Wisconsin Journal

Number 30

18 June 1998



When my parents were out here at the end of May, we left them in

the care of our kids and headed up to Lake Superior. We traveled

almost due north. By the time we reached Steven's Point (home of

Point Beer), we were seeing fewer dairy farms, more second-growth

pine, potato fields and then very flat country, like around Tomah.

(Presumably because the land was at the bottom of the lake formed

during the last Ice Age.) We stopped in Wausau for lunch. Finding

a restaurant that was open was a bit difficult, because it was

Memorial Day. We ended up in a downtown mall, at Diamond Dave's Tacos.

The decor consisted of memorabilia from more-famous restaurants:

Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood and Hooters. The downtown was

interesting, in that it formed about a 4-by-4-block square, rather

than being strung out along one or two streets.



We crossed the Wisconsin River at a couple of points, and it was

considerably narrower than down by Spring Green. We saw some evidence

of a continued lumber industry, in the form of window manufacturers

and planing mills. The part of Wisconsin is also the premier place

in the US for growing ginseng. We saw fields of ginseng covered by

netting for shade. Buyers from all over the world show up during

harvest time (it's the number one cash crop in Wisconsin), and I've

read that a field used for ginseng can't be used for that crop again

for 100 years.



While we were headed north, the Memorial Day vacationers were headed

home going south, with boats, trailers and ATVs in tow. Around 3 in

the afternoon, we passed a 20-mile stretch of continuous traffic

coming at us from the other direction. We laughed.



We took a side road through the Lac du Flambeau Indian Reservation.

There are about five Ojibwe reservations in northern Wisconsin,

all of which trace back to settlements on Madeline Island in

Lake Superior. The Lac du Flambeaus are the Crane Clan of the

Ojibwes, and settled in their current area around 1745. The name

came from their custom of fishing at night with torches on the

lake. We had hoped to visit the reservation museum, but it was

closed when we arrived. We made a trip around the lake (not really

intentionally) and think we saw some wild rice marshes.



Later in the day we passed through the Bad River Indian Reservation,

who are also Ojibwes, of the Loon clan (as are those on the Red Cliff

Reservation, which we drove through the next day). On this part of

the drive, we saw a large roadside statue of a duck (to remind us

that we were in the land of the loon) and also a giant corkscrew (to

remind us that we were in the land of the snowmobile). Wisconsin has

a "highway system" of snowmobile trails, with both "state routes" and

"county roads". Also on the way up we passed over the continental

divide between watersheds that empty into the Atlantic (via the

Great Lakes) and those that empty into the Gulf of Mexico (via the

Mississippi).



We ended up that evening in the city of Ashland, on Chequamegon Bay

off of Lake Superior. Ashland reached its zenith in the late 19th

century, as an iron-ore export port. At its peak, it shipped more

iron ore than the ports of Duluth, Milwaukee and Superior combined.

The shoreline is still dominated by a great ore dock that extends

1800 hundred feet into the bay. (It originally went out 1/2 mile).

Ashland once boasted four docks of similar length. This dock belonged to

the Soo Line, which used the only 10-wheel-drive locomotive in the world

to shuttle around the ore cars. We saw the locomotive when we went to

dinner, inside the former Soo Line railroad depot. The dining room is

the former men's waiting room, and the bar is the women's waiting room.

The depot is a handsome brownstone structure. The stone came from

around Bayfield (further around the bay), and is the same stone used

in many brownstone buildings in Chicago. The depot was built in 1888,

and was restored in 1986. Kaye ordered lake trout cooked on a maple

plank. The fish was also served on the maple plank. The maple plank

had warped from many trips under the boiler. The maple plank proceeded

to shed sauce and fish juices onto the tablecloth in copious amounts.

I pretended not to know her.



