The WPA Guide to Wisconsin: The Federal Writers' Project Guide to 1930s Wisconsin

Natural Setting

Wisconsin’s area of 56,066 square miles, in the north central portion of the United States, is defined by a ragged boundary. Lake Michigan lies on the east, Lake Superior and the Menominee, Brule, and Montreal Rivers on the north, the St. Louis, St. Croix, and Mississippi Rivers on the west. Only the southern border and some relatively few miles at the State’s northern limits follow a line unsuggested by natural water courses.

The topography today is essentially the same as it was immediately following the Ice Age. Broadly, it may be described as a composite of large areas of plains, smaller areas of stream-cut plateaus, and large areas of erosion-worn mountains. Elevations above sea level range between 581 feet where Wisconsin’s eastern border edges Lake Michigan to a highest point of 1,940 feet at Rib Mountain near Wausau. The mean altitude for Wisconsin is 1,050 feet. Generally speaking, the elevation of the north is higher than that of the rest of the State.

Streams to the west of Wisconsin’s major watershed, a broad land arch extending north and south through the middle of the State, empty by way of the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico. Chief among these streams are the St. Croix, Chippewa, Black, and Wisconsin Rivers, the latter the State’s largest interior waterway. Each joins the Mississippi at some point along Wisconsin’s western border. The Rock River and some few small streams flow through Wisconsin into Illinois, where they join the Mississippi system. Streams to the east of the watershed empty into the Atlantic Ocean by way of Lake Superior or Lake Michigan. The St. Louis, Brule, Bad, Nemadji, and Montreal Rivers find their way to Lake Superior; the Menominee, Peshtigo, Oconto, Wolf, Sheboygan, and Milwaukee Rivers, together with numerous smaller waterways, are a part of the Lake Michigan system.

Wisconsin is bordered by more than five hundred miles of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior; the State possesses close to 4,000 mapped interior lakes. To the northeast, chiefly in Vilas, Oneida, and Iron Counties, are the hundreds of small waters of the highland lake district. In the northwest, especially in Sawyer, Barron, Polk, Burnett, and Washburn Counties is a second group of small, closely set lakes. Eastern and southeastern Wisconsin have a generous number of moderate-sized, scattered lakes. Lake St. Croix, an interruption of the St. Croix River, and Lake Pepin, a widening of the flow of the Mississippi, are both long narrow bodies associated with hundreds of small flood plain lakes within the bottom lands that line these rivers. Of all Wisconsin lakes, Winnebago, in the Fox River Valley, is largest, covering 215 square miles.

Climate and Soils

A mean annual rain and snow precipitation of 31 inches is one of the chief climatic factors that make the State a uniformly humid region with a constant water supply for all but the smallest of streams. The heaviest rains fall in the spring and summer months. As well as plentiful rain, there is plentiful sun; half of Wisconsin’s days are shiny.

Wisconsin’s position between 42° 30' and 47° north latitude places it in the belt of prevailing westerly winds and within the temperate zone. Weather changes are numerous and rapid and there is a marked difference between summer and winter. Lakes Superior and Michigan have only a very limited influence in checking the temperature extremes of the very cold winters, like those of northern Sweden and central Russia, or of the hot summers, comparable to those of France, Germany, and southeastern England. Fifty degrees below zero to 111 degrees above are the recorded limits of Wisconsin temperatures. Within these extremes, temperatures vary according to the altitude of a given region, according to the northern or southern position of that region, and according to the proximity of lake bodies. Thus the growing seasons range between a shortest season of 75 days for a small part of Wisconsin that borders Michigan and a longest season of 175 days for the southwestern corner of the State.

Among Wisconsin’s greatest natural assets are its soils, many of them immensely rich deposits of the glaciers. The latter, including tills or unsorted clays and sands, assorted gravels and sands, and red clays of glacial lake beds, cover the larger part of the State. Other Wisconsin soils are divided between residual—products of weathering of underlying rocks—and those transported by the wind. The residual and wind-blown soils include a sandy soil, the results of the weathering of sandstone, and a clay soil mixture composed of weathered limestone and a wind-brought silt called loess.

Geographic Areas

Geographers divide the State into five major areas, three of which lie in the belted plain covering all of central and southern Wisconsin. This belted plain is so named because it includes a ring of ridges, each with a short steep descent on one side and a long gentle slope on the other, marking the junctures of weak sedimentary rocks with more resistant, overlapping formations. Such ridges are called cuestas.

First of the three areas within the belted plain is the Western Upland, which begins in southern Polk County and widens southward until, at the Wisconsin-Illinois border, it extends from the Mississippi River to beyond the middle of the State. With elevations above sea level ranging between 900 and 1,200 feet, it has the highest altitudes of the belted plain. Two cuestas—the Galena-Black River and the Lower Magnesian, of much greater length—are salient land features in this region of 13,250 square miles. The Baraboo Ranges intersect the Magnesian Cuesta at Sauk County. A section of the Galena-Black River Cuesta, extending from Fennimore to Mount Horeb, is widely known as the Military Ridge. The Green Bay-Prairie du Chien Military Road, built in 1835, followed the crest of the cuesta. Other well-known heights are Blue Mounds of 1,716 feet, highest point in southern Wisconsin, situated near Mount Horeb; and Platte Mounds and Sinsinawa Mound in the vicinity of Platteville.

