The Plover River is a river in the U.S. state of Wisconsin .
66-635: It is a tributary of the Wisconsin River as the Plover River originates near Aniwa in extreme southern Langlade County and flows through Marathon County , then into Portage County . The Plover River flows through Hatley and Stevens Point before it converges into the Wisconsin River in Whiting just above Plover . 44°29′03″N 89°34′00″W / 44.48417°N 89.56667°W / 44.48417; -89.56667 This article about
132-639: A 93-mile (150 km) stretch of the Wisconsin between its mouth and the Prairie du Sac Dam is free of any dams or barriers and is relatively free-flowing. In the late 1980s, this portion of the river was designated as a state riverway, and development alongside the river has been limited to preserve its scenic integrity. The Wisconsin River is a "navigable river of the United States." This designation primarily means that
198-556: A continuous protected area. Most of the tributary streams and the Kickapoo River itself, upstream of Gays Mills , are good trout habitat due to the baseflow from coldwater springs and watershed and stream projects carried out over the recent decades. The river "contains over 500 miles (800 km) of coldwater streams with populations of Brown trout ( Salmo trutta ) and Brook trout ( Salvelinus fontinalis ). Half of these streams have naturally reproducing trout populations. Recently
264-402: A dam or rapids, they would tie the rafts to the bank and the pilot and two to eight men would try taking a rapids-piece raft through. Dams were built then with a slide for rafts - a gap about 50 feet wide leading to a ramp of logs descending to the water below. A spectator described a raft going over a dam: The moment the bow entered the slide it was literally jerked down, and disappeared beneath
330-605: A large scale" - before the Wolf and the Chippewa . The lumber industry in the Wisconsin River valley was heavily dependent on the river system until the coming of railroads in the 1870s. In winter, logging camps out in the forests felled trees, cut them into logs typically 16 feet long, and sledded them over icy trails to streambanks where they stacked them in "rollways." In spring, when melting snow raised water levels, lumberjacks rolled
396-725: A location in Langlade County, Wisconsin is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about a location in Marathon County, Wisconsin is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about a location in Portage County, Wisconsin is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article related to a river in Wisconsin is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Wisconsin River The Wisconsin River
462-1074: A movement called "Save Taryn's Beaver" was launched to save a family of beavers on Weister Creek , a tributary of the Kickapoo. The beaver is a keystone species , increasing biodiversity in its territory through creation of beaver ponds and wetlands. Not only are riparian habitats enlarged as the circumference of a beaver pond is much greater than the circumference of the two banks of a stream, but aquatic plants colonize newly available watery habitat. Insect, invertebrate, fish, mammal, and bird diversity are also expanded. Beavers benefit bird diversity in numerous ways. Trumpeter swans ( Cygnus buccinator ) and Canada geese ( Branta canadensis ) often depend on beaver lodges as nesting sites. As trees are drowned by rising beaver impoundments they become ideal nesting sites for obligate cavity nesters such as wood ducks ( Aix sponsa ), goldeneyes ( Bucephala spp. ), mergansers ( Mergus spp. ), and owls ( Titonidae , Strigidae ). In addition, beaver ponds have been shown to increase
528-400: A race down a narrow, quarter-mile gorge. Lumbermen tried to reduce the hazards on the river, building timber slides over rapids and dams, dynamiting troublesome points of rock, and building wing dams to focus the current. These improvements were initially made by individual companies, along with splash dams and lumber booms, but it became clear that these investments affected everyone and
594-969: A short distance on the river. Over the course of a mile and a half, the river dropped 89.5 feet. Major tributaries of the Wisconsin are the following, working upstream from the Mississippi: the Kickapoo River , the Pine River, the Baraboo River , the Lemonweir River , the Yellow River , the Little Eau Pleine River the Big Eau Pleine River , the Eau Claire River , the Big Rib River ,
660-523: A trading post on the portage from the Wisconsin River to the Fox, at modern Portage. In 1828 the U.S. Army bought LeRoi's building and built Fort Winnebago at his strategic site - the army's third fort in what would become Wisconsin. To build the new fort, one of the officers from the fort led a party up the Wisconsin River, then up its tributary the Yellow to cut pine logs. In the spring of 1829 he and his men floated
