Summer 2003 Issue of the Wisconsin Magazine of History

SUMMER 2003

Wisconsin’s Environmental Horizons Celebrating our Lands, Lakes, and Wildlife

Wisconsin Historical Society Aldo Leopold Foundation

ldo Leopold shaped the thinking of millions through the publication of A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There, which came out in 1949 and is often cited asA the century’s most influential conservation book. Sib- lings Bob and Janet Silbernagel, 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 directly through the land itself. In their story for this issue, they recount the history of the Riley Game Cooperative and reveal the impact of Leopold’s work on their lives. WISCONSIN

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 2 Kenneth A. Miller 2 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 Magazine 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, WI 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”). The WMH has been published quarterly since 1917 by of a New Scientific Field 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 publisher at the address above. Communication, inquiries, and MacQuarrie and Leopold 30 manuscript submissions may also be addressed to An excerpt from Gordon MacQuarrie: [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 34 site by following the “Publications” link from the home page. By Keith Crowley Photographs identified with PH, WHi, or WHS are from the Society’s collections; address inquiries about such photos to the Visual Materials Archivist, 816 State Street, Madi- Tracking Aldo Leopold 34 son, WI 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 Bob 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, WI 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, MI 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) 46 Back Matters 64 1 V OLUME 86, NUMBER 4 / SUMMER 2003 WHS Archives Name File ConservationConservation Pioneers Pioneers JENS JENSEN AND

Courtesy of the author

By William H. Tishler and Erik M. Ghenoiu

istorians of American 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 architect Jens Jensen. Jensen’s ideas about people’s rela- 1913, the Friends was one of the earliest pri- tionship to nature offered an original, highly valuable lesson Hvate organizations 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.1 foremost conservationists (Stephen Mather, the first director Jens Jensen 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), writers (Vachel Lindsay and Wisconsin native fiancée, Anne Marie Hansen. The couple settled in Chicago Hamlin Garland), and philanthropists (Henry Ford and in 1886, 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 of the 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 grams, 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 commissions when he moved into private practice for five years. Left: Jens Jensen sought and embraced the drama that life and nature had to offer. Eighty-three years of an extraordinary life are In 1905 he returned to the West Parks District as superin- captured in this photo, taken in 1943. tendent and landscape architect, a position he held for the W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY

H. B. Chaffee The Hetch Hetchy Valley before the dam. The dispute that arose over the building of the dam 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, and John 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 of the nat- consin, accelerated the growth of conservation, bringing ural landscape. But just as he began to enter the fray of the 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 of the progressive cation for the preservation of the 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 of the University of Wisconsin and one of the 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 of the work of naturalists like were two conflicting schools of thought in the fledgling move-

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Bentley Historical Museum Jensen’s interest in Wisconsin would lead him north after the end of his successful career in Chicago’s park system. One of his many public programs, the Prairie Club, 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, favored the ential, yet overlooked of these philosophies was formed by responsible treatment of wilderness as an economic and Jens Jensen. 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 1913 Jens Jensen 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.2 Jensen would design an impressive array of public parks and private estates in the Midwest and beyond. He had just prepared his capsule version of the early history of the 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 T of 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

5 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY 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-wolf ring. His appearance, combined with was organized to administer them.3 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.4 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 1939, Jensen made his fundamental beliefs clear: professional use of native plants and the major role that he played in the development of the Prairie School of landscape Through generations of evolution, our native landscape becomes a architecture were accompanied by a very active civic life cen- part of us, and out of this we may form fitting compositions for our tered on promoting a greater appreciation of the region’s natu- people. In this little world is found all that makes for a full life. Here ral landscape. Like others in the Prairie School movement, we learn tolerance and charitableness, peace and friendliness. Jensen sought to combine and complement the natural environment 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 even more important to forming character than descent or notably parks. In 1908, through his involvement in the Chicago genetics: Playground Association (of which he was a founder), he helped organize the Saturday Afternoon Walking Trips to important Two brothers migrate to America from Scotland. One settles in natural areas beyond the confines of the city. These walks were New England and the other one in the Carolinas. Their descen-

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

6 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY dants can not be recognized as coming from the same stock.5

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 inhabitants. This deeply held conviction provided the moral impetus for his public park designs, as he described:

The human mind is not influenced by excursions, 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- WHS Archives WIS Mss QF box 33 folder 1 talism and Pinchot’s resource-use conserva- The Wisconsin chapter of the Friends was 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. their modern forms derive from Ralph Brown; Father Bahrmeister; Friends president and Wisconsin Secretary 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 of the 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 and John 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 of the 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. Jens Jensen 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 which Jensen Landscape. Flush with professional success and the tremen- had a longtime involvement.6 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 sustainability—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 of the 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 (C69)6482 The Wisconsin Friends achieved a glorious success in conserving the native landscape in 1927 when they dedicated Richmond Memorial Park of the Rock of Gibraltar, and Jensen himself performed the “consecration services.” and by June 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 of the Friends had was an innovation typical of Jensen’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 in Jensen’s designs, were catapulted to fame by Poetry magazine, whose editor, Harri- intended to accommodate meetings like those of the Friends. et Monroe, was one of the five directors of the 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.8 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 by Jensen to help develop a state park system for Illinois. In 1921 the Friends published its findings in Proposed Park Areas in the State of Illinois: 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 attentions were slowly drawn away from Illinois. In 1920 the new Illinois governor, Leonard Small, abolished Jensen’s position after the landscape architect made clear his disdain for political meddling. His connections 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 Ellison Bay. Wisconsin would prove to be began to wane in the 1930s, his criticism of the Friends began fertile 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 of the Amer- Native Landscape. ican landscape.”7 The Friends was also an active preservation organization, f in 1920 Chicago was the metropolis of the Midwest, and it was not long before it faced its first major battle. The Madison was its model city.9 The elite of Madison fol- Indiana Dunes, near Chicago on the southern shore of Lake I lowed 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 of the 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, Olin succeed- University of Chicago, or his former client, automobile mogul ed in bringing the brilliant 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 ideals led to important commissions for several prominent landscape architects. Since the early teens Jensen had tried to convince Van Hise to institute a program in landscape architecture at the Uni- versity of Wisconsin. In 1915 WHS Archives WIS Mss QF box 34 folder 1 such a professorship went to J. S. Donald served as President Franz Aust, a friend of Jensen’s of the Wisconsin Friends from its and a member of the Prairie formation in 1921 until his death 10 in 1933. As Wisconsin secretary Club. Aust quickly made pow- of state, Donald had the ability to erful friends in Madison society. help the group achieve significant On February 21, 1920, directly political success during the early years. after a fiery address by Jensen to members of the Wisconsin state assembly, Aust collected a acres of woodland, including the group of people in the senate north fork of the Flambeau parlors of the capitol to organize River, to preserve and restore a new chapter of the Friends of the Dells, to appropriate funds Our Native Landscape. The for the development of state group included Jensen and rural planning, and to preserve eighteen of his disciples, much WIS MSS QF box 33 folder 3 the Aztalan historic site. The like the group that founded the The Friends insisted that the food at their annual celebrations be Wisconsin Friends maintained original chapter. Thus, the Wis- just as “native” as possible, so this menu from an annual dinner this breakneck pace for a num- announces “Wisconsin Products Only.” consin chapter was born. ber of years, instituting many Aust became the organization’s secretary, a post that he advances in Wisconsin’s park and preservation policy. By 1923 held until his retirement from the university in 1942. The pres- the Friends had 102 paid family memberships representing a ident of the 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 of the MPPDA; Charles cized their meetings, which were often held at prospective E. Brown, secretary of the State Archaeological Society; and E. parks and endangered places. These outings, with their picnic A. Birge, president of the University of Wisconsin. 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 entitled “Activities of the Society during the Year This was an idea they adapted from the Illinois chapter, and it 1921” lists many accomplishments for the fledgling group, generated considerable public interest in their projects and such as sending two delegates to the National Parks Congress, nativism. A 1923 meeting of the two states’ chapters in Ore- meetings with the Illinois chapter, and sponsoring four bills in gon, Illinois, was attended by nearly two thousand people, far the state assembly. These bills were to preserve eight thousand more than the combined membership of the two groups. The

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WHS Archives WHi(X3)53677 In April 1949 Jensen, always young at heart, joined in the fun at Madison’s Glenwood Park.

Friends also maintained the Illinois 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 collaborator 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 of the 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 well 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 of the native One of these was Aust’s publication, Our Native Landscape, landscape” in accordance with the organization’s purpose. The which became the newsletter of the whole organization in its incorporation was duly filed, and on October 29, 1927, the fifth volume.11 The first issue had short articles by Jensen, Aust, Friends dedicated the Richmond Memorial Park of the 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 of the University of Wisconsin. 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 all these throughout Wisconsin. It was, perhaps, the crowning moment techniques, the group became a leading force for conservation of the 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 president John 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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Courtesy of the author This contemporary view of Toft’s Point bears witness to the final success of the Friends of Our Native Landscape.

