He traces the evolution of rural zoning laws and shows how the teristics—earned its name for its appearance in the early twentieth place-making of storytellers and writers supported these ideas. But century after decades of ruthless logging. In Planning a Wilder­ Kates fails to make a crucial connection; he does not show how ness, ^arati Kates, who holds a Ph.D. in journalism from the Uni­ ideas translated into on-the-ground changes in the cutover. With­ versity of Wisconsin and is currently an editor at the Milwaukee out this connection, there is no way to gauge the impact of the Journal Sentinel, traces the roots of today's northwoods. He ideas that he analyzes. (Of course, the cutover is forested today.) demonstrates how foresters, land economists, and planners looked Nor does Kates consider the social costs ofthe planners' vision for at a landscape scarred by social and economic stagnation, failed the cutover by exploring, for example, how forest regeneration agriculture, and a crisis in tax delinquency and envisioned a affected the people who lived in the region. vibrant new economy based on scientific forestry and recreation­ Nevertheless, Kates has an important story to tell, and he tells al tourism. it well. He writes with strong, clear prose, and deftly introduces the Kates explores this vision for cutover regeneration by examin­ reader to both the theories and the personalities of his subjects. ing the lives, careers, and ideas of a handful of men active in con­ Planning a Wilderness reminds us that the modern landscape of servation in the 1920s. For example, Richard T. Ely and P. S. the Great Lakes cutover is the product of conscious planning, and Lovejoy sought to end the failed agricultural experiments in the that a planned "wilderness" holds many lessons about American cutover. Both men advocated a more rational, scientific approach interactions with nature. to land use—one informed by the emerging disciplines of regional JAMES FELDMAN planning and land economics—that would identify the most pro­ University of Wisconsin-Madison Barn Again! Celebrating an American Icon - 2003 Wisconsin Tour

arnstorm Wisconsin is an initiative of tine will visit Kewaunee, Farm Technology Day in Wisconsin Humanities Council tliat is Waupaca County, Osceola, and Washburn this B bringing the Smithsonian traveling exhib­ summer and fall. For details on the many Barn­ it "Barn Again! Celebrating an American Icon" to storm Wisconsin events scheduled, the tour dates, Wisconsin. The exhibition also features a special and to find out more about "The Year of the Barn" exhibit on Wisconsin's barns and agricultural his­ in Wisconsin, visit the Wisconsin Humanities tory. The tour runs through November 1, 2003 and Council website at: http://wisconsinhumanities.org

SUMMER 2003 "g BOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS

After the Fire: A Keepers of the Wolves: The Early Years of Writer Finds His Wolf Recovery in Wisconsin Place BY RICHARD P. THIEL BY PAUL ZIMMER University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 2001. Pp. aiii, 227. Index, notes, illustrations, maps. ISBN0-299-17474-3, $19.95, softcover. University cf Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2002. Pp. xtiii, 229. W% ichard P. Thiel pnavides a first-hand account ofthe return of imN 0-8166-4019-X, $21.95, hardcover. the timber wolf to Wisconsin. Thiel made a career out of tracking and protecting the animals that he calls the "phantom of his is the story of Paul the forest," eventually holding the post of wolf biologist for the Zimmer's joumey from Wisconsin Department of Natural Resourc;es. In this book he his boyhood in Canton, Ohio, shares his personal and professional stories fnam his interactions with Wisconsin's expanding wolf population. and his days as a soldier during atomic tests in the Nevada desert. His clear, Lighthouses ofthe poignant prose takes us Great Lakes: Your through his many years as a Guide to the Visiter and publisher and Region's Historic finally to the rural tranquility of his present life on a farm in the hills of the Driftless Area of southVi'estern Wisconsin. Above all, Lighthouses the book is a consideration of the Vi'ays that nature provides TEXT BY TODD R BERGER meaning and solace, and of the importance of finding the right PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANIEL place in Vi'hich to live. E. DEMPSTER Voyageur Press, Stilboater, MN, Ghost Towns ofthe Forest: Vanished 2002. pp. 160. Index, bibliography, 125 color and b/v) photographs. Lumber Towns ofWisconsin, VoL 1 ISBNa89658-517-4, $29.95, BY RANDALL E. ROHE hardcover. Forest History Association of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Papids, Wl, 2002. Pp. 333. Index, notes, illustrations, appendices, maps. ISBN 193180327-7, $42.50, m ighthouses ofthe Great Lakes takes readers on a historical hardcover. '— tour of the 312 lighthouses of Minnesota, Michigan, Wis­ ave you ever heard of Shanagolden, Wisconsin? Or Morse, consin, New York, Ontario, and to a lesser degree Pennsylvania, HMarsh Rapids, or Knox Mills? These are the names of some Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Berger's lively stories about lighthouse of the ghost towns that dot the Wisconsin landscape, towns aban­ keepers and their families, horrific storms, and even encounters doned as their timber disappeared and their sawmills shut down. with ghosts are complemented by outstanding color photographs Rohe provides a brief history of fifteen ghost towns, complete with of lighthouses, interiors, and lenses. historic photographs of the abandoned places and the people who lived in them. Wisconsin Travel Companion: A Guide to Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise History along Wisconsin's Highw^ays