The hotel we stayed in was a free reconstruction of a hotel built on

the same location in 1877 by the railroads, for passengers switching

between ship and train at Ashland. There were a few items that had

been salvaged from the original hotel in the lobby, and we had a

great view to the bay. We saw a dock with with two large mounds

on it, one white and one black. Kaye hypothesized it was salt

and pepper supplies for all of northern Wisconsin. The salt may

have been right, but the black pile was likely coal. (Or the "salt"

might have been crushed limestone.) I noticed the town power plant

was fueled both by coal and sawdust.



In the morning, we drove around the town some more. The town museum

is in the Willmarth Mansion, built as a private residence in 1869.

It functioned as a hospital from 1917 to 1972, and had a nurses'

trainng school. My favorite exhibit was by school kids doing their

genealogies. Quite a number had French/Native American ancestry,

while the others were usually some combination of Norwegin, Finnish,

German and Irish. We stopped in a gallery on the way out of town,

and found out about the Lake Superior Waterlogged Lumber Company,

and backtracked into town to check it out. You may have heard of them.

There are an estimated 1 million hardwood logs on the bottom of

Lake Superior, which sank over 100 years ago while being rafted from

the forests to the mills. The coldness of the lake, and the low rate of

biological activity (because of a low oxygen level) has preserved these

logs on the bottom of the lake. A local diver looking for shipwrecks

discovered several  concentrations of them, and figured out you could

bring them to the surface with an inflated inner tube or balloon. About

30,000 logs a year are currently "harvested", kiln dried, sawn and sold

to various craftsmen and artisans. The logs are all old-growth timber,

seldom seen any more in the eastern US, and are actually slightly denser

than when they were cut, because of being compressed by the weight

of water on top of them. The lumber mill runs a shop where people

buying their lumber can sell items they make. My favorite was an

electric guitar, which is similar to one used by a guitarist in the

Eagles.



>From there we went to the Great Lakes Interpretive Center. This

center just opened, and has all the trappings of congressional pork.

A beautiful building, with an observation tower, but the appropriation

for exhibits must be coming next year. There were a few temporary

exhibits on loan from various state agencies. I read about the problem

with sea lampreys in the upper Great Lakes. The problem started shortly

after the Welland Canal was built in 1829, bypassing Niagara Falls,

which was a natural blockage to the lampreys. They have taken a toll

on indiginous fish populations, and are being controlled to some

degree by poisoning their breeding grounds, release of sterile males,

and placement of electrical blocking gates in breeding streams. We

met one of the Park Service personnel in the elevator, as she

was adding a sign near the emergency phone. She explained that the

week before a group of boys had managed to halt the elevator by

jumping up and down in it. The emergency phone rings at a number

in Minnesota that's monitored around the clock. However, the boys

didn't remember the name of the place where they were, and it took

an hour and a half for the operator to figure it out and summon

help.



We headed up to Bayfield, and arrived just in time to catch a ferry

over to Madeline Island, one of the Apostle Islands. The Apostle Islands

were so named by early Jesuit Missionaries. However there turned out

to be 22 islands in all. (I want to know what happened to the

other ten apostles). They are all part of Apostle Islands National Park,

except for Madeline, which has a year-round population. The islanders get

to the mainland by ferry from late spring to early fall. Once the lake

starts freezing up, transportation is by "skimmer", which is powered

by an airplane propeller and has rollers that let it ride up over

chunks of ice. Once the lake has frozen hard, from about January to

April, State Highway 13 is officially extended to the island and

cars drive across. They line the way with used Christmas trees.

Winter diversions include ice fishing and stock-car racing on the

ice.



Madeline Island has a rich history, as an Indian settlement and a

French trading post. The Ojibwe moved into the Lake Superior area shortly

before the arrival of Columbus, and occupied Madeline Island, which

they call Mauning-wuna-kaunig or "Home of the Yellow-Breasted Woodpecker."

The first contact with Europeans probably occurred in the 1620s,

with French fur traders who came to Chequamegon Bay. Two Jesuit

priests had a mission across from the island on the mainland, from

1665-1670, but there was no further church presence until the 1830s.