Mount Vernon, fell into the care of the Friends. Started on Jensen’s ties to Madison. At this time he focused his preserva- Arbor Day in 1916, 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. idents, governors, and other distinguished people. Jensen and The year 1934 saw two 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 1934, 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 1938 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 of the 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 of the 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 Aust’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 of the Dan- ning. Leopold became a longtime member of the 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 of Wisconsin sent their land- School’s representative. Leopold’s involvement is significant in scape students to The Clearing, which helped to maintain that he carried an authority comparable to Jensen’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 privileging human char- had “been asleep at the acter over the maintenance of an ecosystem. If the Friends were switch.”12 originally the manifestation of Jensen’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 UW Arboretum wander and show tendencies toward becoming more of a social club than an activist organization. During the Depression, members were still involved in rural planning and state legislation, but by the end of World War II, their activity had slowed to a virtual standstill. The group did not maintain vigilance over its earlier 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 earliest of the Friends’ projects. In 1943 Franz Aust, the group’s principal founder, abruptly

13 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY when Jens Jensen died at The Clearing at the age of ninety-one. “purchase the land . . . provide a method of perpetuity, and . . . Jensen had grown even more striking in appearance in his old give the land to a governmental agency that would relieve the age, and he had easily assumed the air of a prophet. His mind responsibility of taxes, etc., [and] provide a life occupancy . . . for and his strength were vigorous until the end, and though his last Miss Emma Toft.” fifteen years were full of feverish activity, he feared that his By then many years had passed since the Friends were the entire legacy would lose direction without his guiding hand. only major preservation society in Wisconsin. In the years of This last fearful prophecy was not fulfilled: The Clearing was their inactivity, newer groups took the forefront in the battle preserved through the indefatigable 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 Wisconsin chapter was help of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau, as well as The Clearing’s founded in 1960. In its first decade alone the Wisconsin chap- many friends and supporters. The Friends, on the other hand, ter completed twenty-one projects preserving 2,273 acres at a had already strayed from their old ideals, and without Jensen cost of half a million dollars. Paul Olson, the leader of the much of the life went out of the movement. Just five years after Wisconsin chapter, had a single-mindedness and talent for his death, the Wisconsin Friends deeded their very first project, fund raising that made him a force in Wisconsin conserva- 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 stop the county from Toft Point project paving a driveway to the top. After several years of negotiations, the deal for Toft Point Jens Jensen’s legacy was destined to continue through local was settled. The Friends purchased the land valued at preservation efforts and the continuation of his beloved school $67,000 using some of their own money and a no-interest at The Clearing. Ultimately, the Wisconsin Friends took part in loan of $55,000 from the national office of the Nature Con- carrying on Jensen’s mission in the preservation of Toft Point in servancy. Subsequently, the property was deeded to the nas- Baileys Harbor. Toft Point was the 740-acre forest and cent University of Wisconsin–Green Bay as an arboretum, unspoiled Lake Michigan shoreline held by unheralded conser- with the condition that Emma Toft 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 Ridges Wildflower Sanctuary.13 Toft had also been an intimate support the project, and found many major contributors to of Jensen and Mertha Fulkerson and thereby had a link to the help pay off the loan. The Friends did their part too, and on Friends. “Miss Emma,” as she was affectionately known, want- April 12, 1973, they raised the last six hundred dollars and ed to be sure that her property would be preserved after her the loan was repaid. death, ideally to be added to the adjoining Ridges Sanctuary. After this project, the Friends of Our Native Landscape She conveyed this dream to Fulkerson, and it was discussed at faded from public view, a process notably helped by The the Friends’ “Meeting of the Falling Leaf” held at The Clearing Nature Conservancy’s policy of claiming complete credit for in 1964. Earlier that year Albert Fuller, a botanist at the Mil- Toft’s Point without mentioning the Friends.14 The Friends waukee Public Museum and a founding member of the Ridges even suffered the ignominy of being referred to as “a now Sanctuary, had also suggested to the Friends that the sanctuary defunct predecessor of The Nature Conservancy” 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: three other Toft relatives also held part defunct; they were simply moving into their final stage. Sur- ownership of the point, and Toft’s life of activism had not left passed at the forefront of conservation by newer, richer her enough 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 of the point in perpetuity. sort through their files and papers and assemble an archive of Early in 1965 Fulkerson, who would be elected to the board their past accomplishments. The Friends remained primarily of directors of the 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 family members on behalf of the Wis- Wisconsin the last remaining chapter disbanded. consin Friends. In February the Friends had made a The Friends of Our Native Landscape accomplished a commitment to purchase the property, and a committee headed great deal at a crucial period in the history of conservation. by Madison’s mayor, Henry Reynolds, was designated to pursue They were instrumental in establishing and protecting the the matter. In a letter from Reynolds to Thorval T. Toft, the state parks systems 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

14 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY the following parks: Aztalan, Tower Hill, Wyalusung, Nelson The Authors Dewey, Devils Lake, Rocky Arbor, Roche a Cri, Rib Moun- A Door County native, William H. Tish- tain, Terry Andrae, High Cliff, and Peninsula State. By ler is professor emeritus 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 chair of Wisconsin’s Historic Preservation forefront of the development of rural and regional planning Review Board, he has developed and and environmental lobbying. Following the philosophy of taught courses in historic preservation, their founder, the Friends were pioneers in the protection of 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 Architecture at Harvard University. He a landscape preservation meeting or just for a nature walk, he holds degrees in urban geography, cultur- was breaking new ground. Moreover, the Friends included al geography, and the history of art. He many people who would go on to become crucial figures in studies nineteenth- and twentieth-century American conservation, from Stephen Mather to Aldo urbanism and issues related to the cultur- Leopold. The history of the 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 of the concept of “place” in architectural discourse and an certainly for them all, the Friends should be remembered. investigation of the relationship between American and German 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 1Unless otherwise indicated, the primary sources noted in the article are from the archives of the why it should be saved. Jens Jensen wanted an environment Wisconsin chapter of the Friends of Our Native Landscape, hereinafter referred to as FONL archives, which is currently in the possession of the principal author, the group’s final president. that we would not despoil through our actions, but which we 2 Standard treatments of this story may be found in Stephen Fox, The American Conservation would nonetheless live in and experience every day. He want- Movement: John Muir and His Legacy (1980; reprint, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985) and Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (1967; reprint, New Haven ed us to be a part of the landscape, a product of it, imbued and London: Yale University Press, 1982). 3 See the pamphlet series “Saturday Afternoon Walks in the Forests, Fields, Hills, and Valleys with its spirit—for our very identity to be firmly bound to the About the City,” which became a publication of the Prairie Club in its twenty second issue, Cen- ter for Research Libraries, Chicago, C-20918. landscapes of home. Jensen wrote in Siftings: 4 A more lengthy account of Jensen’s earlier activity may be found in Robert E. Grese, Jens Jensen: Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). It is quite essential to understand the soul of our own envi- 5 Some recent scholarship has cast doubt on Jensen’s moral integrity on the ground that his advocacy for native plants helped lead to the racist 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 Germany and the Land- and understand the arts and intellectual efforts of other peo- scape Design of the Reichsautobahnen.” Selected CELA Annual Conference Papers: Nature and Technology (Iowa State University, 1995, vol. 7). This passage of Jensen’s is a good example ple and the forces that lie behind them. of how for him the genetic attributes of race were less significant than the formative effects of native landscape. Jensen, himself an immigrant, had no qualms about adopting and becoming a part of a region other than that of his birth. For a complete refutation of the allegations against Jensen, see Dave Egan and William H. Tishler, “Jens Jensen, Native Plants, and the Concept of To be a friend of the native landscape in the way Jens Jensen Nordic Superiority,” Landscape Journal 18, no.1 (1999): 11–29. wanted is to be a friend to one’s own true self. This lesson is the 6 A. W. N. Pugin, Contrasts, introduction by H. R. Hitchcock (reprint, New York: Humanities Press, 1969) second edition; E. C. Semple, Influences of Geographic Environment (on the Basis principal legacy of the Friends of Our Native Landscape. of Ratzel’s System of Anthropo-Geography (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1911) Note that Semple’s work is a continuation of a German school of geography with which Jensen might have been familiar through his German ties. Acknowledgments 7 See Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, 13, nos. 1-2, and 15, no. 6. 8 See Grese, p. 127. Grese gives an essentially similar account of the early years of the Illinois This article, especially in its latter parts, was made possible chapter of the Friends. 9 For a good account of Madison’s development, see David Mollenhoff, Madison: A History of by William H. Tishler’s acquisition of the archives of the Wis- the Formative Years (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishers, 1982). 10 See Yearbook of the Prairie Club (Chicago: Prairie Club, 1914). consin chapter of the Friends of Our Native Landscape. 11 Most issues through 1934 are found in the FONL Archive; other copies are in the possession Jensen’s autobiography, Siftings, originally published in 1939, of the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Steenbock Library at the University of Wisconsin. In the 1940s a larger-format Illinois chapter newsletter succeeded this publication. was reissued in 1990 by the Johns Hopkins University Press, 12 Personal correspondence, Longenecker to Jensen, February 22, 1944, from the Jensen Archives of the Morton Arboretum, Lisle Illinois. and it is an essential resource for anyone interested in learn- 13 For the history of Toft Point, see Roy Lukes, Toft Point: A Legacy of People & Pines (Egg ing more about the man and his philosophy. Harbor: Nature-Wise, 1998). 14 See for example the Nature Conservancy News 18, no. 1 (1968) or the Wisconsin Chapter, The authors are grateful to Ms. Marion Kerr and Mrs. Nature Conservancy pamphlet of 1970. Jeanette Paul for assistance in preparing this article.

