(ISSN 0043-6.534) WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY The State Historical Society of Wisconsin • Vol. 74, No. 2 • Winter, 1990-1991 r D d ^ 4 ^•^ Fl D 1 i 111 7r r I i ^*N,fc. C-mK^^. •^1 ^* 5i. VSj^HAd {ftix^idl^ il 1. ,. i. - ' ^K«' L Mk ^:i ''i THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN H. NICHOLAS MULLER III, Director Officers GEORGE H. MILLER, President H. NICHOLAS MULLER III, Secretary GERALD D. VISTE, Treasurer JANE BERNHARDT, Second Vice-President FANNIE HICKLIN, First Vice-President THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN is both a state agency and a private membership organization. Founded in 1846—two years before statehood—and chartered in 1853, it is the oldest American historical society to receive continuous public funding. By statute, it is charged with collecting, advancing, and dissemi­ nating knowledge of Wisconsin and of the trans-Allegheny West. The Society serves as the archive of the State of Wisconsin; it collects all manner of books, periodicals, maps, manuscripts, relics, newspapers, and aural and graphic materials as they relate to North America; it maintains a museum, library, and research facility in Madison as well as a statewide system of historic sites, school services, area research centers, and affiliated local societies; it administers a broad program of historic preservation; and publishes a wide variety of historical materials, both scholarly and popular. MEMBERSHIP in the Society is open to the public. Individual membership (one person) is $25. Senior Citizen Individual membership is $20. Family membership is $30. Senior Citizen Family membership is $25. Supporting membership is $100. Sustaining membership is $250. A Patron contributes $500 or more. THE SOCIETY is governed by a Board of Curators which includes twenty-four elected members, the Governor or designee, three appointees of the Governor, a legislator from the majority and minority from each house, and ex officio, the President of the University of Wiscpnsin System, the President of the Friends of the State Historical Society, the President of the Wisconsin History Foundation, Inc., and the President of the Administrative Committee of the Wisconsin Council for Local History. A complete listing of the Curators appears inside the back cover. The Society is headquartered at 816 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, at the juncture of State and Park streets on the University of Wisconsin campus. The State Historical Museum is located at 30 North Carroll Street. A partial listing of phone numbers (Area Code 608) follows: General Administration 262-3266 Library circulation desk 262-3421 Affiliated local societies 262-2316 Maps 262-5867 Archives reading room 262-3338 Membership 262-9613 Contribution of manuscript materials 262-3248 Microforms reading room 262-9621 Editorial offices 262-9603 Museum tours 262-7700 Film collections 262-0585 Newspaper reference 262-9584 Genealogical and general reference inquiries .. 262-9590 Picture and sound collections 262-9581 Government publications and reference 262-2781 Public information office 262-9606 Historic preservation 262-1339 Sales desk 262-8000 Historic sites 262-9606 School services 262-7539 Hours of operation 262-8060 Speakers bureau 262-9606 ON THE COVER: A stereograph of the canal at Portage, about 1870, try A. H. Armor. An article focusing on the environmental traditions of three residents of the area—John Muir, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Aldo Leopold—begins on page 83. fWHi(X3)34870] Volume 74, Number 2 / Winter, 1990-1991 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY Published quarterly by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 816 State Street, Madison, Landscape and Home: Wisconsin 53706. Distributed to Environmental Traditions in Wisconsin 83 members as part of their dues. William Cronon (Individual membership, $25; senior citizen individual, $20; family, $30; senior citizen family, Someone in the Darkness Singing: $25; supporting, $100; sustaining, $250; patron, $500 or Anthony Walvoord, a Wisconsin more.) Single numbers from Missionary to Japan 106 Volume 57 forward are $5 plus Lane Earns postage. Microfilmed copies available through University Microfilms, 300 North Zeeb William R. Castle and the Postwar Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106; reprints of Volumes 1 Transformation of Japan, 1945-1955 125 through 20 and most issues of Alfred L. Castle Volumes 21 through 56 are available from Kraus Reprint Company, Route 100, Millwood, New York 10546. Book Reviews 138 Communications should be addressed to the editor. The Book Review Index 148 Society does not assume responsibility for statements Accessions 149 made by contributors. Second-class postage paid at Wisconsin History Checklist 154 Madison, Wisconsin. POSTMASTER: Send address Contributors 158 changes to Wisconsin Magazine of History, Madison, Wisconsin 53706. Copyright © 1991 by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. The Wisconnn Magazine of History is indexed annually by the editors; cumulative indexes are assembled decennially. In addition, articles are abstracted and indexed in America: History and Life, Historical Abstracts, Index to Literature on the American Indian, and the Combined Retrospective Index to Journals in Editor History, I838-I974. PAUL H. HASS A.ssociate Editors Photographs identified with WHi negative numbers arc from the WILLIAM C. MARTEN Historical Society's collections. JOHN O. HOLZHUETER Cirt Scouts camping m a Wisconsin Cave, 1967. A Milwaukee journal photo by James G. Conklin. 