BY GAYLORD NELSON WITH SUSAN CAMPBELL AND PAUL BY RICHARD OLSENIUS WozNiAK, WITH A FOREWORD BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR. AND JUDY ZERBY University of Wis consin Press, Madison, 2002. Pp. an, 201. Rlustrations, notes, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2001. Pp. 336. Index, maps, index. ISBN 0-299-1804a9, $26.95, hardcover. raphy, illustrations, maps. ISBN 0-8166-3678a8, $19.95, softcover.

b n 1970 Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin helped to galva- his reprint tells the stories behind the naad signs and pro­ I nize the environmental movement by founding the nation's first T vides the history of towns along the most well-traveled high­ Earth Day. In this book Nelson offers his thoughts on the state of ways of Wisconsin. It not only recounts why towns were formed today's envinanmental movement. He discusses current environ­ and how they were named, but it also offers local anecdotes, his­ mental concerns like population gnawth and global climate torical accounts, and personal glimpses of Wisconsin's culture. change and suggests a strategy for reprioritizing environmental The volume is enlivened by maps, illustrations, and historical pho­ issues on the national agenda. tographs.

^ SUMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY Letters from Our Readers

Editors' note: The Winter 2002-2003 issue featured the arti­ Doty, like Gass, was primarily interested in speculating in the cle, "Judge James Duane Doty and Wisconsin's First Court" property of others; whatever endeavor would fill his own by Patrick Jung. The article generated two thoughtful pockets intrigued him. responses, which the editors shared with Jung. Those letters In his defense, the "honorable" judge was among peers as and Jung's response follow. he engaged in a number of corrupt schemes. John Jacob Astor, a master puppeteer and fur magnate, used both men to loved your publication of Patrick Jung's article on Judge do his bidding and swell his coffers. Those most affected, the I Doty in the recent issue, especially learning more detail rightful inhabitants including my Native American and Metis about the trial of Oshkosh. I do have to share a correction ancestral grandparents had suffered significantly by the time with you, however, in the detail of the judge's case against Doty was named Judge. The military presence was established "country marriages." Of course he was referring to "common in Wisconsin to intimidate the Native Americans and Metis. law" marriages, where the French married natives by their Injustices were only exacerbated. Doty clashed with the mili­ customs, not American legal custom. Jung stated that Ebenez­ tary as well, but for very different, sometimes self-centered er Ghilds was one ofthe men "indicted for the crime" on page reasons. 38, when, in fact, Ghilds was on the jury in this case. Ghilds, The Yankee interlopers to which Doty belonged found in his "Recollections," Wisconsin Historical Collections Vol. themselves cringing at the sight of peaceable, self-governing 4, p. 166—167, stated that he was the first plaintiff in a Green people with impeccable manners and ability to speak several Bay trial under Robert Irwin, but in the common law mar­ languages. The communal ways of my ancestors, their dress riage case, he was nearly prejudiced against because he was including deerskin and feathers, and the ability ofthe group to also a witness to so many of these defendant couples. He was move about the cultures of two societies uneased the already allowed to remain on the jury. His comment, which Jung tight skin ofthe intruders. Of course Doty and cronies were accurately quoted, was probably in reference to Doty giving concerned that Native American title would hold or they out the fmes over the jury's recommendation, though Ghilds would not be swindled and the ability to rape the land and didn't state it that way exactly, so I can see how misleading the plunder the resources would be impaired. statement was. I interpreted Ghilds's statement to mean that Doty was among those who foraged politically and helped he was probably on the side of the common law marriages, develop the seedier side of government that has managed to and though Doty was harsh, they had to submit. endure. These men posing in positions of power did accom­ When I saw Jung's interpretation of Ghilds's statement, I plish some admirable things while living a life of dreaming and went back to Ghilds's own words and reread it, and I am con­ scheming and we build monuments to their memory. But vinced he was on the jury and not "indicted for the crime." I somehow I think my ancestors would not have applauded the apologize to Mr. Jung my need to point this out. I'm sure his man for his "contributions" to their race or justice. It may well article is overall accurate, but as Mr. Ghilds is a strong focus be that Doty should be admired for his sheer tenacity and ofthe book I'm writing, I need to set the record straight. brash resolve. Among the affable, cheerful, compliant Metis Thank you for providing a great local history read. community his attributes must have been liabilities. MONETTE BEBOW-REINHARD, via e-mail, Abrams, Wisconsin Indeed many ofthe Metis inhabitants discussed moving to Ganada following the U.S. incursion into Wisconsin. Most of appreciate the scholarship of Patrick Jung as he portrays my kinfolk quietly vanished into their tribal connections and I the court and life of James Duane Doty. History however, were further persecuted by our government. My ancestral can be viewed from varying vantage points. The image grandfather appeared before Doty in the infamous fornication viewed by the spirits of my ancestors from their Metis trial of those 28 men for the misdeed of native marriage of gravesite in Bay Settlement reveals Doty's nether side. their Native/French selves to their Native American wives. In A disreputable manipulator and minion of Governor Gass, my grandparents' case, Francois and WaBeNesMaWaQua Doty was not exactly a romantic figure in Wisconsin history. had already lived together for many years, had several chil­ Gass vowed to "eliminate Gallic sloth" and extinguish the dren and were part of a successful, well-established communi­ property rights of inhabitant Native American and Metis. ty. In 1821, Francois was formally denied the right to vote

^ SUMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

according to Territorial papers and in 1824, Francois was the hero that he is ofl^n portrayed as in less critical works indicted for fornication. Francois and WaBeNesMaWaQua, concerning Wisconsin history. My own article was not an "unlawfully, scandalously, publicly and notoriously did live attempt to lionize James D. Doty. A long time ago, I learned and cohabit together," according to court documents. To that the writing of history does not and should not have as its these ancestral grandparents I am eternally grateful. To Doty purpose the creation of heroes and villains. The writing of his­ who eventually extracted five dollars and court costs from tory is an academic exercise that must be characterized by Francois for his crime of fornication and eventually attempt­ critical use of sources, disciplined methodologies, and, most ed to use Francois' name in a profit significantiy, objectivity. Wasjames scheme, I wink in the jovial manner D. Doty the great statesman who of my fore bearers. served as a federal judge, a territori­ LIMDAJOHNSON, via e-mail, al governor, and who estabfished Kohler, Wisconsin the city of Madison, or was he a greedy, conniving, manipulative Patrickjung responds: Yankee who preyed upon the native want to thank Ms. Bebow-Rein­ and Metis residents of early Wis­ T hard for bringing to my attention consin? He was undoubtedly a fittle a factual error in my article. After bit of both, but these profiles are reading her letter, I rechecked the caricatures, and neither one can be considered an objective historical court records concerning the 1824 portrait of the actual man. Ms. session of the Additional Court of Johnson is correct when she states Michigan Territory, and, much to that "History. . . can be viewed my embarrassment, I found that from varying vantage points," how­ Ebenezer Ghilds did not appear ever, as every good historian knows, before the court to be tried for the every vantage point has to be tem­ crime of fornication as I state on pered with objectivity. page 38 of my article. Moreover, I also checked the available case files In my own article, I sought to to see if the prosecuting attorney ifiustrate the impact ofthe Addition­ had drafted an indictment against al Court upon the residents of early Ghilds during the 1824 court ses­ Wisconsin, Moreover, for all of sion, but I did not find any such Doty's faults, the records of the Additional Court clearly and consis­ document. This presents historians Wisixjnsin Supreme Court tently demonstrate that he had with something of a puzzle since Doty's image receives attention. Ghilds's pubfished reminiscences in sought to treat Indian and Metis volume 4 ofthe Collections ofthe State Historical Society of persons feirly. His papers also show that, for his time, he had Wisconsin indicate that he was at least indicted for this crime. very progressive ideas concerning Indian people. While we would label his ideas racist today, in the context ofthe 1820s, Ms. Bebow-Reinhard has done an impressive amount of Doty possessed surprisingly tolerant ideas concerning native research on Ghilds, and she offers some convincing argu­ societies. It is this aspect of Doty that caught my eye as an his­ ments for why Ghilds