15 S UMMER 2003 The original Trout Lake Station was built in 1925, and its rustic buildings offered the same view of the 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

en thousand years ago, as the great mass of the last gla- cier retreated to the north, it littered the northern quarter 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 kettle, or ice block, lakes. Because of the random nature of glacial lake formation, the myriad lakes of the region vary greatly in their structure, chemistry, and biological characteristics. One of the larger kettles 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. The author of this article is the recipient of an Alice E. Smith Fellowship from the Wisconsin Historical Society. W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY

Graphic by Joel Heiman

Above: Trout Lake in Vilas County. Left: Professor Chancey Juday had joined the Wisconsin faculty in 1900, but it would be another twenty-five years before he and E. A. Birge founded the Trout Lake Station. Before 1925 they often worked on Madison’s nearby lakes, just as they are here 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 of the water and sky, along ern Wisconsin, but the significance of Trout Lake goes with the muted colors, lent an eerie mood to the beauty of the beyond the state’s natural beauty or sport fishing opportuni- landscape. 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 of the 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 Chancey Juday, Wisconsin pioneers in the field of limnology, the study of inland waters. Limne—“Pool or Marshy Lake” 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 of Wisconsin. 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 Cladocera. As a work to this day. natural historian and biologist, he sought to describe how the I visited the site of the 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 of the 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

18 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY 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: Its Physical Charac- limiting. The field draws its ter, Vegetation, and Animals. name from the Greek word Agassiz also founded the limne, 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 of Wisconsin. aspects. WHS Archives (B46)61 E. A. Birge had been teach- The best definition is still In 1912 E. A. Birge had served as professor, dean, committee ing for more than twenty years the one found in the 1963 clas- member many times over, and even acting president of the Uni- at the University of Wisconsin versity of Wisconsin, but he seems most comfortable pictured as sic textbook Limnology in he is here, taking readings from an anemometer and enjoying when he completed his first North America: the 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 of the 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 of the waters, the geology, meteorology, Commissioner of Fisheries. While the Survey provided signifi- hydrology and bioecology 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 accepted the position of acting president of the University of Wiscon- Even today, this scientific endeavor continues to expand, sin, a post he would hold until 1903. (Years later Birge would somewhat like a flooding river, in many directions. again be asked to serve, and he would accept the title 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 right (with a man identified as March in the center) testing the first mud thermometer on the ice, ca. 1927. The permanent hammer, attached to the two insulated lines, drives a thermometer into the mud as far as the hammer itself can go. Right: Even a land-based vehicle had limnological uses, as Birge demonstrates in 1930, reading the gauge of the “sun machine,” a small device attached to the car’s rooftop.

That partner was to be Chancey Juday, a biologist and a native Hoosier trained at Indiana University who was studying 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 WHS Archives PH1282 its first four decades. Birge carried on as an administrator and took care of fundraising, personnel, and politics, while Juday 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 described Juday 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 of the courses at the University of Wisconsin; 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.

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Many years after forming his partnership with Juday, Birge described one culminating experience in that endeavor in an address before the Madison Literary Club, entitled 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 of fish. He reported:

Here we had for the first time a definite notion of the 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 by Eleanor Tressler defining one for Birge’s career and for the daily The Trout Lake crew in 1929, left to right: Chancey Juday, Willis lives of many who worked with him. Tressler, Fred Stare, Lowell Taylor, Ed Schneberger, E. A. Birge, and Hugo Baum. 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 of the 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 of Wisconsin. would become a classic study that involved collecting data Robinson recalled the rugged conditions of the station in its early from 156 lakes, many of which were in the north central part years: of the 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 gravel 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 set up 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 of Wisconsin 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 of the 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 limnological 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 of the 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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WHS Archives PH1282 Above: Despite the lack of foliage, the unmistakable backdrop of Trout Lake frames E. A. Birge as he takes to the water, his preferred location for study. Right: Arthur D. Hasler brought a laboratory-based approach to research, and this departure from virtually exclusive research in the natural environment lost him the support of Birge and Juday but earned him the respect of his students, who sought 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-pollination among the various fields, and this multi- disciplinary cooperation became a well-established tradition. Juday maintained his bent for collecting data, literally by the boatload. 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, visibility and other properties; studying the lakebed soil; describing the lay of the surrounding 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 recently became part of a computer database shared by the current UW limnology program 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

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UW Center for Limnology The Lake Mendota lab, situated next to the Memorial Union on Madison’s campus, is a familiar building to students and longtime Madison residents, although many do not know the building’s purpose. It was built in 1963 under Hasler. 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 In 1937 Guyer found Arthur D. Hasler, after Juday retired. He and Birge wrote experimental limnology, 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 Chancey Juday and working as a biologist Birge died in 1950, at the age of ninety- as adventure for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. Hasler eight. 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 under Juday. Unlike Juday, 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 eminently 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 When Juday 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 the formal establishment of the Center for Limnology in 1982, a conference titled “History of Limnology in Wisconsin” drew students from several generations and fields of study. Left: John Magnuson, looking over Trout Lake in 2001, recalls both his own twenty-two year tenure of leadership and the significance of the men who led before him.

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 while Juday 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 of the 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 of the author set out to build experimental ponds in the University of Wis-

24 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY 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. Over the years, Hasler’s fifty- Other tales of adventure still three doctoral students fanned told at limnologists’ 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 Ragotzkie: For example, student Waldo John J. Magnuson E. Johnson hypothesized that The tanks came in a box with some James F. Kitchell succeeded Magnuson in 2001, the same year changing the alkalinity of a that Arthur Hasler died, and the program is as vital as ever to instructions, and we put them on both Wisconsin’s history 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 photoflood 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 of 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

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UW Center for Limnology Prior to the 15th International Congress on Limnology, Profs. Robert A. Ragotzkie (left), local chairman, and Arthur D. Hasler (right), execu- tive chair of the congress, inspect yellow lotuses on Mendota Bay near the 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 of the practices of Birge and the building of a new limnology laboratory west of the 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 of the program. He would it houses offices, labs, a library, a boat slip, 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. The 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 of the original buildings across the lake on the ice, from motivation, and the inspiration to learn it. . . . I think it’s a great the old site to the new one. Today, some of the old labs house shame if anyone starts with any subject in science today with the

26 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY 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 limnology, we live 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 field 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 Brandt noted that Magnuson, decades. Both men were highly pro- like Hasler, believed in chal- ductive, fiercely intelligent individu- WHS Archives WHi(X3)36989 lenging students to fend for als with forceful personalities, and A trap from the early days of limnological study. themselves. they drove prolific programs of “At professional confer- research. Unlike 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 recalled 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 establishment of the Center for Limnology lished as the head of the program for over two decades. in 1982. It had been one of Hasler’s goals, and Magnuson made it happen. He pulled 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 Illinois and made possible a dynamic program for limnology on campus.

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WHS Archives WHi(D483)6996 Trout Lake Station offered a curious blend of new 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 facili- undertaken by Emily Stanley, who views lakes and streams ties during the 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, limnology has brought in social formed, it was staffed by Magnuson and James F. Kitchell, scientists to study how people—through politics, economics, then the associate director for the Mendota Lake lab. Today, and lifestyles—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—little robots on buoys that make regular has the number of resident researchers. Four scientists and six trips to the bottom of the lake to record data such as temper- other staff members now work year round at the station. ature, dissolved oxygen, and organic carbon levels—sending The interdisciplinary 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 satellite and acoustic remote sensing and ecosystem modeling, a major growth area. The field has technology to study Wisconsin’s waters.