The first European settlement on the island was by Pierre Le Sueur,

a French soldier, who set up a fort and trading post from 1693 to

1698. This post was the first La Pointe, which is the current name

of the main town on the island (though it is the third La Pointe).

The second La Pointe was another French outpost, set up in 1718,

by Paul le Gardeur. That La Pointe lasted until 1763, when the

British seized French Canada.



The relationship between the French and the Indians in northern

Wisconsin during these times is interesting. There was a lot of

inter-marriage, and there really wasn't an "us-vs-them" mentality.

Some of your relatives might live at the trading post, and others

might be in a nearby native village. Pictures and artifacts from

this era are quite interesting, because society was really an

amalgam of the two cultures. So you see drawings of people in

European and Indian clothing, or toy dolls with light complexions

but Indian dress. This melding came to an end when the US got

control of the area, and Yankees and "Yorkers" moved into the

area, and wanted to treat people strictly as one or the other.



Back to island history. Michel Cadotte, who was French-Ojibwe,

founded a trading post for the British Northwest Company in

1793. The British left in 1816 after the territory went over to

the US, but Cadotte stayed on to run a post for John Jacob Astor's

American Fur Company. This settlement moved in 1835 to the present

location of La Pointe. (My notes don't quite make sense here, as

I have down that the area was under US flag by 1783.) The first

Protestant minister assigned to Wisconsin established a mission

on Madeline Island in 1831, and a Catholic mission started in 1835.

By 1854, treaties had divided the Ojibwe into two bands, who

went to the Bad River and Red Cliff reservations. (The Lac du

Flambeau had already left.)



Our time on the island was brief. We bought some lunch, and took it

to a city park further out the island to eat, while we watched

the waves on the lake and a group of geese on a nearby lagoon.

(It wasn't really a gaggle---there were only five of them.) We

continued looping around the island, and found out the road

is only paved on the eastern part of the loop. When we returned

to La Pointe, we spent some time in the historical museum there

(where I got most of the information above). Industry in the

area has included fishing, boatbuilding, coopering, and logging.

Most of the other Apostles were logged as well, though a few have

uncut patches that host rare species, and there were brownstone

quarries on some of the islands. I also learned that pirates

used to hide out at Oak Island. (They have since moved to Pittsburgh.)



We crossed back over to Bayfield, and succeeded in locating some

baskets and beadwork. We headed on around the shore of the lake,

crossing through the Red Cliff reservation. Their cultural center

was closed, but the casino was open. (The State of Wisconsin recently

decided not to renew their gambling license, because of disputes

on how much money the state should get and about raising the

gambling age from 18 to 21. The current license still has six months

to run, so something may still be worked out.) As we drove

through the reservation, we noticed piles of birch logs that

had been peeled. Birch bark is used extensively in Ojibwe crafts.

(I saw several different spelling of Ojibwe on the trip, including

Ojibwa and Ojibway, as well as the alternative transliteration

Chippewa, which doesn't look very similar but actually doesn't

sound that different, if you say it fast.)



Instead of taking the straight route into Superior, we meandered through

a series of small towns on the lake shore. Cornucopia is the site

of the northernmost post office in Wisconsin. Herbster has an

interesting name, and not a lot else. In Port Wing, we saw a mail

sled that was used from 1915-31, and the first "school bus" in the

area, which was actually a covered wagon. Just before we got back

to the main highway there was a windmill, built by an Finnish immigrant

in 1906, and used to mill grain until 1926.



We arrived in Superior to find out that the going price for leeches

most places is $9/lb, which is somewhat more expensive than wild rice,

the other item being touted at most convenience stores and gas

stations. (Bought the rice, passed on the leeches.) We thought

about staying somewhere along the water in Superior, but it's

still very much an industrial harbor, with lots of ore and coal

docks. We decided to check out Duluth, across the river in Minnesota,

for other places to stay. That turned out to be a great decision,

because we found this neat area called Canal Park. This industrial

area is being prettified into restaurants and shops, with several new

motels and a maritime museum. Canal Park is at the landward end of

Minnesota Point, a long spit that shelters the mouth of the St. Louis

River and protects the ports of Superior and Duluth. The canal was dug

across the base of the spit to provide a shortcut to Duluth ports. We had

a room with an unobstructed view of the the lift-span bridge across the

canal, and about 10:30 that night we got to see the bridge go up and

a huge ore freighter slide out into the lake. Pretty cool.