82 Landscape and Home: Environmental Traditions in Wisconsin By William Cronon ''HINKING about "a sense of place seemed to me a very steep hill. There, we found T in Wisconsin," I'm inevitably a deep sinkhole filled with refuse. At the bot­ tempted—as an expatriate Wisconsinite—to re­ tom was a narrow slit sending clouds of steam flect on my own experience of the state's land­ into the cold December air, and leading down scape. My sense of this place is mainly that of into darkness. We lit our carbide lamps—mod­ a child and young adult growing up and coming ern remnants of Wisconsin's lead-mining of age here. My first visits to Wisconsin began days—and edged gingerly down into the world farther back than I can remember, on the sum­ below. mertime excursions from my family's house in Entering such a place is always magical. New England to my grandparents' cottage on You're suddenly engulfed in darkness, and it Green Lake in the central part of the state. We takes a minute or two before your eyes adjust moved to Madison when I was eight years old, to the dim yellow glow of the lamps. If you've so that most of my schooling and growing up arrived as we did in the winter, the air at 47 happened in Madison and its environs. But my degrees Fahrenheit is suddenly warm and very first really deep engagement with the Wiscon­ humid, with an indescribable odor of clay and sin landscape—with any landscape—came in a damp stone that is like an ancient farm cellar most peculiar way. When I was eleven years old, but older and less human. Behind you, the blue I fell in with a group of University of Wisconsin light of day becomes ever fainter as you move students and became a cave explorer. As I look away from the entrance. When the last glimmer back on that event from the distance of nearly vanishes and you realize that your lamp is now a quarter century, I suddenly realize that spe­ your only lifeline back to the outside world, lunking—caving—was among the formative ex­ you suddenly understand that you have entered periences of my life, and has informed my sense a wild place, which people can visit but cannot of place in Wisconsin ever since. call home. The contrast with the daylit coun­ My first visit to a wild Wisconsin cave was to tryside above could hardly be more stark. Pop's Cave, in Richland County. I still remem­ As caves go, Wisconsin's are a humble and ber the trip quite vividly. After a drive along unpretentious lot. The glacier did away with the Wisconsin River and through the hills of most that might have existed outside the Drift­ the Driftless Area, we parked our cars by an less Area, so there are only a few hundred left. old church and headed out across the waist- Our thinly bedded dolomites just can't com­ high weeds of a farmer's meadow. To reach the pete with the great limestones of Kentucky or cave, we clambered through several barbed- New Mexico, so our caves have none of the wire fences and climbed to the top of what then mileage or grandeur one finds elsewhere. More Copyright © 1991 by The Slate Historical Society of Wisconsin All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 83 WHi(X;<)46042 Tum-of-the century visitors to a cave near the Mississippi River. than a century of human vandalism has re­ minders that the ceiling is gradually collapsing moved most of the calcite formations they once as the cave migrates upward. Eventually, it will contained. Pop's Cave is fairly typical. The produce new sinkholes and then cease to exist steeply sloping entrance room leads down to a altogether. scries of chambers and tight crawlways for a The attractions of such a place are com­ total of about eight hundred feet. Thick wet pletely lost on some people. You either feel mud covers nearly every surface, and soon cov­ them or you don't. Indeed, I should confess to ers you as well. Soda straw stalactites hang next some ambivalence about them myself. I never, to a few dew-covered bats from various places for instance, got over a lingering fear of the on the ceilings, and water drips everywhere. At dark. The thought of my lamp going out was the far back of the cave are some wonderfully akin to the dread of being caught without a delicate rimstone pools, where calcite has built night-light to hold back the terrors that lurk up in a series of steps to produce a frozen behind the closet doors of every child's bed­ cascade of water, like nothing so much as a room.