726-400: A variety of fish species. Recreational opportunities on the lower Wisconsin River range from fishing and canoeing to tubing and camping. Canoe camping is particularly popular because of the abundance of suitable sandbars along the riverway and because no permits are required. On summer weekends, naturists can be found on Mazo Beach which is north of the village of Mazomanie . According to
SECTION 10
#1732855293308792-482: Is a tributary of the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Wisconsin . At approximately 430 miles (692 km) long, it is the state's longest river. The river's name was first recorded in 1673 by Jacques Marquette as "Meskousing" from his Indian guides - most likely Miami for "river running through a red place." Before roads into Wisconsin, the river was canoed, hunted and fished by Indians. Loggers used
858-559: Is a state-funded project designed to protect the southern portion of the Wisconsin River. It extends 93 miles (150 km) from Sauk City to the point where the Wisconsin River empties into the Mississippi, about 3 miles (4.8 km) south of the city of Prairie du Chien . The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources manages protected lands of over 75,000 acres (300 km ), including the river itself, islands, and some lands adjacent to
924-558: The Erie Canal , completed in 1825, revived old ideas of how the Fox River and Wisconsin River, which Marquette and Joliet and their Indian guides had traversed 150 years before, could provide a shortcut between the Mississippi valley and the Great Lakes . In 1839 some preliminary surveying was done to assess possibilities and cost. In the 1840s and 50s Congress approved land grants to finance
990-534: The Fox-Wisconsin Waterway , formed a major transportation route between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. When Marquette's company entered the Wisconsin River in their two canoes, he wrote: The river on which we embarked is called Meskousing . It is very wide; it has a sandy bottom, which forms various shoals that rend its navigation very difficult. This is the first recorded mention of
1056-586: The Helena shot tower on the lower Wisconsin around the same time. A few years later in 1836 the Menominee ceded some of their land to the US government. Most of this land was in northeast Wisconsin, but the U.S. negotiator pressed them to also cede a six-mile-wide strip along the Wisconsin River from the future site of Nekoosa up to Big Bull Falls ( Wausau ). He pressed for this land because its pine stood within easy reach of
1122-608: The Tomahawk River , and the Pelican River . The river borders Adams, Juneau, Columbia, Sauk, Dane, Iowa, Richland, Grant, and Crawford Counties. The modern Wisconsin River was formed in several stages. Most recent was the northernmost segment of the river, from the source to around modern Merrill . During the last ice age an ice sheet crept down from Canada, and a section called the Wisconsin Valley Lobe bulged down
1188-517: The "banked" logs into the river and log driving crews rode them downstream, breaking up log jams and retrieving those that got tangled in sloughs. In 1879 logs jammed the river near Wausau, backing up for four miles. The logging companies built special splash dams to raise water levels when the natural spring floods weren't enough. As driven logs reached the sawmills, log booms in the river were used to capture floating logs and sort them to their appropriate owners. Sawmills were more scattered along
1254-682: The 2007 flooding that cost well over $ 60 million in the Kickapoo Valley, and after the 2008 floods, communities are being forced by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to move from their historic locations requiring even more unwilling residents to have to relocate. The Kickapoo River flooded over its banks in Gays Mills in 2007 and again from the June 2008 Midwest floods . The 2007 flooding cost well over $ 60 million and after
1320-436: The 2008 floods, communities are being forced by FEMA to move from their historic locations requiring even more unwilling residents to have to relocate. After several years of discussion, a planned relocation of the village began in 2010. After a record-setting 6-12 inches of rainfall at the headwaters of the Kickapoo River, much of the area around the Kickapoo River faced major flooding between August 28-30, 2018. Villages along
1386-468: The Corps of Engineers' plan to build a levee around the village and undertook the relocation of the community's central business district to higher ground. The relocation was completed several years later, with the business district rebuilt out of reach flooding and heated largely with passive solar systems. The project became a national model of nonstructural flood control. Soldiers Grove was virtually undamaged by
SECTION 20
#17328552933081452-443: The Kickapoo were hit by water 7-12 feet above flood stage. With a flood stage of 16 feet, Ontario saw the floods crest at 28.5 feet. In Readstown, the flood stage is 11 feet with the 2018 flood cresting at just over 23 feet. Though the area faced extensive property damage with villages discussing the high cost of flood mitigation projects up to an including the relocation of entire villages, no deaths occurred during or immediately after