The next morning, Kaye went off to check out a museum complex in

the old train depot, and I walked down the boardwalk to the Coast

Guard museum. The "boardwalk" has both wood and paved portions,

to accommodate walkers, joggers, bladers and bikers. It runs the

length of Canal Park, and then runs along the city lakefront to

the north. Much of it is built on rock removed during the construction

of a highway tunnel.



The museum was quite informative. It pointed out that Duluth is the

westernmost "Atlantic" port, and also the most inland seaport in

the world. (2300 miles to the Atlantic.) I learned that the main

cargos for the port are coal, semi-refined iron ore (taconite), grain,

crushed limestone, cement and salt. The largest freighters on the

lake are over 1000 ft. long, but those can only go between ports

on the Great Lakes, since there are locks on the St. Lawrence Seaway

around 700 ft. long. Lake Superior is the deepest Great Lake, and

also the most voluminous. If it were magically to be emptied tomorrow,

it would take 200 years to refill at current inflow rates.



There were some old photos of the port. Minnesota Point was mainly

fishing shanties in the beginning. The canal across it was dug

in 1871. The digging of the canal was opposed by the city of Superior,

since it would mean docking in Duluth would be as easy as docking

in Superior. Superior got a federal injunction against putting in

the canal, but word of it got to Duluth before the official paperwork.

The local story is that people with shovels and pickaxes dug a

canal by hand overnight that was 15 feet wide and 30 inches deep.

By morning, the St. Louis River had widened it to 40' and scoured

it out to 5 feet deep. The injunction only forbid construction of

a new canal, not improvement of an existing one, so Superior went

ahead with machine dredging. Today the canal is 300' wide, which

isn't all that much wider than the largest freighters.  The drawbridge

we saw started out as an "Aerial Ferry". The end piers held up

a truss, from which the "ferry" was suspended. The ferry didn't

actually touch the water on the trips back and forth. This structure

was later converted into a lift-span bridge. A UW research tug

came through the canal while I was in the museum, so I ran down to

stand under the bridge while it was raised for the tug. You can

actually touch the bottom of the lift span when it's down, and it's

kind of eerie to stand under it as it's being lowered.



Back in teh museum I saw a steam engine with two pistons of unequal

size. The smaller one was driven by high-pressure steam, and the steam

leaving the smaller one went into the larger cylinder, and drove

a piston there that was about 2.5 times greater in diameter.



Since it is a Coast Guard museum, there were maps showing where

all the Coast Guard stations are on the Great Lakes, and displays

on different CG activities, such as ice breaking and dredging.

Barkers Island in Superior, which holds a motel and an amusement

area, is an artificial island constructed from dredgings.



I watched a video about how a modern iron-ore loading dock works.

Originally, the ore docks were all gravity powered. Trains of

ore cars would go out along the top of the dock, and drop their

loads over chutes that were positioned over cargo hatches in the

ship. The rail cars had to be moved several times, since the cars

were spaced more closely than the hatches. Modern ore docks have

hoppers all along them, with a conveyer under each hopper that

lines up with each hatch. The hoppers might still be loaded directly

from rail cars, but all the cars can be emptied at once, and don't

have to stick around while the ore is actually conveyed into the

ship. More commonly, the hoppers are filled by a huge overhead

conveyer that brings the ore from stockpiles near the docks. In

that case, the trains don't have to coordinate their schedules with

the ships. The ore (taconite) is now all pelletized, to make loading

and unloading it easier and less dusty. An entire ore ship can be

loaded in as few as 5 hours by two people. The main concerns are

loading all the holds at an even rate, so the ship doesn't buckle,

and making sure it is evenly spread from side to side, so the ship

doesn't list. The ore ships all seem to be self-unloaders, so

the unloading docks can be quite a bit simpler.