made the comments he did. Regardless torian, and it was this aspect of Doty that I wanted to examine, of why he made these comments, she is correct in stating that I sought, as I always do when I write history, to be objective Ghilds did not appear before the court in 1824 nor at any and dispassionate in my analysis, I wfil let the readers ofthe other time for the crime of fornication. Again, I thank her for Wisconsin Magazine of History judge whether or not I have pointing this out. succeeded in this objective. Ms. Johnson's letter presents a different kind of historical problem. When I first read her letter, I assumed that she was As a fmal note, Ms,Johnson and the readers ofthe Wis­ critical of how I presented Doty in my article, but subsequent consin Magazine of History should understand that the custom readings disabused me of that idea. I believe that the purpose of country marriage (or "la fa^on du pays") was not a com­ of Ms. Johnson's letter is to communicate that Doty was not pletely benign system, Ms, Johnson notes that her ancestors m SUMMER 2003 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY had lived together for many years and had had several children Johnson for their comments, and I want to thank the Wisconsin when Doty fined Frangois for engaging in "fornication." It is Magazine of History for the opportunity to respond to their letters. undoubtedly true that many ofthe men charged with this crime lived in stable, long-term marriages. However, in the long run, hat a surprise and pleasure to turn to the inside last the eventual decline of the custom of country marriage was a page of the Winter issue and see Edgar and Jennie positive turn of events for Indian and Metis w Krueger, my grandmother Lorena Goetsch women. Because country marriages could History isn't just Evans's cousins. The taped interviews that be easily dissolved, it was not unusual for Marjorie McGleUan had with my grand­ women to be abandoned by their husbands other people, it's us. mother when she worked with the Krueger and thrown into destitution and poverty. coUection of photos preparing Six Genera­ The estabfishment of Anglo-American law Thank you, Wisconsin tions Here are family treasures, and you under the Additional Court put an end to Historical Society, for can be sure that every family photo in our this by making divorce extremely difficult possession is labeled! and the abandonment of wives and children helping this family History becomes real when you see your a crime. Thus, from the vantage point of family's relation to it. When my grand­ Indian and Metis women, the custom of remember mother saw the cover ofthe 1977 edition of country marriage was not wholly to their Germans In Wi.scon.sin, she exclaimed, "Why, there's Uncle benefit, and it often worked directly counter to their interests. August and Aunt Trina!" History isn't just other people, it's us. And while Doty certainly did not have their interests in mind Thank you, Wisconsin Historical Society, for helping this fam­ when he criminalized the custom of country marriage in the ily remember, 1820s, his efforts in this regard were certainly a positive devel­ MARVEEN ALLEN MINISH, Minneapolis, MN opment for Indian and Metis women. Once again, I want to thank Ms. Bebow-Reinhard and Ms.