Most of the Western Upland was never covered by the glaciers and therefore retained its early rugged landscape. But in the eastern part of the Baraboo Ranges the ice tore away huge blocks of the quartzite rock, deposited moraines, and created Devils Lake; in a region near the St. Croix and Chippewa rivers the glaciers deposited a thick drift. Nearly all of that portion of the Magnesian Cuesta which extends for 35 miles through Polk and Barron Counties is covered by glacial deposit. Drift left by some of the earliest ice sheets is spread throughout the Upland near Beloit and Monroe. The area north of the Baraboo Ranges affords good examples of glacial lake deposits.

Chief rivers of the Western Upland are the Chippewa, St. Croix, Trempealeau, Black, La Crosse, Wisconsin, and the Mississippi on the western border. The latter two have terraced their valleys and cut exceptionally deep gorges; the gorge of the Mississippi is cut to a point more than 500 feet below the level of the Upland Ridges. Interstate Park on the St. Croix River, Perrot, Merrick, and Wyalusing State Parks along the Mississippi, and Devils Lake and Tower Hill State Parks are regions of great natural beauty.

The province known as the Eastern Ridges and Lowlands covers 13,500 square miles in eastern and southern Wisconsin. Its western boundary reaches southwest from the Menominee River in Marinette County to the Wisconsin River in Sauk, thence southeast to the southern limit of the State in Rock County. The eastern boundary touches on Lake Michigan from the tip of Door County south to the Illinois line. Along this eastern boundary abandoned beaches, wave-cut cliffs, and terraces are found at varying distances inland. Door, Racine, and Kenosha Counties possess the best preserved of the ancient shorelines of the glacial predecessors of Lake Michigan.

The Eastern Ridges and Lowlands is a glaciated plain, flanked by northeast-southwest running cuestas of Lower Magnesian and Black River limestone on the west, and by a broader and higher parallel escarpment of Niagara limestone on the east. In contrast to the cuestas of the Western Upland the escarpments are generally of lower altitude and are simpler in outline. Between the two cuesta flankings a lowland, underlain by Galena-Black River limestone and St. Peter sandstone, provides the level topography and fertile soil which make this province the foremost agricultural portion of the State.

For a distance of some ninety miles in the upper part of this Green Bay-Lake Winnebago-Rock River Lowland the topography is that of a smooth plain, made so by evenly spread glacial lake deposits. From here south topography is progressively more irregular until in the southern lowland the area is marked by a glacially made landscape of modified hills, moraine and drumlin mounds, many small streams, and lakes. A great kettle moraine, an irregular mass resulting from glacial accumulation between two lobes of the ice sheets, and marked by deep hollows and knobs, is an important topographical feature of the area from Kewaunee County south to Walworth County.

The principal lakes of the Lowland are the Oconomowoc group and the Lake Geneva group in the south, a large group north of the Oconomowoc group, the Madison chain, and Lake Winnebago; the chief river systems are the Rock and the Fox of Illinois in the south and the Fox of Wisconsin in the north. A series of rapids in the northern Fox River provides the most valued water power in the State. Important manufacturing cities have developed at the sites of the rapids, and these, with Fond du Lac, Oshkosh, Madison, and the cities of the Lake Michigan shore, make the Eastern Ridges and Lowlands region the most highly populated and industrialized of the five geographic provinces. The lake regions, Terry Andrae, Peninsula, and Potawatomi State Parks, and the coastal islands and mainland of Door County are notable for their scenery.

Between the Western Uplands and the Eastern Ridges and Lowlands is the great crescent-shaped Central Plain. With the exception of a small area in the northwest portion which is floored by Keeweenawan lavas, all of the area is immediately underlain by Cambrian sandstone. Elevations vary from 685 feet above sea level (at Ellis Junction) in the eastern end of the plain to 1,242 feet at the western end.

Within the 13,000 square miles of the crescent are both driftless and glaciated areas. The unglaciated Camp Douglas country extending from Wisconsin Dells through Mauston and Camp Douglas to Tomah, and from Camp Douglas through Wyeville and Black River Falls to Merrillan and Humbird, a flat expanse of sandy, arid-looking landscape broken frequently by isolated buttes and mesas, is typical of Central Plain driftless country. Roche à Cris, standing 225 feet above the plain, and Friendship Mound, even higher, are well known among scores of castellated ridges and mounds.

Though the Camp Douglas country was never overridden by the glaciers, the water from the melting ice sheets covered the region with lake deposits—sand, gravel, and clay. Some of the Camp Douglas country is within a much larger area, which was once the basin for glacial Lake Wisconsin, and much of the Camp Douglas sand is sand of that lake bottom.

The glaciated landscape of the Central Plain is one of low, rounded hills and moraines, with occasional castellated hills, called nunataks, which were surrounded by the ice during the glacial period but never overridden by it.

