Ketchum's Point WI451

Ketchum's Point, named for a local family, stands above the low, marshy Portage connecting the Fox River and Great Lakes with the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers. This waterway served as a vital thoroughfare for supplies and furs during the fur trade era. Used in times of flooding, the fork in the portage trail began at this landmark. The trail ascended this bluff, following the Cook Street ridge to the Wisconsin River. The 1827 Ho-Chunk Uprising, begun by the rapid expansion of the lead mining settlements, ended with Red Bird's surrender near Ketchum's Point. A leader in the Uprising, Red Bird moved in a group of thirty Ho-Chunk along the Cook Street ridge singing his death song. They crossed the Fox to Major Whistler's encampment from Ketchum's Point. The event was associated with a series of treaties which took Ho-Chunk territory and removed them from their lands

Erected 2000

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Prairie Du Chien WI116
In prehistoric times water from melting glaciers cut a wide valley between the bluffs of the Mississippi River to form a broad flood plain. On it French explorers, traders and missionaries found a large and well-established Fox Indian village. The chief's name was Alim in Indian, Chien in French, and dog in English. Jonathan Carver visited the village in 1766 and called it "Dog Plain" but the residents preferred the French "Prairie du Chien". Another traveler, who could trade and fight better than he could spell, was Peter Pond. In 1773 Pond visited Prairie du Chien and wrote: "This Plane is a Very Handsum one. The Plane is verey Smooth hear. All the traders and all the Indians of Several tribes Meat fall and Spring." The United States Government negotiated three important treaties with the Indians here in 1825, 1829 and 1830. Most important was the council that opened August 5,' 1825. In a conference that lasted fourteen days, leaders of most of the Indian tribes of the Northwest met with William Clark and Lewis Cass to establish territorial boundaries for each tribe.

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Pere Marquette and Sieur Jolliet WI188

In 1673, Louis Jolliet, Canadian fur-trader and explorer, and Father Jacques Marquette, French Jesuit Missionary, with five French Canadian boatmen, were the first white men to enter the upper Mississippi River.

Indians directed them to the Great River via the Fox-Wisconsin waterway from the present site of Green Bay to Prairie du Chien. The Frenchmen entered the Mississippi River June 17, 1673.

Descending the river until July 16, the explorers turned back at the Arkansas River because they anticipated possible danger ahead from the Spanish and Indians. Returning North, the expedition pioneered what is now the Illinois-Des Plaines- Chicago River passage to Lake Michigan.

Marquette and Jolliet were back at the mouth of the Fox River by the end of September. The trip had taken them over 2,000 miles through country never before seen by white men.

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Soldiers Grove Origin WI405
In late July, during the Black Hawk War of 1832, Sac Indian leader Black Hawk led his starving followers through this area in their escape from the General Henry Atkinson and his military forces. After Black Hawk's brilliant delaying tactics at the Battle of Wisconsin Heights, he fled with his band towards the Mississippi River. On August 1st, in their pursuit of Black Hawk, about 1,300 United States army and militia, including notable future leaders, Col. Zachary Taylor, Col. Henry Dodge and Albert Sidney Johnson, encamped in this vicinity, known then as Pine Grove Village. Weary from their trek through the rugged terrain of western Wisconsin, the soldiers rested; their exhausted and hungry horses, who were unable to find food for days in the jagged terrain, foraged in the grass here. Because this military encampment became widely known throughout the territory, Pine Grove Village was renamed Soldiers Grove.

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The Wisconsin River WI269

"The Nations Hardest-Working River"

From its source at Lac Vieux Desert to the Mississippi River at Prairie du Chlen, the Wisconsin River descends 1,071 feet in 430 miles. Twenty-six power dams utilize 640 feet of the fall of the river to produce an annual average of one billion kilowatt hours of electrical energy. The Wisconsin Valley Improvement Company, created after passage of state enabling legislation in 1907, operates a system of 21 reservoir dams in the upper valley designed to store water during high flow periods for use in the downstream power dams during periods of low flow. The reservoir system, in addition to enhancing power production, diminishes flood damage and enriches the recreational potential of the valley. The system of private development and management under state regulation, made possible by the 1907 legislation, is unique and has enabled the Wisconsin River to earn the title "The Nation's Hardest-Working River."