1518-592: The Miami language, argued that Meskousing is a rendering of "river running through a red place" in the language of the two Miami guides who spoke to Marquette. They were probably referring to the reddish sandstone along the river, like at the Dells. The fur trade reached up the Wisconsin and its tributaries, with traders like John Baptiste Du Bay and Amable Grignon establishing posts along the river where they traded goods like knives and beads with Indians for furs. Franci LeRoi ran
1584-643: The Mississippi River far to the southwest near Prairie du Chien. It originates in the forests of the North Woods Lake District in Lac Vieux Desert on the border with the Upper Peninsula of Michigan . It flows south across the glacial plain of central Wisconsin, passing through Wausau , Stevens Point , and Wisconsin Rapids . In southern Wisconsin, it encounters the terminal moraine formed during
1650-529: The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, two thirds of river users can be found on the stretch between Prairie du Sac and Spring Green . Kickapoo River The Kickapoo River is a 126-mile-long (203 km) tributary of the Wisconsin River in the state of Wisconsin , United States . It is named for the Kickapoo Indians who occupied Wisconsin before the influx of white settlers in
1716-406: The Wisconsin River is the hardest working river in the nation. Twenty-five hydroelectric power plants operate on the upper part of the river, above Prairie du Sac. In total, these power plants use 645 feet of the river's drop to generate nearly one billion kilowatt-hours of renewable electricity a year — enough energy to power the homes of over 300,000 people - with minimal pollution. Despite this,
1782-577: The Wisconsin landscape. Because of the extremely crooked path of the river, its source north of Wilton is just 60 miles (97 km) from its mouth at Wauzeka, although the river is nearly 130 miles (210 km) long. The Kickapoo, the longest tributary of the Wisconsin River, drains over 800 square miles (2,100 km ) of land in Monroe , Vernon , Richland , and Crawford counties. The Kickapoo River watershed encompasses 492,000 acres (1,990 km ) in southwest Wisconsin. There are many small tributaries with
1848-405: The Wisconsin river until its bottom had been fully lathed and plastered." And railroads finally finished the canal scheme, criss-crossing much of the state by the 1860s and providing a means of hauling freight that ran in winter when the rivers were frozen and in summer when they were low. In the mid-1800s the northern half of the Wisconsin watershed held large stands of virgin pine forest. Far to
1914-414: The Wisconsin than other rivers because the Wisconsin presented more challenges to driving logs. That is, on other major rivers the sawmills were concentrated at Oshkosh , La Crosse , Chippewa Falls and Eau Claire , and Stillwater ; but on the Wisconsin, mills were strung out from Wisconsin Rapids up through Merrill, so that the logs wouldn't have to be driven so far. The earliest sawmills were powered by
1980-406: The Wisconsin. This was soon shut down by the army because Whitney didn't have proper permission to harvest timber from Indian lands. At that point, northern Wisconsin was still owned by several Indian nations. After obtaining better permissions, entrepreneur Whitney moved on to build the first sawmill on the Wisconsin River in 1831 or 1832 10 miles (16 km) downstream from Wisconsin Rapids, and
2046-507: The banks of several Kickapoo river watershed streams to reduce beaver colonization. The river has a relatively low capacity for water, leading it to quickly and frequently flood after heavy rain. In the late 1960s, the frequent floods prompted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin a dam project on the Kickapoo River near La Farge, Wisconsin . The proposed dam would have created a 1,780 acre (7.2 km ), 12-mile (19 km) long reservoir to control downstream flooding. In preparation for
Plover River - Misplaced Pages Continue
2112-550: The bedrock beneath is pre-Cambrian igneous and metamorphic rock - hard-to-erode stuff that produces frequent rapids. The next segment, from Wisconsin Rapids to the Baraboo Hills , flows through a sand plain. Though the last ice sheet stopped around Merrill, another lobe of the ice sheet to the east reached far to the south, butting up against the east end of the Baraboo Hills. With drainage blocked, water backed up north of
2178-680: The bottom of shallow streams. Cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki) and bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) were noted to overwinter in Montana beaver ponds, brook trout congregated in winter in New Brunswick and Wyoming beaver ponds, and coho salmon in Oregon beaver ponds. In spite of the benefits of beaver to trout and bird abundance and diversity, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources continues to recommend removal of trees and brush from