After Kaye and I rendezvoused, we headed back south through Superior.

We stopped briefly to look at the last remaing "whaleback" freighter,

which now sits on dry land. The whalebacks were tubular in cross

section, which allowed them to be built of lighter-weight materials

and still have sufficient strength. However, their necessarily small

hatches made them obsolete when automated unloading booms were

invented, which were too large to fit through the hatches.



We drove mostly due south to Eau Claire, stopping only briefly

at a wayside to eat our sandwiches. (Note to Linda W.: That was

near Sarona.) We wanted to have time to stop in Eau Claire to see

the Chippewa Valley Museum, which had been closed for a football

game last time we were there. (The museum and the UWEC football

stadium are both in Carson Park, and I guess the museum figured

nobody would come while the homecoming game was on.) It's a well

done museuem, and they had lots of awards on display for their

various exhibits. There was an explanation of how the Ojibwe

(Chippewa) Indians came to the valley from the east. Their ancestral

tribe called itself the Anishinabe, and split into the Potawatomi,

Ottawa and Ojibwe branches. The Ojibwe were called Saulteurs by

the French when they dwelt near the falls (sault) at Sault Ste. Marie. (?)

The Ojibwe were by no means the only Indians in the valley. At

various times there have also been Dakota, Ho-chunk (Winnebago),

Fox, Sauk, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Huron, Tionontati and Menominee

there. It wasn't always a peaceful co-existence, as there was

competition on who would control the fur trade. Under President

Taylor, an order was issued to move the Ojibwe and Dakota out of

Wisconsin to Minnesota. This was largely a political action, as it

would have directed Bureau of Indian Affairs money from Democratic

Wisconsin to Whig Minnesota. (Guess which Taylor was.) There was

a strong outcry from the loggers in Wisconsin against the removal,

as most of the lumber camps were supplied with rice and game in the

winter by Indians. Millard Fillmore finally overturned the order,

but not after much hardship had befallen the Ojibwe.



Eau Claire got its start as a mill town, with logs coming down the

rivers from the Chippewa Valley, being sawn, and then getting

"reassembled" into rafts of cut lumber, for the trip down to the

Mississippi. A typical lumber raft had 28 courses of planks, with

shingles, pickets and lath stacked on top. There was a lot of

competition between Eau Claire and Mississippi mill owners. The

owners of mills on the Mississippi wanted to float the raw lumber

down to their mills and saw it there. Eau Claire mill owners wanted

the millwork to be done before the logs left the valley. To prevent

logs being floated past Eau Claire, the mill owners put a large boom

across the river. A certain Mississippi mill owner, one Frederick

Weyerhauser, bought up large tracts of timberland in the valley,

and had his crews put enough logs into the river that the boom

couldn't hold them all. After that, the millowners negotiated a

60/40 split on the logs that stayed in Eau Claire vs. the ones

that continued on.



The trees eventually ran out in the 1890s. Some speculators (remember

Mr. Weyerhauser) pulled up stakes and headed out to Oregon and

Washington. But others stayed behind and tried to diversify the

economy into other industries and agriculture. Tires were an

early industry, made at the Gillette Tire Company, which was bought

by US Rubber, now called UniRoyal. There were some small steel and

iron works, an icebox plant and companies making mill machinery.

Despite the new industries, the town almost bought it near the end

of the last century when a flood knocked out all 36 bridges in town.

One factor that helped them recover was the decision to put a

Normal School there, now UW-Eau Claire. And I shouldn't forget

Cray Corporation in nearby Chippewa Falls.



There is quite a bit more at the museum I'm not covering in detail:

farm machinery, an 1850s log house, a one-room school house used

from 1882 to 1961 and a temporary exhibit on time. There's also

an interpretive center devoted to logging next door, but it was

near closing time, and we wanted to get back to Madison before dark.



Less than a week till I hit the road. Gotta go pack some more.

Dave