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The Upper Mississippi WI264
From Lake Itasca, Minnesota, to Cairo, Illinois, the upper Mississippi River flows through America's heartland for over 1100 miles. Its currents have borne the Indian's canoe, the explorer's dugout, and the trader's packet. Jacques Marquette, Louis Jolliet, and Zebulon Pike tested its strength. Mark Twain gave it life in literature. Paddle-wheelers by the hundreds ferried lesser known passengers over its waters during the halcyon days of steamboating in the 19th century. Into the Great River pour the St. Croix, Chippewa, Black, Wisconsin, Rock, Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio. Along its banks have flourished St. Paul, Winona, La Crosse, Davenport, Keokuk, Quincy, and St. Louis. For a time diminished in importance by the railroads, the Great River came back into its own in the 20th century through dredging and damming. The present nine-foot channel and a series of locks and dams allow 300-foot barges to transport coal, cement, grain, and other products vital to the region's economic well being. Imposing in size and beauty, violent and muddy in flood-stage, calm and serene on a summer morn, the Great River sustains life and livelihood within itself, along its banks, and upward in the hinterlands east and west.

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Spence Park WI242

Because of the fertile soil and lush woodlands on the river shores, the Winnebago Indians settled in this area in 1772. Sixty years later they ceded these lands to the US. Government. In 1842, Nathan Myrick, the first white settler in La Crosse, built his log cabin and trading post on this site. It was designated a public boat landing in 1851.

This was the most strategic Mississippi River port on the western boundary of Wisconsin. Boats traveling north and south docked here, and wagons traveling west crossed the river on ferries from this place. La Crosse thus became known as the Gateway City.

The Indians made this a neutral ground and met on the prairie east of here only in peace, and competed in athletic contests. Their most notable game was lacrosse, from which the city derived its name.

In 1903 the city named this park for Thomas H. Spence, a pioneer businessman and civic leader who gave this land to the people.

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Brule-St. Croix Waterway WI200

From early Indian days the St. Croix River and the Brule River, reached by a two mile portage, formed a waterway connecting Lake Superior with the Mississippi River.

The first white man to travel the Brule-St. Croix route was the French explorer and trader, Daniel Greysolon, Sieur de Lhut, in 1680. Many traders followed in the next century and a half to harvest the beaver. They had hardly gone before the St. Croix carried the logs and the rafts of the lumbering days, now gone too.

The primitive beauty and rugged landscape of the St. Croix earned its distinction by the United States Congress as a wild and scenic river. It is one of the best for recreation and for adventurous canoeing.

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Mormons in Early Wisconsin WI307
Among those contributing to the nation's westward expansion in the nineteenth century and to Wisconsin's early development were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). In 1835, Moses Smith helped establish Burlington and in 1837 organized Wisconsin's first Mormon congregation. His cabin stood across the river from here. Mormons helped develop communities in southwestern and western Wisconsin Oenkynsville in 1837, Blanchardville in 1842, and near La Crosse in 1844-1845), where they mined lead ore and farmed, and at sites along the Black River (1841-1844), where they harvested pine and floated it down the Mississippi River to build the Mormon temple in Nauvoo, Illinois. Oliver Cowdery, second only to Joseph Smith in the church's early history, was a lawyer and newspaper editor in Elkhorn. After Smith's 1844 murder in Illinois, Wisconsin Mormons either joined the migration to Utah or formed separatist churches here. Few remained after 1850; then by 1875 Mormons re-established a growing presence in Wisconsin.

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The Saukville Trails WI375
An important American Indian village once stood in this vicinity near the Milwaukee River, the meeting point of two major Indian trails that led west toward the Mississippi River and north toward Green Bay. In the 1830s, Menominee, Sauk, and Potawatomi people, among others, were living here when U.S. government treaties required them to move. New settlers soon founded Saukville, and the ancient Indian trails, by this time U.S. military roads, became Decorah Road and Green Bay Road.

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