Summer 2003 Issue of the Wisconsin Magazine of History
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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 Aas 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 pub- lisher 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 pho- tos 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 com- missions 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- 4 S UMMER 2003 W ISCONSIN M AGAZINE OF H ISTORY 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.