William Best Hesseltine Nominations

With this summer issue, Volume 86, whose four issue covers by emailing [email protected], or by regular mail, appear here, has come to an end. We are once again asl

SUMMER 2003 Back Matters Inspiring History

n his 1990 article for this magazine, "Landscape and ty Almanac or any of his essays that appear in the 1999 pub­ Home: Environmental Traditions in Wisconsin," lication For the Health ofthe Land. Now that I have, my con­ Wilfiam Cronon describes how his early interest in sciousness has been raised regarding what we can learn from caving led him to a general passion for land and its his­ a piece of land. Itory that has defined his fife and work as an environmental My reading of Leopold coincided with meeting Janet and historian. While caves inspired Cronon to learn to "read the Bob Silbernagel, who seem to have absorbed Leopold's influ­ landscape as a place of many stories," for others, he says, the ence from the land itself As siblings, they grew up in the catalyst could just as easily be a passion for "hunting or bird- 1970s on a farm that was once a part of the Riley Game watching or farming or even Cooperative, a shooting pre­ just owning a piece of land." It serve in Dane County that is the "simple act of declaring Leopold and others founded in an interest," he explains, that 1931. Only as adults did tiiey "carries us across a threshold learn from essays in For the that leads outward from our­ Health of the Land tiiat tiie selves to the world around us." farm on which they were raised Of course, what Cronon was part of a significant called Wisconsin's "especially Leopold project. By that time rich tradition of people who Janet was a teacher of land­ have committed themselves to scape architecture at the UW the land in a passionate and in Madison, and Bob was a self-reflective way" did not journafist with an environmen­ become apparent to him until tal bent. Perhaps their devo­ he left the state for graduate tion to the land ethic is an school. Unfike his undergradu­ example of "inspiration" in the ate professors in Madison, who truest sense of the word: "the had integrated environmental action, or act, of breathing in issues and questions across a or inhafing." Their story in this wide range of discip fines, mem­ issue traces the history of the bers ofthe academic communi­ Riley Game Cooperative and ties he joined later had much its impact on their lives. less interest in what some of Conservation, archaeology, them called "outdoor history." limnology, landscape architec­ When Cronon was compli­ UW Department ofWildlife Ecology ture, game management, and mented for the original perspec­ environmental history are not Fishing on the Sugar River, ca. 193

SUMMER 2003 Wsde House, Robert Granfsten photo Old World Wsconsm, Joel Heimsn photo Staying home in Wisconsin never was so good! f this summer's travel plans involve I staying close to home, consider enjoying the lively action and unique activities at the Society's many historic sites. Located through­ out the state, the sites offer many days' worth of enlightenment about Wisconsin's past.

Visit our Web site for individual schedules, special events, and locations. www.wisconsinhistory.org/sites Madeline Island, Steve Cotherman photo _-:^s"^ Wisconsin /^/r'%,

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n 1920 the Wisconsin chapter ofthe Friends of Our Native Landscape was formed, and its founder, Jens Jensen, infused the group with his own spiritual I bond to nature, garnering members with a strong desire to protect and cele­ brate the land. Lhese program covers are just part of the story told in this issue by William H. Lishler and Erik Ghenoiu. WISCONSIN magazine o/history Wisconsin Historical Society Press • 816 State Street • Madison, Wl • 53706-1482