Three-quarters of a million acres of swampland lie within the Central Plain. One great swamp covers an area of 300,000 acres between Wisconsin Rapids, Camp Douglas, and Black River Falls.

Lakes are few within the crescent. Some lie in the northwestern part of the section and a few others in the east within Waushara County. Green Lake in Green Lake County is deepest of all inland Wisconsin lakes; Lakes Shawano and Poygan, associated with the Wolf River, are among the largest lakes of the Central Plain. Major rivers are the Wisconsin, Wolf, Fox, Black, Chippewa, and St. Croix. The Wisconsin and the St. Croix rivers have both cut deep gorges, the beautiful Dells of the Wisconsin at Wisconsin Dells and the Dalles of the St. Croix at Interstate Park near St. Croix Falls. Rapids on the Chippewa River provide water power for the furniture factories and paper mills at Eau Claire.

With the exception of a relatively small area touching on Lake Superior, all of Wisconsin outside the belted plain is Northern or Lake Superior Highland. This plain, covering 15,000 square miles, shield-shaped and gently arched—with elevations ranging between 700 and 1,700 feet—is part of a great upland area which reaches beyond Wisconsin to Canada, Labrador, and Hudson Bay. Its moderate topography and underlying pre-Cambrian rock are evidence of the Wisconsin which was once all lofty mountains. Now only in the Northern Highland and a few other places are the early gneisses, quartzites, granites, schists, and lavas exposed.

Certain ridges and monadnocks are remnants of the early landscape. These more resistant metamorphic rocks stood above the ancient plain much as they do now. The eighty-mile long Penokee-Gogebic Range in the northern part of Ashland and Iron Counties is an outstanding example of a pre-Cambrian ridge. The quartzite Barron Hills of Barron County, the Flambeau Ridge of Chippewa, and quartzite Rib Mountain near Wausau are prominent. The latter, rising 1,940 feet above sea level, is the highest known outcrop in the State. The mountain summit has been designated a State Park.

Most of the Northern Highland was glaciated, but a small area near Wausau, Stevens Point, and Wisconsin Rapids escaped the ice. Some hundreds of square miles in Marathon, Wood, Clark, Taylor, Lincoln, and Langlade Counties are within an old drift area which was abandoned by the ice earlier than other parts of the highland. Here the lakes and swamps have practically all been drained and filled, the landscape shows great erosion, and the pre-Cambrian rock is almost everywhere very near the surface.

Areas of younger glaciation have abundant lakes and swamps and many moraines and drumlins; they are covered with a great thickness of drift. Lakes of the glaciated Northern Highland fall into two groups—those of northwestern Wisconsin, of which Lakes Court Oreilles, Upper St. Croix, Chetek, and Namekagon are probably best known, and those of the extreme northern part of the State in Vilas, Oneida, and adjacent counties. The latter, the Highland Lakes group, are numbered in the hundreds. Most of the lakes lie in holes, called kettles, that were left by the melting of ice blocks buried in the drift.

Principal rivers of the Northern Highland are the St. Croix, Chippewa, Menominee, Wolf, and Wisconsin. All of these rivers have rapids and waterfalls and are a source of water power. Extensive marshes, numerous boulders, and frequent areas of poor sandy soil that are found in the glaciated parts of the Northern Highland, combined with a short growing season, make much of this region better suited to forestry and recreation than to farming.

The Lake Superior Lowland, fifth and last of the geographic provinces, is a comparatively small region of 1,250 square miles—all within Douglas, Bayfield, and Ashland Counties in the northwest corner of the State. It is essentially a plain, with altitudes ranging between 600 and 1,000 feet above sea level.

Presumably this area was one part of a great pre-Cambrian peneplain which included the area now occupied by Lake Superior, the Northern Highland, and areas extending northwest into Minnesota and northeast into Canada. Unlike the hard bedrock of most of the peneplain, a relatively small part of the area was of weak sandstone and shale. In a period of uplift the rock weathered and was worn away to such an extent that the area became a lowland. Eventually the continental ice sheets covered the lowland, scoured its surface in some places, and left deposits in others. The water from the melting glaciers formed a mammoth lake whose waters spread and retreated, becoming finally the present Lake Superior.

The Lake Superior Lowland is covered by the deposits made when the lake extended farther inland; abandoned beaches and shorelines are frequently evident. The sand and clay soil, largely compounded of Lake Superior deposit, makes the region better adapted for grazing and for hay production than for grain and general agriculture. Glacial drift is thick in certain parts of the lowland and contains some native copper.

For a considerable distance inland from Lake Superior the postglacial streams have cut deeply into the plain, and here the landscape is one of ravines and hills.

The most prominent relief feature of the Lowland is the escarpment which extends southwest to northeast from the Wisconsin-Minnesota line to the Apostle Islands and marks the boundary between Superior Lowland and Northern Highland. A companion escarpment edges a lowland of Minnesota. The two indicate the abutment of weak sandstone against the hard lavas and other older rocks of the Northern Highland. The Superior escarpment appears at Ashland as a low sloping wall and, south of the city of Superior, as the South or Douglas Copper Range.