2244-583: The burden should be shared and coordinated. To address these concerns, the Little Bull Falls Boom Company was formed in 1852. In 1856 a larger Wisconsin River Boom Company was formed. When the rafts reached Point Basse below Wisconsin Rapids, they entered a tamer sand-bottomed part of the river. The crews joined three rapids-piece rafts side-by-side into larger rafts 48 feet wide and 100 feet long, called "Wisconsin rafts." From this point,
2310-413: The construction, the government used eminent domain to buy 149 farms comprising 8,569 acres (35 km ) of land from mostly unwilling sellers. This land would have either been flooded by the dam or used as for the recreational park planned for the area around the lake. Construction of the dam began in 1971. Questions about the Corps of Engineers' benefit-cost calculations, its environmental analysis and
2376-451: The current, when a sudden breeze made a raft miss a slide, or by a poorly designed slide. It was reported that forty raftsmen drowned in 1872. The most notorious rapids were Big Bull Falls (future Wausau), Conant's Rapids (Stevens Point), and Grand Rapids (future Wisconsin Rapids), but many thought Little Bull Falls (future Mosinee) was the most dangerous, with a 16-foot ledge in the river starting
2442-435: The dam and leaving local residents vulnerable to future flooding. The halting of the project also doomed the 1983 attempt by local residents to get government support for a smaller flood control dry dam. Lawsuits by local residents in the valley to force completion of the project were rejected. The 8,569 acres (35 km ) of land bought by the government remained in the possession of the Corps of Engineers until 1996, when it
2508-548: The destruction can be catastrophic. Today, an increasing number and intensity of extreme weather events is sometimes exceeding the design capacity of flood control structures. Because of the abandonment of the La Farge flood control project the Kickpoo Valley continues to suffer from catastrophic flooding. Major floods have occurred in 1978, 2007, 2008, and 2018. In the mid-1970s, Soldiers Grove residents decided on an alternative to
2574-449: The early 19th century. The river begins midway between Wilton, Wisconsin and Mill Bluff State Park and flows south through a deep valley cut into the hilly Driftless Zone of southwest Wisconsin. It empties into the Wisconsin River just south of Wauzeka, Wisconsin . Kickapoo is an Algonquian word meaning "one who goes here, then there", a fitting name as the river is very crooked, frequently doubling back on itself as it flows through
2640-644: The federal government has jurisdiction for dams on the river. Dams that include hydropower facilities are regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission . Courts have ruled that despite the fact that the river lies entirely in one state, it nevertheless historically carried goods to markets in other states and therefore is subject to the commerce clause of the United States Constitution . Courts have also ruled that raw logs, even if merely carried via log drives to mills within
2706-541: The gap and poured through, carving the Wisconsin Dells and cutting the start of the river's channel through the sand plain. Subsequent erosion has further cut that channel through the flat plain. The lower, westward-flowing portion of the river, between the Baraboo Hills and the Mississippi, is probably the oldest section. Passing through the Driftless Area , it was never covered by a glacier. The western, lower end of
Plover River - Misplaced Pages Continue
2772-488: The headwaters of the Fox River - modern-day Portage. From there, they portaged their two canoes slightly less than two miles through marsh and oak plains to the Wisconsin River. They then continued downstream 200 miles (320 km) to the Wisconsin's mouth, entering the Mississippi on June 17. Other explorers and traders would follow the same route, and for the next 150 years the Wisconsin and Fox rivers, collectively known as
2838-404: The hills, forming Glacial Lake Wisconsin , which reached from modern Baraboo north to Wisconsin Rapids. As the ice sheet receded, meltwater carried sand and silt ground by the glacier into the lake, where the water slowed and its sediment settled to form a fairly flat lake bed. When warming began to melt back the ice against the Baraboo Hills, about 18,000 years ago, the flowing water quickly opened
2904-502: The ice, starting in January. (Rafts on other rivers like the Chippewa and St. Croix were built lighter and less flexible, since those rivers were less demanding than the rapids and dams of the upper Wisconsin.) When the ice was out and the river's water level was high enough, a fleet of twenty or forty of these 100-foot-long rafts would set out under the direction of a pilot. When they came to