28 S PRING 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 grown a river system that is essential a freelance writer. He received a master’s richer and more diverse within degree in journalism, concentrating on sci- to its functioning, its produc- the Center for Limnology. ence writing, from the University of Min- tivity, and the exchanges that Wisconsin became one of the nesota in 1983. He lives in Madison, and make the system work,” Mag- largest of twenty-four sites in with his wife, son and daughter, and he nuson says. the Long Term Ecological enjoys exploring the waters of Wisconsin. So, like a naturally benefi- Research Network—a consor- cial flood, the expansion of tium of over 1,100 scientists limnology has benefited sci- and students investigating eco- ence and society. The UW logical processes around the world. At the “If the analogy of a river Center for Limnology has always been, and same time, much of the research is aimed continues to be, a major force in that at solving more immediate problems. For is apt for limnology, it is expansion. example, Stephen Carpenter is examining what happens to fish populations when because the discipline, Resources fallen logs are removed from shorelines, as like a river, has several An excellent account of the story of lim- they usually are in the development of nology in Wisconsin can be found in Break- lakeshore property. Removing such debris sources and tributaries.” ing New Waters: A Century of Limnology makes the shoreline less biologically com- at the University of Wisconsin, a special plex, and that might affect fish adversely. Carpenter also stud- issue of the Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sci- ies the effects of invading species in lakes, a subject of great ences, Arts and Letters, written by Annamarie L. Beckel and interest for wildlife managers and anglers. Frank Egerton and published in 1987. Breaking New Waters James Kitchell, who received his doctorate at the Univer- is a primary source for this article, and the author wishes to sity of Colorado and came to Wisconsin in 1970, is now direc- acknowledge his appreciation to the editors. tor of the Center. He sees the history of limnology in I conducted interviews with the following individuals in Wisconsin as a natural sequence of events in the birth and the year 2001 and wish to thank them for their time and con- growth of a scientific field. In a recent interview, he sideration: John J. Magnuson, former director of the UW explained: Center for Limnology; Robert A. Ragotzkie; James F. Kitchell, Stephen R. Carpenter and Emily H. Stanley, all of You first survey what you are studying over a period of time, as the Center for Limnology; Timothy K. Kratz, Senior Scien- did Birge and Juday. Then you try to understand the nature of tist and Associate Director of the Trout Lake Station; Carl J. 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 publications 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. published by Waveland Press in 1983; Focus on Field Sta- tions, a bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, from In the 1980s Wisconsin limnologists used the analogy of January 1999; Limnology in North America, edited D. G. “breaking new waters” to describe their endeavors. These Frey and published by the University of Wisconsin Press in days, limnology itself might be thought of as a flooding river, 1963. Alexander J. Horne and Charles R. Goldman’s Lim- expanding in many directions. The analogy has its limita- nology, second edition, published by McGraw-Hill, Inc., in tions. Unlike a flooding river, limnology is not an uncon- 1994 was also helpful as were John J. Magnuson’s work, trolled destructive force, but rather a carefully planned and “Lakes and rivers” in the Encyclopedia of Global Change coordinated set of programs. However, as Magnuson points published by John Wiley & Sons; and G. C. Sellery’s E. A. out, the flood can be a healthy component of a large flood- Birge: A Memoir, published by the University of Wisconsin plain river system. It augments the interactions between land Press in 1956. and water and stimulates organic and inorganic cycles. Fish

29 S UMMER 2003 MacQuarrieMacQuarrie andand Leopold Leopold Excerpt from Gordon MacQuarrie: The Story of an Old Duck Hunter By Keith Crowley

The Wisconsin Historical Society Press is proud to announce the publication of the first full-length biography of one of Wisconsin’s favorite writers, Gordon MacQuarrie, best known for his Old Duck Hunters stories. Author Michael McIntosh writes in his foreword to this new volume: “Gordon MacQuarrie was one of the most influential writers of his time—so much so that he shaped an entire generation of writers who are just now emerging in the mold that he created.” This excerpt deals with MacQuarrie’s contribution to the conservation and wildlife management movement.

n April 1936 Gordon MacQuarrie left the Superior Evening Telegram for the bigger, greener pastures of Milwaukee, where he became the first outdoor editor of the Milwaukee Journal. When MacQuarrie began at theI Journal on April 19 he didn’t have an official title, but he was in effect becoming the first full-time professional outdoor writer in the nation. Other men dabbled in outdoor news stories, but MacQuarrie was the first on record to specialize in the previously neglected field. Men like Jay “Ding” Darling of the Des Moines Register devoted part of their time to conservation and sporting stories, but their scope remained broad. MacQuarrie focused on the outdoor life by mandate from the Journal’s management, and he turned this position into one of the most coveted writing jobs in the country. . . . Soon after MacQuarrie arrived in

This 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 to Journal readers: throughout the ’40s, MacQuarrie and Leopold, who was then teaching in A Sand County Almanac is a modern Photo by Milwaukee Journal/Staff, September 1946. © 2002 Madison, communicated frequently. Journal Sentinel Inc. Reproduced with permission. bible of conservation. Everyone in Wis- They talked of the 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 final word from of Wisconsin’s sportsmen. MacQuarrie set about to learn from one of the greatest men ever to teach at the university of Wisconsin.1 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 of the 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.2 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 of Wisconsin 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.”3 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- W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY papers—particularly the Milwaukee Journal. MacQuarrie came off the fence in his Journal 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.”4 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 next Journal “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 Journal/Staff, 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. . . .”5 MacQuarrie was a stickler when it came see it with their own eyes.” Wisconsin Con- During the early 1940s Wisconsin’s cher- to equipment. He was continually 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.”6 significant hunting pressure (from humans replacing worn decoy cords, mending 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 II. Many Wiscon- doublegun, he considered express themselves in the Journal. After wit- sinites viewed this unprecedented growth in “puttering” a favorite pastime. 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, IA 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 President Elect: Mark L. Gajewski Hartley B. Barker, Scottsdale, AZ. John M. Russell, Menomonie Thomas H. Barland, Eau Claire (emeritus) Treasurer: Anne M. West 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 James D. Ericson, Milwaukee Ruth Barker, Ephraim Carlyle H. “Hank” Whipple, Madison Thomas H. Barland, Eau Claire Rockne G. Flowers, Madison Murray D. “Chip” Beckford, Cascade Ex-officio Board of Curators John J. Frautschi, Madison Patricia A. Boge, La Crosse Delores C. Ducklow, President, FRIENDS of the 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 The Wisconsin Historical Foundation Charles E. Haas, La Crosse 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

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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.10 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 publications 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, but let it not be 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 upbraid- deer herd is over.”7 ed—even reviled—by 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.11 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 the Journal 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 Journal 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. and practices to readers who sometimes did not appreciate the 1. Gordon MacQuarrie, “Right Off the 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. 3. Gordon MacQuarrie, “Right Off the Reel.” Milwaukee Journal, October 20, 1940. the deer population again grew to unsafe levels, Wisconsin 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.8 8. 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. scientists and government agencies for their failings, as many of Gordon MacQuarrie, “Here Come the Biologists.” 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 Oshkosh, Wisconsin, ca. 1940. trustful of newspapermen in general. They had been raked over 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.”9 MacQuarrie chose ordon MacQuarrie: The Story of an Old Duckhunter is instead to clearly explain the scientific position to the oft-befud- G available through local bookstores. Members of the Wis- dled masses. It became a career-long trend in his columns. 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.

33 S UMMER 2003 Pheasant tracks in the snow. According to Aldo Leopold, the Riley area was “devoid of pheasants” until the Riley Game Cooperative stocked it in 1931.

UW Department of Wildlife Ecology Tracking Aldo Leopold through Riley’s Farmland Remembering the Riley Game Cooperative

By Bob Silbernagel and Janet Silbernagel

our years before Aldo tinued 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 Fbecame 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 about equal distance between of Madison, he stopped at the Aldo Leopold with a favorite hunting dog on unidentified Mount Horeb and Verona, property believed to be on the Riley Game Cooperative. farm of Reuben Paulson and 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 the Journal of Wildlife Management. miles. “I 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—of the 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.”1 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 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY

UW Department of Wildlife Ecology Aldo Leopold 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 of the 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 of Wis- (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 of A 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 of Wisconsin. 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 organization of the cooperative, annual reports about the suc- hickory nuts and picked wild plums and grapes. cess of the hunts, and records of bird plantings.2 West beyond the crest of the hill, the woods were a different

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

world. Stinging nettles 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 of the 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 of the farmhouse, is the hilltop hay meadow where get underground where all cats behave.” a hot-air balloon unexpectedly dropped out of the sky one crisp There are other stories, only glimpsed in the notes and autumn morning. Frightened horses raced for the cover of the 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. And John Riley won the annual contest it nostalgic and sentimental memories for us, they for the biggest pheasant of the season in 1945. W are not written in the lyrical style of his Sand We decided to follow up on this last item since John 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 Preserve—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 memory.3

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“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 of the 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, whose great-grandfather provided the name for the of Leopold, the elder Roark For John Riley, memories of community of Riley, hunted on the Riley Game Cooperative and apparently met him when both remembers Aldo Leopold 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 of Wisconsin.4 the spring. All of the farmers and their families would turn out, “I especially recall one hunt, with my dad and Leopold, and all of the town members. It was a big thing. I remember when after I’d missed a hen Leopold told me, very softly, 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.” mostly 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.”5 greatest man you’d probably ever want to be around,” some- For the farmers like John Riley and his dad, Wes, the Riley