As the St. Louis, Nemadji, Brule, Bad, and Montreal rivers descend over the Superior escarpment to the lake, they have developed cataracts which are among the steepest in the State. The Copper Falls of the Bad River and the falls at the juncture of Tylers Fork and the Bad River may be seen at Copper Falls State Park near Mellen. Little Falls and Manitou Falls on the Black River (tributary to the Nemadji) are in Pattison State Park south of Superior. Manitou Falls, one hundred and sixty feet, is the highest cataract in Wisconsin.

Geology

Successive geologic changes by which visible Wisconsin was shaped are revealed in exposed rock masses in many parts of the State. Oldest of these, the Archean fire-born stones of the north, found at Wausau, Rhinelander, and Chippewa Falls, may be remnants of the earth’s primeval crust. They are part of the foundational body of the early North American Continent, which extended from Alaska to Labrador and thence south to the present latitudes of southern Missouri and Tennessee. This land was a barren expanse surrounded by seas that held only the simplest of single-celled life. Wind, rain, frost, sun, and all corrosive chemistries slowly planed the heights. Then, with a downward movement of the earth’s crust, the continent sank into the sea where surface waste had already been deposited.

Into the waters covering what is now Wisconsin poured sediments from southern and eastern shores; they settled and eventually became thick deposits of hard crystalline sandstones and conglomerates. Finally the sunken land began slowly to rise again, and, as it presented its new face to the elements, portions of the great mass folded and fractured to form mountains. During the process molten rock welled up from deep within the earth and invaded the roots of the mountains. Pressure and heat metamorphosed sandstone into quartzite, shale into slate, limestone into marble. This period of flood and subsequent land elevation and the period of like action which immediately followed are known as the Lower and Upper Huronian stages in Wisconsin’s geologic history. The purple-grey rocks seen in the present Baraboo Ranges are quartzite of these periods. Huronian slate and marble are both revealed near Mellen. Some of the rock formations are rich in iron; good examples are found at Hurley.

The alternation of deposition and erosion continued. Still a third sea terminated millions of years of levelling. Differing from the previous oceans whose beds lay quietly gathering their sedimentary stores, the third presented a restless floor. Alternate short terms of erosion and deposition occurred as the ocean’s bottom frequently emerged from the deep, then sank again. Volcanic activity accompanied these processes, and great surface areas were covered with the hot spread of lavas. Upon cessation of volcanic action sandstone was deposited. A final movement upheaved the earth’s crust again, and mountains were made. Thereafter northern Wisconsin was depressed in a mighty downward fold of the earth, the Lake Superior syncline. St. Croix Falls, Mellen, and Superior afford good outcroppings of the Keeweenawan masses of lava, sandstone, and conglomerate. In places the formation reaches a thickness of 55,000 feet.

With the end of the Keeweenawan period more than half of the earth’s estimated billion years of record had passed; living things had developed slightly in complexity but, without backbone or shell, were still confined to water.

Then began a long age of land rest, with the bulk of Wisconsin protruding above waters whose northern boundary lay close to the present Illinois-Wisconsin line. The elements continued to wear away the land until the only heights that remained were a few rock masses in the central part of the State and the early Huronian mountains, including the Baraboo Ranges. The waters gradually crept over the land until northwest Wisconsin became an extensive peninsula companioned only by offshore islands of rock. With complete inundation came the deposition of sands, fine muds, and clays that form the Cambrian series of rocks, examples of which are present at Madison, La Crosse, Eau Claire, Camp Douglas, Trempealeau, and Lodi. Soft and porous, the Cambrian sandstones are the natural reservoirs that supply water to many Wisconsin cities.

While the ancient sea sometimes covered Wisconsin, sometimes claimed only parts, two more geologic periods passed. Animal and plant life had progressed materially. Shelled fauna were plentiful, corals built their limey colonies, and earliest fishes swam through the weeds. In southern and eastern parts of the State the stacked formations of Ordovician and Silurian times lie in ordered sequence save where complete erosion of a formation or insufficient deposition has caused a lost interval; in such places rocks of one series lie directly upon those of an older series, without trace of the missing term in the structural record.

First of the Ordovician deposits is the lower Magnesian limestone, a heavy rock quarried near Madison and La Crosse and used for road building and general construction. Frequently complete erosion of this particular limestone resulted in a lost interval, indicated by the abutment of the second Ordovician formation immediately upon the Cambrian series.

St. Peter sandstone, a formation of the second Ordovician deposit, which appears, for example, at Viroqua, is a source of water supply for southern and eastern Wisconsin. Because of insufficient St. Peter deposition the next formation, Platteville limestone, rests in some places upon Lower Magnesian limestone.

Two limestone deposits, Platteville followed by Galena, were made in Ordovician time. Small quantities of lead and zinc are distributed throughout the Galena formation and are most concentrated in southwestern Grant, Iowa, and Lafayette Counties. A thickness of one hundred to five hundred feet of shale completes the Ordovician system in the State. Along the east side of Lake Winnebago near Fond du Lac, Richmond shale is dug out and used in the making of tile and brick.