2970-527: The improvement of the rivers. Work proceeded slowly, done by the government and a succession of private canal companies. In 1854, the first steamship, the Aquila came up from the Mississippi, crossed the canal at Portage, and descended the locks of the Fox to Green Bay. But the upper Fox was shallow and winding. Even less fixable was the lower Wisconsin, with its shallow, shifting sandbars. A railroad executive observed wryly that "navigation could never be secured upon
3036-439: The joints as it went over a rapids or dam - a bit like a string of roller-coaster cars 16 feet wide and 100 feet long, with heavy bumper logs across the front and back, and "spring poles" along each side to tip the front crib up a bit. A long steering oar was mounted on the front of the raft and another on the back, each 36 to 50 feet long. Then the top of the raft was loaded with lath and shingles. Sometimes these rafts were built on
3102-568: The last ice age , where it flows through the Dells of the Wisconsin River . North of Madison at Portage the river turns to the west, flowing through Wisconsin's hilly Western Upland and joining the Mississippi approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Prairie du Chien . Before the Grandfather Falls dam was built in Lincoln County , that series of rapids constituted the largest drop in
3168-657: The logs down to Portage to use in building the fort. That officer was Lt. Jefferson Davis - future president of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Indian territories shifted over time, but just prior to European settlement, the Ojibwe dominated the upper section above modern Wausau, the Menominee the middle section from Wausau to Portage, and the Ho-Chunk the lower section from Portage to Prairie du Chien. The economic success of
3234-584: The most significant being Moore Creek, Billings Creek, the West Fork of the Kickapoo, Reads Creek and Tainter Creek. Wetlands have largely been drained for pasture and comprise a tiny portion of the lands in the Kickapoo River watershed, 0.8%, whereas agriculture accounts for 50.4% of the land use followed closely by forest land at 48%. Wildcat Mountain State Park and the Kickapoo Valley Reserve form
3300-489: The name that evolved into "Wisconsin," which the state ended up taking. Sieur de La Salle misread Marquette's elaborate 'M' as "Ou" and wrote the name as "Ouisconsin." In the 1800s Americans anglicized the spelling to "Wisconsin." Antiquarians have long sought the meaning of Meskousing/Wisconsin. Indians and early French residents offered meanings ranging from "stream of a thousand isles" to "gathering of waters" to "muskrat house." In 2003 Michael McCafferty, who specializes in
3366-682: The number of trout, their size, or both, in a study of brook trout ( Salvelinus fontinalis ), rainbow trout ( Oncorhynchus mykiss ) and brown trout ( Salmo trutta ). These findings are consistent with a study of small streams in Sweden , that found that brown trout were larger in beaver ponds compared with those in riffle sections, and that beaver ponds provide habitat for larger trout in small streams during periods of drought. The importance of winter habitat to salmonids afforded by beaver ponds may be especially important (and underappreciated) in streams without deep pools or where ice cover makes contact with
SECTION 50
#17328552933083432-608: The pilot led a string of rafts slowly down the winding river, trying to avoid shifting sandbars. The Dells still presented hazards, and some rafts were smashed there, but nothing like on the upper Wisconsin. Below the Dells, railroad bridges were a hazard, along with sandbars. When the rafts reached the Mississippi, they were all joined together into a huge "Mississippi raft," and proceeded downriver. Most of them went to St. Louis, where they were disassembled and sold to lumber yards. The whole trip from central Wisconsin to St. Louis took from three weeks to all summer, depending on how much water
3498-511: The prospect of ecological problems like the eutrophication of the dam's impoundment led to opposition from environmental organizations, some residents of the Kickapoo Valley and Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson . After many lawsuits and numerous environmental and economic studies by outside activists highlighting the negative impact of the dam, the government elected to halt construction in 1975, after spending more than $ 19 million and building nearly half of
3564-507: The river didn't flow. Nevertheless, rafting remained cheaper transport than railroads, and continued for some years. The last lumber rafts went down the Wisconsin River in 1888, from the sawmill at Biron , heading for St. Louis. Later, in the first half of the 20th century, more dams were constructed to provide for flood control and hydroelectricity . The dams also spurred tourism, creating reservoirs such as Lake Wisconsin that are popular areas for recreational boating and fishing. Today,
3630-552: The river is narrower than its upstream valley, leading to the suggestion that an ancestor river once flowed east through this segment. Native Americans had long used the Wisconsin as a highway through the forests, canoeing and fishing it, living along its banks and burying their dead there. At times they fought, but they also met to trade, and several tribes could share the same hunting grounds. In 1673, French missionary Jacques Marquette , French-Canadian explorer Louis Joliet , five voyageurs , and two Miami guides arrived near