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Game Cooperative wasn’t a part-time effort. It became part of their 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 like John 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.”6 John was just a toddler when the Riley Game Cooperative was founded, so he has no personal recollection of the 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.”7 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 patiently to the fair words of UW Department of Wildlife Ecology the prophets of conservation, predicting the Reuben Paulson, cofounder of the 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 of the 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.8 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 of the 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 fifty 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 each June 30. Members of the 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 recently 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 figured out, how- game farms can raise game birds and release them year-round

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UW Department of Wildlife Ecology The railroad tracks as they appeared running near the Riley community in the 1930s. Today the tracks are gone, and the railroad grade 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.9 tions of their precious pastureland. The Riley Game DNR records on the shooting preserves only go back to the Cooperative began with just three farm members and five town 1970s, not to the days of the 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, 1932.10 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 farmers for part of their 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 all 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 all of the members of the 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

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Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Research Report no. 24, 1960-67. 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 literary accounts. “To kill one’s first cock on one’s own grounds is a memorable experience,” he declared. 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 of the pheasants, quail, prairie chickens, Hungarian partridges, rabbits, and foxes they spotted. Reuben Paulson’s wife was official keeper of the scales. When cooperative members shot a pheasant, they were to take it to Mrs. Paulson to have it weighed and recorded. There were gatherings of the farm and town members to build the brush shelters that were to provide winter shelter for the birds and feeders where farmers or their sons could set out corn. “None of us for years had so enjoyed our winter Sun- days,” Leopold wrote of those gatherings.11 Although Leopold and Paulson sought to keep the size of the cooperative small, so that all those involved would always UW Department of Wildlife 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 of the Riley 1,700 acres involved; this, despite the fact that Leopold some- Game Cooperative. times hectored the farm members to do more conservation

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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 corner of the Paulson property. work. In a 1935 newsletter he urged each farmer that year to Leopold offered the trees to any and all 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 of Wisconsin. He was quickly reassured that the majority of Riley members “If you see a small army coming across your fields, it isn’t the wanted it to carry on.12 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 all find number of ways. For example, there were regular ‘Lebensraum’ at Riley.” T plantings 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 of the area, yet not seriously affect the farmers’ ability power. In 1942 there were not enough people to plant all the to take care of their cows and hogs, Leopold concentrated on Norway pines the cooperative had ordered. In his newsletter, what he called “foul-weather cover.” “It consists of cattail bogs

42 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY too soft for cattle to enter, bush wil- low along streams and railroad tracks, and grape tangles or plum thickets in fencerows.”13 The members of the cooperative also developed plantings of evergreen trees, mostly red and Norway pine, fenced off from cattle. They learned from painful experience. A severe drought in 1934 and 1936 cost them many of the plantings, and inadequate fences allowed animals to get in and destroy others. But they tried again, with assistance from the University of Wisconsin students and depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps crews. By 1939, when another drought hit, most of the plantings survived.14 Much of that work is evident today. Warren Exo, who has lived in the area since the 1960s, still picks wild plums along the Military Ridge Trail west of Riley each autumn. Grape tangles and other brush are still 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 evergreens.15 Those plantings were what attract- ed many of the farmers to the cooperative and kept them involved. “I know Dad really liked the plantings, the bushes along the fencerows and the stands of evergreens,” Riley Joel Heiman photo 16 said. Over the years, the success of Original Riley Game Cooperative fence line along Paulson property. those plantings and of the game management 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 farm, was not listed as a farm member in any of the 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 final “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-

43 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY ing a brush fire on a neighbor’s said.21 In the 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 earlier Dane County Commissioners to ones, but it still contains a consider much of the old Riley wealth of information: Twenty- Cooperative farmland for land four hens and five cocks were protection. His one-man cru- released in 1947, all 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 Department to be in the Town trees to use as windbreaks. New of Verona or Riley area. state regulations for shooting Jim Mueller, who retired in preserves required all birds to be early 2002 as a Dane County turned loose using the “gentle 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 allowing the pheasants parks and open space plan in to wander out as they chose.17 2001.22 Since then, the 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.”18 Natural Heritage Land Trust, Roark says that remnants of the and local landowners to study cooperative continued until the the landscape ecology and land early 1960s. “I don’t know when UW Department of Wildlife Ecology use of the Riley area, and to sug- Riley ceased to be licensed 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 1936. In most letters and documents regarding Riley, will protect the legacy of my last hunts were in ’61 or Leopold referred to his friend as “R. J. Paulson,” but in a few Leopold and the Riley Game letters and one article, he is listed as “Reuben Paulson.” ’62.”19 Cooperative. Just as Leopold Although he moved off the family farm more than a half- used the Riley Cooperative for an outdoor classroom sixty century ago, John Riley hasn’t entirely abandoned the com- years ago, Janet is using it today for her landscape architecture munity founded by his ancestors. He returns regularly. In the students at the University of Wisconsin. autumn of 2001, a deer hunt in the area provided Riley with a So the legacy survives as far more than some old metal signs link to the past. On a fence along the boundary of O. Hub’s old rusting in the brush of hidden fences. It is in the fencerows farm, he found a remnant of the Riley Game Cooperative. It themselves, and the brush that has maintained itself through was a small, yellow metal sign, about the size of an auto license the decades. It is in the tall pine groves, like that just to the east plate that said “Wisconsin Licensed Shooting Preserve.” Once of the former Silbernagel farm. New homes now nestle among those signs were ubiquitous throughout the Riley farm country. those stately trees. The cooperative’s legacy is also in the “I think people really respected them. They didn’t trespass descendants of those pheasants planted almost seventy years much when they saw those signs,” John said.20 ago and all of the other species of wildlife that have found Roark, too, has continued to visit the area, though he rarely homes for generations in the cover Aldo Leopold created. hunts now. “Sometimes I wish I’d ‘kept the faith’ and made an On a winter’s hike around the Riley area, evidence of those effort to keep Riley going, if for no other reason than to honor animals is abundant. Tracks in the snow indicate that modern what Aldo Leopold and Reuben Paulson had started,” he inhabitants include not only pheasants but wild turkeys, mice,

44 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY rabbits, 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 coyotes 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.”23 It is a pragmatic, let’s-get-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 land, as expressed in his foreword to A Sand County Almanac: “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land UW Department of Wildlife Ecology as a community to which we belong, we may begin to Releasing a trapped pheasant after banding. use it with love and respect.”24 The Authors 1Aldo Leopold, “History of the Riley Game Cooperative, 1931-1939,” in For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays and Other Writings (Washington, D.C.: Island Janet Silbernagel is a member of the Press, 1999), 176. Originally published in the Journal of Wildlife Management, 1940. faculty of Landscape Architecture and the 2Riley Game Cooperative records, Aldo Leopold Archives, University of Wisconsin, Department of Wildlife Ecology. Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmen- 3Telephone interview with John Riley, December 2001. tal Studies at the University of Wisconsin- 4Telephone interview with Gene Roark, January 2002. 5Gene Roark, “The Riley Game Co-op,” Dane County Conservation League newsletter, Jan- Madison. She teaches a regional design uary 1987. and conservation studio, along with 6John Riley interview. 7Roark, “The Riley Game Co-op.” research methods and geographic infor- 8Quotations from Aldo Leopold, “Helping Ourselves: Being the Adventures of a Farmer and mation systems. Janet studies the ecology a Sportsman Who Produced Their Own Shooting Ground,” For the Health of the Land, 33- 40. Originally published in Field & Stream, 1934. of cultural landscapes. Her work generally 9Telephone interview with Shirley Zwolanek, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, has direct applications to conservation or ecological design. July 2002. 10Letter from Aldo Leopold to Mr. Paul Kelleter, whose title is given only as “Director of Currently she has a public design project underway in Middle- Conservation, Madison, Wisconsin.” The letter is dated 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 records, Aldo Leopold Archives, University of Wisconsin. bition about cultivation along Wisconsin’s Lake Superior region. 11Leopold, “Helping Ourselves,” 39, 35. 12 Riley Game Cooperative records. Bob Silbernagel and his wife, Judy, 13 Leopold, “History of the Riley Game Cooperative,” 181–82. 14Ibid. abandoned their home state of Wisconsin 15Visit to Riley area with Warren Exo, December 2001. for the mountains of Colorado thirty years 16John Riley interview. 17Riley Game Cooperative records. ago but return annually to visit the Mount 18John Riley interview. Horeb and Madison areas. After studying 19Roark, “The Riley Game Co-op.” 20John Riley interview. journalism at the University of Wisconsin, 21Roark, “The Riley Game Co-op.” Bob began his journalism career in Vail, 22Telephone interview with Jim Mueller, January 2002. 23Leopold, “History of the Riley Game Cooperative, 180. Colorado. He has been the editorial page 24Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (New York: Oxford editor for The Daily Sentinel in Grand University 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 articles.