Clinton iron ore is derived from deposits made in the Silurian period. Once mined at Iron Ridge in Dodge County, the low grade ore of the Clinton formation is not in sufficient demand to be profitably mined. Directly above the Clinton deposits is a series of limestone beds known as the Niagara formation. It is believed that these thick deposits are in part compounded of extensive coral reefs which were reduced to sedimentary muds by erosive water action. Appearing as a line of west-facing cliffs all the way from a point slightly north of Waukesha to the tip end of Door County, the formation is known as the Niagara escarpment and is a prominent physiographic feature of Wisconsin. Racine, Waukesha, Chilton, Sturgeon Bay, and Green Bay lie on or near it.

Devonian time was a signal period in the State’s geologic evolution. Shallow seas deposited limestone and shale—the Milwaukee formation—in a small area along the Milwaukee shore of Lake Michigan. After Devonian time all the area that is now Wisconsin rose above sea level, and there, as far as can be ascertained, it remained. Millions of years passed; through erosion old mountains were again exposed; the Baraboo Ranges took their place as surface features. Animals and plants became more detailed in bodily structure, more varied in kind.

Another radical altering of surface features began within the Pleistocene period, one million or more years ago, when great ice sheets advanced upon the continent; in their course they covered all but the southwestern quarter of Wisconsin. Moving cumbrously over ridges, deep valleys, and rounded hills, the glaciers ground away the hill tops and filled the valleys with the accumulation of their grinding and scouring. Sand, clay, gravel, and even huge boulders were all parts of the glacial load. In periods of warm temperature the forward parts of the ice sheets melted, but each time when the cold returned the glaciers again extended south. There were four major advances or forward movements of the ice.

When the continental glaciers melted away, probably only a few tens of thousands of years ago, they left a vastly changed Wisconsin, with only the driftless or unglaciated area of the southwest representative of previous surface features. Irregular humps and depressions were now characteristic configurations. The former are the kames, eskers, drumlins, and moraines—mounds of glacial accumulation which the ice sheets dropped in temporary periods of melting or in their final recession. The valleys, which were dammed by glacial deposit, and the depressions left where buried ice masses melted are the basins for most of the lakes in the State.

Plant Life

Once great forests, rising 65 to 125 feet above the mold, covered most of what is now Wisconsin; only in the southern and western hilly sections were there tracts of open prairie. Lakes and streams were plentiful in the northern and eastern forest regions; the southwestern portion, which the glaciers had missed, presented a diverse landscape of green-topped crags, rich valleys, and flower-strewn prairies. Today, despite the work of lumbermen and farmers, much of the native flora remains; the only surviving stands of virgin timber are preserved in State, national, and county forests or in a few privately owned tracts.

In general the northern part of the State held a coniferous type of forest. On its best soils were pure stands of hardwood or mixed forests of conifers and hardwoods. Norway pine grew where the soil was sandy or gravelly, and the sandy barrens of the north were also favorable to the jack pine. Farther south were forests of deciduous trees. Bogs with sphagnum and heath undergrowth and tamarack and spruce stands lay in the low areas throughout the State.

After 1870 lumbering became an important industry and the forests of the north began to disappear. Here the white pine was most plentiful. Other evergreens—Norway pine, jack pine, white spruce, tamarack, balsam, fir, and white cedar—were interspersed with deciduous species such as the paper birch, aspen, red and burr oak, black and white ash, and the yellow birch. On richer soils throughout this area a shrub stage of red raspberry, blackberry, pin cherry, and sumac followed in the wake of fires and lumbering; aspen and white birch saplings sprang up in some sections. The sandy regions of the northern and central parts of the State now grow only jack pine, sweet fern, bracken fern, blueberries, and June berries.

The many shrubby plants replacing the ruined forests of the north are not without beauty. In the thinned woods and along old fencerows grow beaked hazel, chokecherry, northern gooseberry, wild black currant, and bush honeysuckle. In winter the shiny, leathery leaves of the pipsissewa and the delicate needles of the yew and juniper are green beneath the snow. When it is warmer, even before the snow has disappeared, the pink trailing arbutus blossoms over rocks and mulchy forest floors. The bogs, low meadows, and wet woods of the north support dwarf birch, wintergreen, bog rosemary, mountain fly honeysuckle, red-berried elder, cranberry, willow, and red osier dogwood.

Aside from the many kinds of mushrooms, grasses, sedges, and rushes, the northern coniferous area shelters various herbaceous plants. The commonest ferns are the brake, shield fern, and beech fern. One of the most interesting of the mosses is the club moss or ground pine, the spores of which are sometimes gathered and marketed as Lycopodium powder, a modern representative of a family that flourished in the coal-forming era. Early in the spring the hepatica puts forth a small, enamel-like blossom, varying from bluish-lavender to pink; then come the straw-colored Clintonia and the dwarf Solomon’s seal, a mass of white flowerets. Ladyslippers, including the yellow and pink moccasin, grow widely, as do the related rein orchis and saprophytic coral root. In bogs and swamps are the pitcher plant, whose streaked purple leaves trap insects for nourishment, and the sundew, which also captures insects, but with the glue-tipped tentacles on its leaves. The fragrant pink twin-flower and the waxy, white, bell-shaped flowers of the shin-leaf are found in late spring. In the fall evergreens and mixed broad-leafs, turning yellow, orange, red, and purple, blend with goldenrod, purple asters, and scarlet swamp maple-gleam.

