History of Wildcat Mountain State Park

Prehistoric Times

Archeologists from the Wisconsin State Historical Society and the National Park Service have excavated rock shelters and Indian mounds in 25 sites in the Kickapoo Valley. Most of these locations are believed to have been temporary hunting camps, as no evidence of cultivated plants was found. Indian hunting parties probably migrated yearly along the Kickapoo from the more settled camps of the Tomah area to the more permanent homes at the junction of the Wisconsin and Kickapoo Rivers.

At one site, seven levels were identified in a 9-foot excavation. The fifth occupation level was dated at about 2,000 BC. At the seventh level pieces of deer and other animal bones, charred bones, broken projectile points and flakes were found.

At another site, there were a few pottery chips and a stone hearth.

The early Indians knew the Kickapoo river as "the river of canoes". (Since the late 1960s it was rediscovered by canoeists and has again become the river of canoes from May to October. Highway 131 from Ontario to La Farge faithfully follows Indian trails, crossing the river 11 times in 13 miles.)

The First Europeans

Two hundred years ago, this area was only a crossing ground for Indians. Probably no whites had ventured this far west except early French trappers and fur traders who came before 1684. The French fur traders translated the Indian word for canoe as bateaux. Others mispronounced and misread the name, so when the county was named originally, it was called Bad Axe County. This name was unpopular so in 1862 it was changed to Vernon, which means 'greenness".

When white people first came to the Kickapoo, the Indians here were the Sacs and the Foxes, which were later displaced by the Winnebagos. In 1837, the government dispossessed the Winnebago Indians, who agreed to move west of the Mississippi River. By 1844, lumbermen looking for virgin timber were moving in from New England. Later people came with oxen and wagons from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, England, Norway, Germany, Scotland and Ireland looking for cheap land. More migration came from the southern states after the Civil War.

W.T. Sterling, his wife and two children from Kentucky left Madison and explored the Kickapoo and its tributaries in 1832 on a raft. They wrote of the pines, which were only found on the upper Kickapoo. The lower Kickapoo had principally oak trees.

Eseau Johnson, originally from North Carolina, left his home at Blue Mounds about 1845 and explored the Upper Kickapoo River. In 1847, John B. Gay came and in 1848, Fred Martin.

Lumber Towns

Their lands were later sold to John Ostrander, a wrestler. He and William Saubert owned a lumber company. They bought virgin land for $1.25 from the government and sold the cut-over land for @2.50 an acre to settlers. For 25-30 years, a little settlement flourished with a mill, post office and school. (It came to an end about 1900.)

The settlers kept busy building cabins, clearing land, hunting for meat, making feather beds and pillows, filling straw or hay ticks, weaving rag carpets, putting straw under them, making cloth and sewing clothes by hand, churning butter, making soft soap, drying fruits and vegetables, preserving food, hunting for herbs, roots, nuts and berries, grinding horseradish, making brooms and collecting sap for syrup.

When they came into Wisconsin, they brought apple seeds with them. There were more apple trees in 1890 than there are today. Every home had its orchard or at least a few apple trees.

Whitestown was named after Giles White, the first permanent settler, who came from New York State in July 1853. Here he found "pines and lots of good, healthful water." Cabins were often located near cool, sweet springs and on streams which yielded brook trout and other fish. The Whites built the first real house on 200 acres near the mouth of Brush Creek. He laid out and platted the village of Ontario in 1857.

This was a wild and lonesome place in the 1850s. One day in 1855, the family came down the river in a canoe to visit with a white woman. They hadn't seen one in two years! No wonder there was a great deal of homesickness. The first large gathering of people in this part of the country was on the 4th of July 1868, at Rockton. One old lady shed tears of joy to see so many people together "in the woods". There was no road to any point except for the track the families had moved in on, which usually followed the Indian trails. The woods were full of animals: the black bear, the white-tailed deer, the wildcat and the most numerous-the large black timber wolf. In the winter, during logging, the deer would get in the way and had to be pushed aside.

So large were the white pines on the bluffs along the Kickapoo River that it was called "the pinery." Settlers literally had to chop their way in. Some went on ahead of the rest and blazed a road through the woods over the most favorable ground. Plots of land were surveyed, the trees were cut and logs rafted down the river to the Mississippi markets of Dubuque, Galena, Savannah, Davenport and Rock Island. Logging was done mostly in the winter when the ice prevented the river work, and it was easier to skid logs in the woods when there was snow and the ground was frozen. Crews worked early and late, felling trees, trimming branches, cutting the trunks in lengths for sawing and hauling them to the mills or to the edge of some steep hill facing the river where they were rolled down a cleared logway and piled along the banks to be floated by rafts downstream in the spring. The lumber was usually sawed in 12, 14, and 15-foot lengths, so a raft would be from 12-16 feet wide and 96-128 feet long. Usually several such rafts made up a fleet or "string".