45 S UMMER 2003 Uncovering the Story of Fort Blue

The Wisconsin Heights battleground, just fifteen miles north of Blue Mounds, was the site of Black Hawk’s final military success.

WHS Archives (X3)51480 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 Mounds southwestern Wisconsin. A large force of Native Americans,I 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 settlers—miners and farmers—feared not only Black Hawk but a general uprising of the neighboring Ho-Chunk people. Tension between the settlers 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.1 Those Ebenezer Brigham, founder of who personally wit- Blue Mounds and “squire” to the small mining community. nessed Black Hawk’s movement through the Michigan Territory would recount the days of fearful tension, in both spoken and written word, throughout their lives. Their descriptions of that spring of 1832 would provide the documents that twentieth-century students would rely upon to learn about frontier 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 residents 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 community, and the opportunity for future exploration. No mat- W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY

ter how the story is told, however, it begins with “the Blue family was that of Essau Johnson, a lead mine operator who Mounds.” owned land, including a farm and a lead smelter next to Brigham’s place. Johnson’s written recollections of the Black “A Beacon to the Traveler, Thirty Miles Distant” Hawk War, penned when he was in his eighties, clearly exagger- There are many physical descriptions of “the Blue Mounds,” ate many things, including his role at the fort. His memories, and the densely wooded twin hills whose peaks are visible from thir- those of many others, are the basis for much of the history writ- ty miles away. These descriptions appear in official documents ten about Wisconsin’s frontier life. from the early years of the territory, including the lyrical prose of Henry Schoolcraft, who toured the lead From Mines to Militia region the year before Black Hawk’s uprising: Upon hearing that Black Hawk and his 1,200 followers had crossed the Mississippi The highest elevations, the Platte River in early April, settlers throughout Mounds and the Blue Mound, are cov- the lead-mining region hastily con- ered with soil and with trees. Numer- structed forts, stockades, and ous brooks of limpid water traverse strongholds to protect them from the plains, and find their way anticipated Indian attacks. Com- either into the Wisconsin, Rock panies of several hundred River, or the Mississippi. . . . mounted militia or rangers, The surface soil is a rich black under the command of Henry alluvion; it yields abundant Dodge, began to ride the old crops of corn. . . . I have never Indian trails to guard the set- . . . seen a richer soil, or more tlements and forts. Mounted stately fields of corn and oats, couriers or “expresses” trans- than upon one of the plateaux mitted information between of the Blue Mound. forts and the military, prima- Such is the country which rily regarding the move- appears to be richer in ores of ments of Black Hawk’s band. lead than any other mineral Construction began district in the world.2 about May 10, and just days later, an incident occurred By 1831 several individu- that may have caused the als had invested some years in fort builders to accelerate Blue Mounds, and the best- their pace: an attack by Black known is Ebenezer Brigham, Hawk, to the south, on mem- WHS Archives (X3)38602 who founded the community bers of the Illinois militia, in

in 1828 on the south slope of Black Hawk, after his capture and release, was transformed a place near a Rock River the east mound.3 By 1832 the from a menacing figure of fear to a sympathetic symbol of a landing called Stillman’s community of Blue Mounds vanishing, and thus no longer threatening, culture. Run. The settlers at Blue included his mine, frontier Mounds had no idea that the inn, and mercantile establishment. All were located near a large “attack” was Black Hawk’s attempt to broker peace with militia spring and just off a major Indian trail that would later become members, whose panic at being confronted led to several deaths, part of Wisconsin’s first highway, the Military Road. The Ho- both white and Indian. But the militia’s response was under- Chunk maintained a camp nearby and with them Brigham trad- standable, by settlers and government officials who perceived ed merchandise for pelts. Black Hawk’s return as an invasion. Indeed, some scholars have The small Blue Mounds community consisted of single men speculated that although Black Hawk’s move was to reclaim his and several families, many employed by Brigham. One family, village, he may have hoped to spark a general uprising. The Illi- that of William Aubrey, Brigham’s hired hand, lived with the nois and Iowa-Michigan militia, as well as federal troops, were unmarried Brigham, taking care of his house. Another frontier ordered to return Black Hawk to the west side of the Mississippi

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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 of the 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.4 tryside moved to the fort. Eyewitness and later historical accounts described a fairly The names of the 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 of the fort in William Smith’s 1854 History mention women by name, although their presence there was of Wisconsin, 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.5 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 blockhouses, measuring 26 by 30 feet.6 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. 49 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY

Brigham brought his account WISCONSIN book listing orders and goods supplied to the settlers of the Blue Ft. Blue Mounds Mounds area as part of his mer- Ft. Blue Mounds & the Black Hawk War, 1832 cantile business. On the back of IOWA book, Brigham kept a brief diary Bad Axe area of main map of the dramatic events that took Portage place at the fort.7 Elsewhere in (Ft. Winnebago) ILLINOIS r e v i the book he provided information R o Wisconsin Heights o about where to contact his next of r p River e a sin v k on i c sc i i R W Madison K kin. i

i s

Henry Dodge, as the leader of s Dodgeville

i Prairie du Chien Blue Mounds s Four Lakes ()

s (Ft. Union)

i (Ft. Crawford) (Ft. Blue Mounds) the Michigan Territory Militia, Mineral Point M Ft. Koshkonong (Ft. Jackson) S u came to Blue Mounds to empha- g a r size the fort’s strategic impor- R Lake i MICHIGAN TERRITORY v Koshkonong e r tance. As the closest fortification Wiota Lake of any kind to Black Hawk’s trail, UNORGANIZED (Ft. Hamilton) Geneva TERRITORY it would serve as a depot for pro- Dubuque P e c a visions for the troops, and its pro- t Galena o n i c tection was critical. The men of a R Stillman's Mi iv ssi er Blue Mounds formed a company ss Run ip p i of the Iowa (County) regiment of R

i v

e the Michigan Territorial Militia r ILLINOIS on May 20, and Dodge himself Dixon’s Ferry began to drill them. They also Battle elected their first company Black Hawk’s r route, 1832 8 ive leader, Captain John Sherman. k R Wabekieshiek State/Territorial oc R (Prophet’sVillage) boundary, 1832 Rock Island Among the miners, there were (Ft. Armstrong) no small arms and only a few 0 25 miles rifles and shotguns. The company Saukenuk 0 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 of the 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 the Mississippi River. Indeed, quartermaster accounts 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 miles 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 militia assigned to Fort frantic activity. Uncertain of the intentions of the Ho-Chunk Blue Mounds,9 but mounted militia 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 of the Wisconsin River area.11 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.”10 According to Johnson, assured the Americans of their peaceful intentions. Around the

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WHS Archives Name File The abduction of Rachel and Silvia Hall filled the lead region with terror, but Potawatomi, Sauk, and Ho-Chunk people, all playing different roles, 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-Chunk and Amer- Potawatomi warriors had murdered several people and abduct- icans exploded into violence a few days later. On June 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.12 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-Chunk encampment on the party of Native Americans who shot and killed Aubrey. Pan- Blue Mounds, northeast of the 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.16 of the 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-Chunk that were not Black Hawk’s warriors, but those of the band of the Ho- the release of the sisters had been secured, and that they would Chunk encamped nearby on the Blue Mounds. Black Hawk was be released to the Americans. But the Ho-Chunk 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.”13 was precipitated by a Ho-Chunk man who had a verbal alterca- A group of Ho-Chunk, including several principal chiefs, tion with Aubrey’s wife, during which he threatened to kill her delivered the hostages on June 1 to Fort Blue Mounds, where the husband.17 Indeed, Ho-Chunk leaders confirmed, after the war’s women took care of the girls, who were haggard but otherwise end, that one of their own had killed Aubrey and that several had healthy.14 Dodge and a company of men came to the fort to take “raised the hatchet” against the Americans.18 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 of the Halls was obtained, took hostage the Ho- company sent by Dodge, followed a trail to the recently aban- Chunk party itself in a misguided attempt to guarantee peaceful doned Ho-Chunk camp and then to the Wisconsin River, where behavior of area Ho-Chunk.15 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 of the fort, “where it

51 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY would be a nice place for a bury- for the military. In mid-July, thir- ing ground.”19 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. tles in the lead mining district.20 They were to be sent east in relief Then on June 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 two had ridden out to investigate August.24 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 “Fort 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- Chunk.21 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.22 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.25 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.26 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 Joel 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.23 “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 of the 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.”