Near Bailey’s Harbor lies a 400-acre tract of ridges and valleys with a wealth of plant varieties typical of northern Wisconsin. Here are found 30 of Wisconsin’s 45 species of native orchids, the bird’s-eye primrose and fringed gentian, rare elsewhere in the State, and all but two of the State’s evergreens.

Common to all or most of the State are such trees as red oak, wild plum, quaking aspen, black willow, Cottonwood, hornbeam, and hickory, and various bushes such as raspberry, gooseberry, and currant. Many herbaceous plants are likewise common, among them the white water lily, wild rose, and violet. The violet, of which Wisconsin has at least 20 species, was selected as the State flower by the vote of school children on Arbor Day of 1909. No particular species was chosen, but probably the children had in mind either the common early blue violet or the pale blue bird’s-foot violet. Other common species are the yellow, the arrow-leaved, and the small fragrant white violet. The white water lily blooms in early summer in many Wisconsin lakes and rivers; and the American lotus, once in danger of extinction, has lately become abundant in lakes and in the sloughs of the Mississippi.

Originally the southern part of the State was covered with forests consisting mostly of hard maple, slippery elm, beech, white elm, burr oak, red oak, and ironwood. Less common were aspen, basswood, black cherry, green ash, hackberry, hickory, and butternut. Along the Mississippi and the lower Wisconsin Rivers a few trees characteristic of the Kentucky-Tennessee forest area reached their northern limit—the honey locust, chinquapin oak, and black maple; others, such as black oak, shell bark hickory, black walnut, and wild crabapple, also common in this forest area, extend farther up the State. Characteristic shrubs were the prickly and Missouri gooseberries, the thornapple, chokecherry, June berry, prickly ash, staghorn sumac, alternate-leaved dogwood, round-leaved dogwood, poison sumac, nannyberry, and honeysuckle; there were also a few climbers—the bittersweet, wild grapevine, Virginia creeper, and moonseed.

The southern part of Wisconsin is made up of three distinct regions: the southwestern uplands, the central sandy plain, and the southeastern marshes, woodlands and prairies.

At the northwest end of the deep-cut southwestern plateau, the valley bottoms and narrow ridges were originally covered with a deciduous forest. On the prairies of the broad upland levels Pasque flowers, growing by the millions, spangled the wheat grass, beard grass, and buffalo grass. Later each spring came a profusion of rich blue bird’s-foot violets, and white and pink shooting stars blossomed in mid-May. Though most of the prairie vegetation has been destroyed by cultivation and grazing animals, the steeper southern slopes and railway right-of-ways are still full. Among the remaining prairie plants, besides a wide variety of grasses, are the grass-like herbs called blue-eyed and yellow star grass and the herbs curiously named for fruit trees—ground plum, ground cherry, and prairie apple. A few plants, mostly lower forms such as mosses, are peculiar to this region and the central sand country, both of which were not glaciated, while other plants such as leatherleaf and small cranberry grow everywhere else in the State but in these two regions.

Northeast of the region of broad highland prairies and narrow wooded valleys, in the central part of the State, is an extensive, oval-shaped terrain with mesa-like bluffs and characteristic vegetation. Originally this area, where bogs and marshes are now abundant, was covered by forests of white pine, jack pine, jack oak, and red pine. Now only some of the tamarack and spruce bogs of the undrained lowlands, and the meadows of sedges and rushes, retain their original vegetation; the remainder of the area consists of cutover land grown to jack pine and aspen. Bogs that have been drained and burned are largely covered with aspen and with thickets of blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries.

Conspicuous plants of the marshy areas are the sedges, bulrushes and cat-tails, the swamp milkweed with its rose-purple flowers, the blue iris, the arrowhead, and various willows. In the bogs and on the sandstone ledges are labrador tea and blueberry; huckleberry and bearberry thrive on the rocky banks and bluffs. In May the sandy open woods and fields are dotted with blue spiked lupine and orange hoary puccoon.

The southeastern part, by far the most fertile in the southern half of the State, was originally covered by deciduous trees, except for scattered bogs and marshes and for prairie openings throughout the south. Where the soil was boggy, tamarack was the most common tree. In the marshes and sloughs the usual reeds, sedges, rushes, and cat-tails mingle with a variety of moisture-loving plants—the arrowhead, water crowfoot, water persicaria, iris, water cress, swamp milkweed, water hemlock, water parsnip, tufted loosestrife, marsh marigold, and stick-tight. The forest edges along the oak openings contained shrubs and small trees such as the dogwood, bladder nut, raspberry, bittersweet, hawthorn, and hazel.

In spring the woodlands throughout the south have large-flowered trilliums, fawn lilies, spring beauties, and a few large yellow ladyslippers. Though much of the undergrowth has died out, many of the more striking species of herbaceous plants remain.