On one of the rafts were placed rolls of blankets, jugs of well water, and a heavy, wooden six-foot chest called a "grub-box". This held tin plates and cups, steel knives and forks, a few cooking utensils, and such food as jars of baked beans, loaves of bread, pans of "Johnny cake", doughnuts, pies, homemade cheese, boiled hams, coffee, bacon, and jars of pickles. Keeping this grub-box dry was a real problem. "Running the river" was not easy or safe work. The long rafts had to be guided around bends and across eddies, held away from rocks, sandbars, and sunken logs, and expertly handled when passing the dams. The working day was long, and there was all kinds of weather to deal with. On April 5, 1884 the last drive of logs passed over the upper Kickapoo dams.

Everything was used in the lumbering industry. There were sawmills, shingle and planing mills, gristmills and hoop pole shops. A Rockton man owned a notable hoop pole chair industry. Eventually railroad ties were also made. The lumbering industry did have an affect on the river, however. It is said that the Kickapoo had 15 times as much water back in 1845 as it does today. The loss of trees, erosion, plowing practices and the accompanying floods lowered the water level. The heavy cutting of trees changed the drainage patterns of the springs feeding into the river also, decreasing the amount of water as the springs dried up. By 1890, the white pines and the hardwood trees were mostly gone. Villages in the Kickapoo Valley founded on the lumbering industry alone were the first to die.

The Ginseng Business

The woods were full of ginseng, or "man plant" as the Chinese called it. Many dug the "seng," earning $3 a day. It was not unusual to see people carrying buckets of roots for spending money. The "seng" was hauled to Woodstock, Illinois, where it was washed, dried and prepared for market. Wisconsin, and especially Vernon County, became the heaviest producer of ginseng in America. It was sold to the Chinese for culinary and medicinal purposes. They believed that the more nearly the root resembled the human form the greater its efficiency in curing or warding off disease, and they believed that it prolonged life.

When the plants became scarce, the berries were gathered and planted in "seng gardens."

Historical Tidbits

There was little crime in the early days, although on August 19, 1904, a store had its safe blown open in Rockton. The robbers got $42 in cash. At a camp meeting in La Crosse, the Kickapoo Valley was called "a place for missionaries" where crime and corruption abound, where almost everyone was a horse thief or a murderer. When the minister started to take up a collection for his work, one young woman rose and stated her opposing feelings emphatically. She went home to write a book called "The Kickapoo Valley, the Gem of Wisconsin" in defense of the valley.

Names: "Dutch Hollow"-many settlers from Germany. "Arntzen Hollow"-a Norwegian named Ole Arntzen, a cabinetmaker, settled in 1867. It was a familiar sight, seeing him trudging along the roads in his wooden shoes, carrying a door that he made on his back, making a delivery many miles away to some settler who had ordered one. He walked as far as Avalanche and beyond.

Firsts: The first surgical operation was performed by Giles White on Mrs. Bushnell's toe which was badly inflamed by an ingrown toenail. While at his mill one day, she said she wished he would cut it off and with one blow with a hammer and chisel, he did just that. Mrs. Lamb got the first range, brought up the river on a raft. She was so proud that she baked its first batch of bread while the stove was still on the riverbank.

Dangers: Heinrich Heinrich (called 'Double Henry") almost lost his life when coming from Germany. Terrific storms drove the boat around and when the coal gave out, they had to burn all the furniture on the ship. Brothers walked to Ontario from Rockton to get sacks of lime and carried them home, fording the river several times with the sacks over their heads so they wouldn't get wet.

Tragedy: On September 14, 1870, three young men drowned. They were running the river and were asleep on a raft tied to a huge oak tree that was leaning over the river. It was used regularly by river men for mooring rafts. While the cook was on shore in the morning making breakfast, the tree, which had been undermined by the current, crashed across the raft on the sleeping men. He yelled but only one of the four men awakened and escaped. Two of the bodies were found but the third was discovered eleven days later four miles away. A folk ballad called "The Fatal Oak" was written by Abbie Payne in the fall of 1870 to commemorate the tragedy.

The lives of the early pioneers were not easy. There were many dangers and hardships, much homesickness and unhappiness. They were very brave and determined to make their homes in the Kickapoo Valley. To all-"Once a Kickapoogian, always a Kickapoogian" is the motto. It is a homeland of which to be proud.

The State Park's Beginnings

Amos Theodore Saunders in 1938 gave a 20-acre tract that others like himself, lovers of Wisconsin's natural beauty, might know the unspoiled woods of the Upper Kickapoo.

In 1947, the legislature voted to establish a state park on the 60-acre Vernon county park and expand it to hundreds of acres. Wildcat Mountain State Park was established in 1948 with that initial donation of 60 acres from Vernon County. Since then the park has grown to 3,643 acres.

(Most of this page is taken from an article in the Wisconsin State Journal, November 9, 1947)

For more information, ask:

Wildcat Mountain State Park
E13660 State Highway 33, PO Box 99
Ontario, Wisconsin 54651
(608) 337-4775