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WHS Archives (X3)41973 Above: Dedication at Fort Blue Mounds. The plaque dedicated on that September day in 1910 was the first historic marker erected by the Society, and the ceremony as well as the plaque itself reflected the efforts of an energetic landmarks committee and a new era of public outreach pioneered by director Rueben Gold Thwaites. 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 of the marker dedication, the swales and depres- sions marking the site of Fort Blue Mounds were still visible, allowing the installation of four cement pillars to distinguish the property from surrounding farmland. But time passed, and plows eventually obliterated these markings, knocking down the Robert Birmingham cement pillars that gave some indication 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 time and skills, including Boy Scout troop mem- In the spring of 1991, one hundred and fifty-nine years after bers completing archaeology merit badge requirements. Between the volunteer militia left Fort Blue Mounds, another large group 1991 and 2000, more than fifty different volunteers worked on of volunteers converged on the site, this time 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 of Wisconsin summer weather.

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Drawing by Mark Heinrichs based on a drawing by Mike Thorson

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 of the 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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Bobbie Malone An archaeologist models correct technique for these children, while the State Archaeologist (and writer of this article) looks on. The students were there to pose for the cover of WHS Press book, Digging and Discovery: Wisconsin Archaeology. still 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 of the fort suggests that blockhouses, unlike the stockade in defensive ditch that encircled the fort. Tracking the orientation walls, were built using horizontal log construction, like log cabins. of the stockade line and defensive ditch led to a huge surprise: The size of the blockhouses at Blue Mounds could not be deter- Fort Blue Mounds was much smaller than the historical record, mined by the limited excavations but the gaps in the stockade even eyewitness accounts, led us to believe. In fact it was entirely 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 of the fort, during times of both terror and anxious gular, measuring 55 feet by 45 feet. waiting, must have been a challenge. It was built of individual oak logs placed vertically in a “wall- 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 artifacts were recovered, deposited during four feet deep. Gaps in the southeast and northwest corners of the both the four-month occupation and after the lead miners stockade represented the presence of the two blockhouses. In the returned to their normal lives. A major category of artifacts are limited excavation, archaeologists found no structural evidence of related to military activities, 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 of the fort may be the from the interior of the fort. Although many of the 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 of the 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

56 S PRING 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY 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 both bachelor’s and master’s marked as resting places of some of 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. minor amounts of beef and poultry. He is senior editor of the special volume of The Wisconsin Archeologist called Wisconsin 1 Alice E. Smith. The History of Wisconsin: Vol. 1 Oats, corn, and garden crops were From Exploration to Statehood (Madison, WI: State Archeology and the senior author of the new book Indian planted, although, like hunting, Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1973). Some of the Mounds of Wisconsin published by the University of Wis- miners were working and living on lands that the Ho- these activities were disrupted by the Chunk still claimed. consin Press. In 2000 he received the Increase Lapham 2 Joseph Shafer, The Wisconsin Domesday Book war. Brigham’s account books indi- Research Medal from the Wisconsin Archeological (Madison, WI: Wisconsin Historical Society 1932) 39. 3 Allen Ruff and Tracy Will, Forward! A History of cate that potatoes, flour, and supple- Society. Dane: the Capital County (Cambridge, WI: Wood- mentary store-bought goods such as henge Press, 2000) 37–38. 4 H. A. Tenney, “Early Times in Wisconsin,” in Col- sugar, salt, coffee, and tea were important to the people of Blue lections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society.) 1:98. 5 Edward Beouchard, “Beouchard’s Narrative,” in The History of Wisconsin in Three Parts, His- 27 Mounds. During the war, lack of food must have been problem torical, Documentary, and Descriptive, Part II, ed. William Smith (Madison, WI: 1854) 209–214. 6 Essau Johnson Papers, 1800–1882, Wisconsin Historical Society. Johnson’s reminiscences are since letters to Dodge included desperate pleas not only for guns, embellished and confused with regard to regard chronology of events and therefore must be but also for provisions. Other artifacts found at the fort site regarded critically. 7 Ebenezer Brigham Diary, Ebenezer Brigham Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society. included numerous fragments of white clay pipes, wine and 8 Muster Role of Captain Sherman’s Company of Iowa Militia Stationed at Blue Mounds Fort, Wisconsin Historical Society. whiskey bottles, nails (mostly from boxes), tools, clothing buttons, 9 George M. Crawford and Robert Crawford, eds., Memoirs of Iowa County (Northwestern His- and one coin—an 1838 American half penny found in the defen- torical Association, 1913) 25 10 Brigham Diary; Ellen M. Whitney, ed. The Black Hawk War:1831–1832 (Springfield: Illinois sive ditch. Each provides an insight into the history of the fort. State Historical Society, 1970–1978, two vols.) 11 Blue Mounds Council, May 28, 1832, in Whitney, The Black Hawk War, vol. 2, part 1, The date of the half penny found at the bottom of a filled-in 467–469. 12 “Beouchard’s Narrative,” 213. defensive ditch, helps date the filling of the trench by returned 13 John Sherman to Henry Dodge, May 30, 1832, in Whitney, The Black Hawk War, vol. 2, part miners. 1, 487–488. 14 “John Messersmith’s Narrative,” in The History of Wisconsin in Three Parts, Historical, Doc- The discovery of each artifact excited the volunteer workers umentary, and Descriptive, Part II, ed. William Smith (Madison, WI: 1854) 225; “Beouchard’s Narrative,” 214. at the site, but a few artifacts in particular helped researchers to 15 Henry Gratiot to Henry Atkinson, June 6, 1832, in Whitney, The Black Hawk War, vol. 2, part understand the humanity behind the artifacts. A hand-carved 1, 531–532; Henry Gratiot to William Clark, June 12, 1832, in Whitney, The Black Hawk War, vol. 2, part 1, 577-579; Henry Gratiot Diary, in Whitney, The Black Hawk War, vol. 2, part 2, bone domino piece and several clay marbles reflected games 1303. 16 Ebenezer Brigham to John H. Kinzie, June 15, 1832, in Whitney, The Black Hawk War, vol. played, perhaps to wile away the hours in the crowded and tense 2, part 1, 604–606; “Beouchard’s Narrative,” 209; Essau Johnson Papers. fort compound. These artifacts are a reminder of the humanity 17 James M. Stode to Henry Atkinson, June 10, 1832, in Whitney, The Black Hawk War, vol. 2, part 1, 566–569. that belongs to history. In successfully connecting the two, this 18 Council with the Rock River Winnebago, September 11, 1832, in Whitney, The Black Hawk War, vol. 2, part 2, 1133. archaeological project met its most basic goal. 19 Essau Johnson Papers. 20 On June 14 four men were killed at Spafford’s Farm near Hamilton’s diggings at modern day But there were other goals as well. The Wisconsin Historical Wiota. On June 16 a man was killed and scalped during a battle on the Pecatonica River. Society archaeological investigations sampled only a small part 21 “Beouchard’s Narrative,” 211–212; Brigham Diary; Essau Johnson Papers. 22 “Beouchard’s Narrative,” 212. of the Fort Blue Mounds site, acquiring enough information to 23 Henry Dodge to Henry Atkinson, June 30, 1832, in Whitney, The Black Hawk War, vol 2, part 2, 715. answer some basic questions about the physical layout and con- 24 Thayer, Crawford, ed., Hunting a Shadow: The Search for Black Hawk (privately published, dition of the fort. The archaeological information combined with 1981) 203. 25 Essau Johnson Papers. historical research provide a clearer window to the past than 26 Tenney, “Early Times in Wisconsin,” 6:347. 27 Accountant Books, Essau Johnson Papers. what documentary evidence alone could provide. With this information, the site was listed on the National Register of His- For Further Study toric Places in 2002. The site of Fort 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 exhibits, and a major archaeological publication are are still hidden and preserved below the surface of the hill on planned. Moreover, visitors can stop at a historic marker in the village of Blue Mounds, within view of the fort site, commemorating the fort and the Black Society property, awaiting future archaeological and historical Hawk War. Elsewhere, travelers can follow the Black Hawk trail in Wisconsin by visiting thirty-five historic markers associated with the Black Hawk War research. Perhaps one day, the fort can be accurately recon- recently erected by local historical organizations in cooperation with the Wis- structed, bringing to life a tumultuous and important period of consin Historical Society.