In the rich soil of densely shaded slopes grow Virginia grapefern, interrupted fern, maidenhair fern. Among the first flowers to appear are the pink and lavender hepatica, the milk-white bloodroot, and the marsh marigold. Often the waxy-white golden-centered trillium and purple-striped Jack-in-the-pulpit grow here, and the showy ladyslipper, with purple hood arched over its white spur-like lip. Bellwort, Dutchman’s breeches, violet and purplish-brown ginger blossom in early May. Phlox and Jacob’s ladder form patches of pale lilac or blue, and the mitrewort extends its spike of flowerets. Spring beauties, which close when a cloud obscures the sun, make solid sheets of pink in the hardwood copses before the trees put forth leaves. In low-lying wooded lands and in ravines among the ostrich fern, shield fern, lady fern, and green dragon, the fawn lily expands large white flowers. The water leaf also grows here, and the jewelweed, with pendant orange and yellow flowers to attract the humming bird. Less common in the upland woods are the yellow ladyslipper and the rattlesnake plantain—Wisconsin’s only orchid with variegated leaves—the rein orchis, and the shinleaf. The red-flowered columbine grows in rocky places; bees, growing impatient, often cut into its nectar cup from below, leaving the task of pollination to the ruby-throated humming bird.

Animal Life

Animal life in Wisconsin was once as varied as the topography. Fur-bearing animals attracted white men to the northwest territories, but, as the areas of human occupation widened, many of the larger animals retreated northward. Today many species originally found over the entire State live only in the northern part, and some species have altogether disappeared.

Within the evergreen forests of northern Wisconsin lived the wildcat, the wolverine, the Canada lynx, the marten, and fishers, all now rare, weasels, otters, minks, muskrats, raccoons, and beavers. In the northern lakes region roamed herds of elk and northern Virginia deer; the latter is the only member of the deer family that remains. The only moose reported in recent years were a pair that strayed across the border from Minnesota, roamed about for a short time, and then returned to their haunts. The herd of some 30 elk in Vilas County is not native but is the progeny of two carloads imported in 1915 from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Timber wolves and black bear are now comparatively rare, but brush wolves, or common coyotes, are numerous. The red fox, the porcupine, and the smaller mammals—the chipmunk, deer mouse, woodchuck, skunk, snowshoe hare, star-nosed mole, shrews, and squirrels—are still abundant. The flying squirrel, red-backed vole, bog lemming, marsh shrew, and several species of bat are common to all parts of the State.

At one time the elk, black bear, eastern cougar, timber wolf, and beaver lived not only in the northern forests but also in the deciduous forests farther south. These deciduous forests came within the Alleghanian faunal area, and in them a large number of animals reached the northern limit of their range. Typical small species in the south were the southern flying squirrel, fox squirrel, striped ground squirrel, gray squirrel, woodchuck, cottontail rabbit, long-tailed weasel, Wisconsin gray fox, prairie mole, opossum, small shrew, and prairie vole.

In the thickets edging the forest openings of the southeast the Franklin ground squirrel, skunk, jumping mouse, chipmunk, and short-tailed shrew are still to be found, and in the prairie openings themselves live some pocket gophers, prairie jumping mice, and badgers. Large herds of bison formerly grazed the more extensive prairie of the southwest, home of the prairie red fox, the coyote, the white-tailed jackrabbit, the ground squirrel, and pocket gopher. However, most of the large native mammals of the southern half of the State have been exterminated; such imported pests as the Norway rat and the house mouse thrive where once deer, bear, and porcupine lived in great numbers.

Whereas such species of reptiles and amphibia as the garter snake, the snapping turtle, painted turtle, and mud puppy are found throughout the State, the swamp tree frog, cricket frog, skink, milk snake, and racer live only in the southern area. Parts of the southeast are favorable to the pickerel frog, the bullfrog, the soft-shelled musk, spotted and map turtles, the green and the garter snake, the bull snake, and the rock rattler.

Wisconsin’s fish fauna, with over 200 species, is rich and varied. Once the many lakes and rivers swarmed with fish. Now fish are less abundant, especially in the south, where conditions favorable to breeding have not been maintained. The northern lakes and streams still abound in game and near-game fish. Among them are brook trout, German brown trout, bluefin, largemouthed black bass, a common whitefish, smallmouthed black bass, black crappie, pickerel, and wall-eyed and other varieties of pike. The lake sturgeon is now comparatively rare. But king of all game fish and the fisherman’s dream is the hard-fighting muskellunge, a species peculiar to the lakes of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota.

A few of the fishes common to the Mississippi River and its tributaries are the spoonbill, shovel-nosed sturgeon, the fish-destroying gar pike, river lamprey, common buffalo fish, carp, sucker, eel, the Mississippi catfish, and the hickory shad. Many other species, also plentiful farther northward and eastward, abound in this area—the channel catfish, common bullhead, common sucker, golden shad, yellow perch, yellow bass, sheepshead, and the smallmouthed and the largemouthed black bass.

