Wisconsin Journal Number 26 17 April 1998 Warm weather is here, suddenly. Most days recently have made it into the 80s, and some days the dew point is in the 70s, so it's muggy. It's thunderstorm and tornado season, though I've been out of town for most of the bigger storms. (I managed to fly through one last Friday on a flight from Chicago, however.) I'm about three weeks behind on writing up our travels. Kaye and I decided to check out Galena, Illinois, just before Easter. I've written about the lead mining region in SW Wisconsin before, and Galena is part of the same area. "Galena" is the most prevalent kind of lead ore in these parts (lead sulfide), and the names of the towns on the way down--such as New Diggings and Leadmine--leave no doubt about the history of the area. We stopped off briefly in Shullsberg, WI, en route, which we assume was another mining town, based on the name of a tavern: The Pick and Gad. (Today's trivia: What's a Gad?*) Not a lot downtown--a creamery and several antique stores. One store was in a church dating to 1869. Galena itself is on the Galena River, a tributary to the Mississippi. The town had several severe floods in the past (the most recent major one was in 1937), and the main feature as you enter downtown are a pair of large floodgates, erected in 1949. The gates do get used. During the midwest flooding in 1993, they held back 8 feet of water. One of Galena's claims to fame was that Ulysses S. Grant once lived there. He came to help his brothers Samuel Simpson Grant and Orvil Grant to run the family business, Grant Leather Store. He was only there from 1860-61, before heading off to the Civil War and the presidency. The townspeople built a house for him in town, but his family seldom occupied it. The Galena River was originally called the Fever River (and it still is in Wisconsin), and Galena started as the Fever River Settlement. Its heydey started with the lead rush around 1823 (though the French had stopped in the area in the 1700s looking for lead). Prospecting slowed down during the Indian Wars in the 1820s, and some of the big strikes, such as that of H.H. Gear, didn't come until a decade later. By 1837, Galena was shipping out 54 million pounds of lead a year, from steamboat docks all along the levy next to downtown. It looked as if Galena would be the major city on the Mississippi north of St. Louis. However, Galena fell on some hard times. The easily mined lead deposits were being played out by 1849-50, when many of the miners pulled up stakes and headed for the California gold rush. There was a big fire in the 1850s, after which it was decreed that there would be no wood buildings downtown. After the Civil War, and the arrival of the railroad, with its terminus a little further on in Dubuque, Galena gradually lost its primacy, and the Depression of 1893 drove it further from the limelight. The river eventually silted up too much for steamboats, because of mining and farming upstream. However, the combination of a depressed economy and all-brick construction has left the downtown much as it was around the turn of the century. Galena now has a little industry (a few small foundries), but makes most of its money off of tourist dollars. In addition to the downtown, there are a bunch of mansions, built by smelter owners and steamoat captains, on a high ridge above downtown. I hiked up the 214 steps to look around the upper town. The "down"-town/"up"-town split reminded me of Oregon City, except no municipal elevator. There are also several impressive houses on the south banks of the river, including the 5-story DeSoto house. While the town is full of stores, Kaye and I were disappointed in their contents and Beany Baby mentality. We didn't find much that seemed unique to the area. After lunch we visited the local historical museum, where we saw a slide show on the history of Galena, and saw displays on the nine Civil War generals who came from the town. There is also a display on the local geology. The area around Galena is part of the Driftless area--it is about the only part of Illinois that wasn't covered in ice sometime during the past 250,000 years. The highest point in Illinois is nearby Charles Mound, at a towering 1241 feet. I also learned that we were in Jo Daviess county, named after a Kentucky Colonel, Joseph Hamilton Daveiss, who died in 1811. (I haven't mispelled the name. Kentucky was the first to honor Daveiss with a county, and managed to mangle the name in the process. Illinois and Indiana copied Kentucky's mistake.) Back in Madison, I finally toured the floor of the State Historical Museum that I hadn't seen, which deals mainly with Indians and Paleo-Indians in Wisconsin. People starting moving into the area not long after the last ice age. Indians who lived here around 6000 BC had copper, which they found in pure form in glacial rubble. They used it to make knives, hooks, spearpoints and beads. The builders of the effigy mounds were hunter-gathers from the period 500-1100 AD. The Oneota, 900-1650 AD, started farming, mainly corn, beans and squash. The first contact with Europeans was with the French in the 1630s, who came to trade for furs. The basis for the fur trade was beaver pelts, until around 1830, when beaver felt hats went out of style. The fur trade declined significantly after that, though there was still some demand for muskrat and otter. The Jesuits arrived in the mid-1600s, and learned the Indian languages. They often acted as translators and arbitrators between the French and Indians. Around 1825 the US government started signing (forcing?) treaties with the Indians that confined them to limited areas, or forced them out of the state altogether. The Winnebago have no tribal lands in Wisconsin, because they were relocated across the Mississippi. On the other hand, some tribes now in Wisconsin, such as the Oneida up by Green Bay, were moved into the state from further east. One part of the floor looks at Indian activities throughout the seasons of the year, such as maple sugaring in the fall, and harvesting wild rice in the summer. The Indians ice fished, though in a style different from what you see today. A fisherman would cut a small hole in the ice, then lie prone on the ice and peer through. He would dangle a small lure in the hole, and have a short spear read to jab any fish that the lure attracted. Basswood bark was an important material, with strands being twisted into string, then woven into bags. There is also a temporary photo exhibit on the first floor, called "Wisconsin Then and Now," in honor of the sesquicentennial. It features 100 pairs of photos, where one is an old picture of a person or place, the new one depicts the place as it is now, or a similar place or person. They've been running one pair in the Sunday paper each week, but it was fun to see them all at once. A final bit of info. I found out the Indian mound in our neighborhood, which I mentioned a couple reports ago, is supposed to depict a bear. Coming soon--The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. -- Dave * A kind of steel wedge used in mining, usually tapered on four sides.