57 S PRING 2003 EDITORS’ ✒ CHOICE Books Events Multimedia Exhibits Resources Locations

Across This Land: A chapter on the Corn Belt) of the lower Great Lakes. Regional Geography The second discussion of Wisconsin appears eight chapters of the United States later in the chapter on the upper Great Lakes region. In just and Canada eleven pages, Hudson places its early settlement history in the BY JOHN C. HUDSON context of the physical environment, addresses the “cutover” region, and the geographical character of the Canadian Shield’s The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 2002. Pp. xxi, 474. extension into Wisconsin, upper Michigan, and Minnesota. Index, notes, bibliography, illustra- Across This Land whets the appetite for more extensive read- tions, maps. ISBN 0-8018-6567-0, $29.95, softcover. ing, 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 Across This Land is references following each chapter are instructive, a more exten- J the first book pub- sive bibliographic essay was not included. Moreover, some of lished since at least the 1970s the illustrations, 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? First, 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, WI 53706-1482 portion of the manufacturing belt, the traditional iron and steel or e-mail [email protected] industry, and much of the 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

58 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY

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- University of Minnesota Press, ceived of farming as the highest form of land use. Kates empha- Minneapolis, 2001. Pp. xix, 207. Index, notes, illustrations. sizes the surprising role that writers played in changing public ISBN 0-8166-3579-X, $29.95, opinion. For example, he suggests that the novels of James Oliver hardcover. Curwood and Harold Titus, two writers and conservationists who 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 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 of the 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, James 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 of the 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 the will visit Kewaunee, Farm Technology Day in Wisconsin Humanities Council that 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

59 S UMMER 2003 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. xiii, 227. Index, notes, illustrations, maps. ISBN 0-299-17474-3, $19.95, softcover. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2002. Pp. xvii, 229. ichard P. Thiel provides a first-hand account of the return of ISBN 0-8166-4019-X, $21.95, the timber wolf to Wisconsin. Thiel made a career out of hardcover. R 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 T Zimmer’s journey from Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. In this book he his boyhood in Canton, Ohio, shares his personal and professional stories from his interactions with Wisconsin’s expanding wolf population. and his days as a soldier during atomic tests in the Nevada desert. His clear, Lighthouses of the poignant prose takes us Great Lakes: Your through his many years as a Guide to the writer and publisher and Region’s Historic finally to the rural tranquility of his present life on a farm in the Lighthouses hills of the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin. Above all, the book is a consideration of the ways that nature provides TEXT BY TODD R. BERGER meaning and solace, and of the importance of finding the right PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANIEL place in which to live. E. DEMPSTER Voyageur Press, Stillwater, MN, Ghost Towns of the Forest: Vanished 2002. Pp. 160. Index, bibliography, 125 color and b/w photographs. Lumber Towns of Wisconsin, Vol. 1 ISBN 0-89658-517-4, $29.95, BY RANDALL E. ROHE hardcover. Forest History Association of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Rapids, WI, 2002. Pp. 333. Index, notes, illustrations, appendices, maps. ISBN 193180327-7, $42.50, ighthouses of the Great Lakes takes readers on a historical hardcover. L 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 Highways

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 Wisconsin Press, Madison, 2002. Pp. xx, 201. Illustrations, notes, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2001. Pp. 336. Index, bibliog- maps, index. ISBN 0-299-18040-9, $26.95, hardcover. raphy, illustrations, maps. ISBN 0-8166-36780-8, $19.95, softcover.

n 1970 Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin helped to galva- his reprint tells the stories behind the road signs and pro- Inize 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 environmental movement. He discusses current environ- and how they were named, but it also offers local anecdotes, his- mental concerns like population growth 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.

60 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY Letters from Our Readers Editors’ note: The Winter 2002-2003 issue featured the arti- Doty, like Cass, 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 Métis 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 Métis. 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 Childs was one of the men “indicted for the crime” on page reasons. 38, when, in fact, Childs was on the jury in this case. Childs, 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 of the 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 of the 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 fines over the jury’s recommendation, though Childs 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 Childs’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 Childs’s statement, I plish some admirable things while living a life of dreaming and went back to Childs’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. Childs is a strong focus be that Doty should be admired for his sheer tenacity and of the book I’m writing, I need to set the record straight. brash resolve. Among the affable, cheerful, compliant Métis 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 of the Métis inhabitants discussed moving to Canada 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 Ithe 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 Métis 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 Cass, my grandparents’ case, François and WaBeNesMaWaQua Doty was not exactly a romantic figure in Wisconsin history. had already lived together for many years, had several chil- Cass 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 Métis. ty. In 1821, François was formally denied the right to vote

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according to Territorial papers and in 1824, François was the hero that he is often portrayed as in less critical works indicted for fornication. François 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 François for his crime of fornication and eventually attempt- critical use of sources, disciplined methodologies, and, most ed to use François’ name in a profit significantly, objectivity. Was James scheme, I wink in the jovial manner D. Doty the great statesman who of my fore bearers. served as a federal judge, a territori- LINDA JOHNSON, via e-mail, al governor, and who established Kohler, Wisconsin the city of Madison, or was he a greedy, conniving, manipulative Patrick Jung responds: Yankee who preyed upon the native want to thank Ms. Bebow-Rein- and Métis residents of early Wis- I hard for bringing to my attention consin? He was undoubtedly a little 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 court records concerning the 1824 considered an objective historical session of the Additional Court of portrait of the actual man. Ms. Michigan Territory, and, much to Johnson is correct when she states my embarrassment, I found that that “History. . . can be viewed Ebenezer Childs did not appear from varying vantage points,” how- before the court to be tried for the ever, as every good historian knows, crime of fornication as I state on every vantage point has to be tem- page 38 of my article. Moreover, I pered with objectivity. also checked the available case files In my own article, I sought to to see if the prosecuting attorney illustrate the impact of the Addition- had drafted an indictment against al Court upon the residents of early Childs 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

document. This presents historians Wisconsin Supreme Court Additional Court clearly and consis- with something of a puzzle since Doty’s image receives attention. tently demonstrate that he had Childs’s published reminiscences in sought to treat Indian and Métis volume 4 of the Collections of the State Historical Society of persons fairly. 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 Ms. Bebow-Reinhard has done an impressive amount of would label his ideas racist today, in the context of the 1820s, research on Childs, and she offers some convincing argu- Doty possessed surprisingly tolerant ideas concerning native ments for why Childs made the comments he did. Regardless societies. It is this aspect of Doty that caught my eye as an his- of why he made these comments, she is correct in stating that torian, and it was this aspect of Doty that I wanted to examine. Childs did not appear before the court in 1824 nor at any I sought, as I always do when I write history, to be objective other time for the crime of fornication. Again, I thank her for and dispassionate in my analysis. I will let the readers of the pointing this out. Wisconsin Magazine of History judge whether or not I have Ms. Johnson’s letter presents a different kind of historical succeeded in this objective. problem. When I first read her letter, I assumed that she was As a final note, Ms. Johnson and the readers of the 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 façon 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

62 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY 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 François for engaging in “fornication.” It is Magazine of History for the opportunity to respond to their letters. undoubtedly true that many of the 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 Métis 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 McClellan 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. Thank you, Wisconsin collection of photos preparing Six Genera- The establishment of Anglo-American law 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 Métis women, the custom of remember. mother saw the cover of the 1977 edition of country marriage was not wholly to their Germans In Wisconsin, 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 Métis 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 asking our addressed to Hesseltine Award, Wisconsin Magazine of History, member readers to vote for their choice of best original article. A list 816 State Street, Madison, WI 53706. Provide the name of the of all eligible writers and articles (excerpts and short essays are writer, the article title, and your member number, or your own name. not in the running) appear on our Web site, Voting ends on November 1, 2003. www.wisconsinhistory.org/wmh. Look for a special ballot in your Thank you! July/August issue of Columns or members can vote on the Web, The editors

63 S UMMER 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 of the Land. Now that I have, my con- William 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 life 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 they “carries us across a threshold learn from essays in For the that leads outward from our- Health of the Land that the 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 journalist 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. Unlike 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 inhaling.” Their story in this wide range of disciplines, mem- issue traces the history of the bers of the 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 of Wildlife Ecology ture, game management, and mented for the original perspec- Fishing on the Sugar River, ca. 1936. environmental history are not tive reflected in his study of the necessarily poetic sounding environmental history of colonial New England, he gave the terms, but those who established and practiced these disci- credit to his early training: “I was simply writing history as I plines in Wisconsin have done so with artistic levels of pas- had learned to do back home.” sion. Leopold, Jens Jensen, Edward A. Birge, Chancey Juday, While Cronon became aware of the uniqueness of Wis- Arthur Hasler, and Gordon MacQuarrie—who all make consin’s environmental tradition only after leaving the state, appearances in this issue—have done their part to infuse the for those of us who arrive as adults, it becomes apparent soon Wisconsin air with an environmental ethic. after we get here. I now feel as if I began breathing in the —J. Kent Calder influence of Aldo Leopold upon crossing the state line for the first time. Back then I had not yet read Leopold’s Sand Coun-

64 S UMMER 2003 Wade House, Robert Granflaten photo Old World Wisconsin, Joel Heiman 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 throughout the state, the sites offer many days’ worth of enlightenment about Wisconsin’s past. Pendarvis, WHS Place File Visit our Web site for individual schedules, special events, and locations. www.wisconsinhistory.org/sites Madeline Island, Steve Cotherman photo Friends of Our Native Landscape Archive

n 1920 the Wisconsin chapter of the 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 celebrate the land. These program covers are just part of the story told in this issue by William H. Tishler and Erik Ghenoiu.

Wisconsin Historical Society Press • 816 State Street • Madison, WI • 53706-1482