3696-411: The river via waterwheels and turbines at dams. After being sawed, most of the lumber was rafted to markets down the river. For example, after a Wausau sawmill sawed a 16-foot log into 16-foot boards, the boards were bound into 16 by 16-foot "cribs" twelve to twenty inches deep - floating packets of boards. Six or seven of these cribs were connected into a long, narrow "rapids piece", which could flex at
3762-406: The river, and the river flowed toward parts of Wisconsin (and beyond) that needed lumber. Once the treaty was signed, lumbermen rushed in looking for good mill sites. They found many, because the river had plenty of fall over the hard bedrock in this section. By 1839, all the sites were taken as far north as Big Bull Falls. Of the state's river drainages, the Wisconsin was the first "to be exploited on
3828-489: The river. In 2020 the riverway was designated as a protected Ramsar site . There are no dams or man-made obstructions to the natural flow of water between the hydroelectric dam just north of Sauk City and the confluence of the Wisconsin and the Mississippi. This long stretch of free-flowing river provides important natural habitats for a variety of wildlife, including white-tail deer , North American river otters , beavers , turtles , sandhill cranes , eagles , hawks , and
3894-472: The south on the savannas of southern Wisconsin and the treeless prairies of Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, settlers needed lumber to build their barns and houses. In that era before trucks or even roads, the Wisconsin River offered a way to move lumber from the forests to markets downstream - an efficient way! In 1827-28 Daniel Whitney started a shingle-making operation near where the Yellow River flowed into
3960-467: The state, constitute commerce. On the basis of these judgments, the Wisconsin River is considered a navigable waterway throughout its entire length. This designation does not generally have bearing on recreational use of the river. Boat registrations and fishing licenses are obtained through the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources , for example. The Lower Wisconsin River State Riverway
4026-480: The upper reaches of the river and its tributaries to drive logs to their sawmills and the lower reaches to float rafts of sawn boards to markets as near as Portage and as far as St. Louis . Today dams along the river generate hydroelectric power and people fish, boat, water-ski and sight-see on the river. The Wisconsin is the longest river in the state, arising at the Michigan border in the northeast and emptying into
SECTION 60
#17328552933084092-408: The valley that would become the Wisconsin River to near Merrill . As the climate warmed and that ice sheet receded about 14,000 years ago, meltwater drained down the valley, eventually cutting a course similar to the modern river. The next segment, from Merrill to around Wisconsin Rapids, was probably formed as earlier glaciers retreated, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Like the northern segment,
4158-451: The wild waters. [Pilot Jack Hawn's] men were lifted off their feet, thrown back upon the raft. Hawn for a moment was overboard, but was caught and pulled aboard - all came out right, the men thoroughly soaked, yet saved the raft. Later in the same day Hawn and Jas. Mowe saved by their daring and skillful handling of a skiff the life of a poor fellow clinging to one of the new piers. Many rafts were wrecked and men drowned when someone misjudged
4224-465: Was flowing and the skill of the raftsmen. The lumber output of the Wisconsin River valley grew from 6.25 million board feet in 1840 to 19.5 million board feet in 1847 to about 100 million board feet in 1854 to about 200 million board feet per year around 1872. This was a huge output, but other river valleys in Wisconsin produced huge amounts too. Around 1871 the Wisconsin side of the Menominee River
4290-629: Was said to produce about 300 million board feet, the Wolf River valley about 180 million board feet, the Black River valley 300 million board feet, the Chippewa River valley over 400 million feet, and the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix over 100 million board feet. With the railroad boom of the 1870s came an alternate means of transporting lumber which didn't depend on spring floods, and went direct to places that
4356-514: Was split and parts were given to the state of Wisconsin and the Ho-Chunk Native American Tribe. The Kickapoo today is a popular canoeing river. Nationwide, the construction of flood control structures has saved lives and property, but in some cases structures have been found to result in greater loss of life and property than if they had not been built. Dams, for example, encourage downstream development; if they fail, as some do,
#307692