Bowfin, mooneye, short-nosed pike, mud minnows, common pike, grass pickerel, white crappie, rock bass, burbot, pike, perch, red-spotted and blue sunfish are common in nearly all Wisconsin lakes. The smaller lakes and streams are rich in brook stickleback, nine-spined stickleback, mud cat, black bullhead, stone cat, tadpole cat, yellow cat, common red-horse, green sunfish, long-eared sunfish, Miller’s thumb, and several species of darters (small fish belonging to the perch family).

The hog sucker is found occasionally in some rivers. New species that have been introduced into Wisconsin waters include the rainbow and brown trout and the German carp, now widely distributed. Smelt, first introduced from Green Lake, Maine, into Lake Michigan in 1906, now occur there in great numbers. In Lake Michigan also, and in the State’s deeper lakes, the whitefish, Menominee whitefish, lake herring or cisco, bluefin, perch, and yellow bass are abundant.

Lying within the path of the mid-continental spring and fall migration, Wisconsin is visited by great flocks of birds. Of the hunted migratory waterfowl the Canada goose, flying in great V’s, honking over cornfields, resting by the thousands on Lake Wisconsin, is perhaps the most spectacular and the most familiar. The fish-eating mergansers migrate in greatest numbers along the Lake Michigan shore and breed regularly in Door County. Mallard, blue-winged teal, black duck, and shoveler breed within the State, as does the beautiful wood duck. Canvasback, redhead, and pintail attract hunters yearly during the fall migration. Of the non-breeding migrants the lesser scaup, or little blue-bill, occurs in greatest number.

Wisconsin’s first settlers found the region particularly rich in upland game birds. The sharp-tailed grouse was originally common in the southern half of the State. This species has since retreated to the northern half, and the prairie chicken of southern Wisconsin is now the pinnated grouse. Ruffed grouse still occurs in well-forested areas, and bobwhite is fairly common except in the extreme north and in counties bordering Lake Michigan. The Canada spruce grouse is found in the northernmost counties. The wild turkey has disappeared as a native Wisconsin bird, and the sandhill crane is reduced to a remnant. Woodcock and jacksnipe are still taken as game. The Eastern Chinese ring-necked pheasant and the Hungarian partridge have been introduced and are increasing in numbers. In 1939 the chukar partridge was introduced.

The common loon breeds on Wisconsin’s northern lakes, and the red-throated loon is sometimes seen on Lake Michigan, especially in winter. The little pied-billed grebe is a frequent summer resident, and the handsome horned grebe a common migrant. Holboell’s grebe is a rare breeder. There are nesting colonies of the double-crested cormorant, the great blue heron, and the black-crowned night heron. On inland waters the green heron is always a familiar sight. The American egret used to breed regularly in Wisconsin, but for a time it disappeared entirely as a breeding bird and for years was only a rare straggler from the south. More recently juvenile birds have occurred regularly in July and August, and at least three pair of egrets bred in the State in 1939.

Wisconsin marshes harbor coots, Florida gallinules, king, Virginia, and sora rails, American and least bitterns, and black terns. Herring gulls breed on the islands of Green Bay. Except for the spotted sandpiper and the killdeer, most shorebirds are known as migrants only, although the upland plover and the Wilson’s phalarope breed in small numbers.

Raptors are well represented among Wisconsin’s birds. The most abundant hawks are Cooper’s, marsh, and red-tailed. The duck hawk breeds here and there on limestone cliffs. The bald eagle is much less rare than the golden. Sparrow hawks nest in small numbers, but the pigeon hawk is rare. Goshawks and snowy owls occur in the northern part of the State and are occasionally seen farther south. The barn owl, which has a relatively southern range, is not common here. There are long-eared and short-eared owls, barred owls (especially in the Wisconsin River bottoms), and great horned owls. The screech owl is very common, the saw-whet much less so.

Hairy, downy, and red-headed woodpeckers are common permanent residents, although many redheads leave in winter. Flickers are abundant in summer, and yellow-bellied sapsuckers are commonest during migrations in the southern counties. Well-timbered country provides the breeding habitat for pileated woodpeckers, and in the northern counties there are a few nesting pairs of American three-toed and Arctic three-toed woodpeckers. The red-bellied woodpecker is fairly common in the Wisconsin River bottomlands.

Other birds peculiar to the Wisconsin River country are the lark sparrow, the blue-gray gnatcatcher, the Kentucky warbler, and the yellow-breasted chat. Blue-winged and golden-winged warblers breed here, and the two hybrid forms, Lawrence’s and Brewster’s warblers, have been found. The beautiful prothonotary warbler nests in holes in bottomland timber, and sometimes nests in wren houses or tin cans. In the southern part of the State the yellow warbler, northern yellow-throat, and redstart are common breeders. More warblers, of course, nest in the northern counties. Both the northern and Louisiana water-thrushes are seen in migration, and ornithologists look for the western form, Grinnell’s.

Many western birds, such as the yellow-headed blackbird, the western meadowlark, the western grebe, Brewer’s blackbird, and Gambel’s sparrow occur in greater or lesser numbers. Certain southern species, such as the cardinal and the tufted titmouse, are extending their range in the State.

In the fall the prairie horned lark is replaced by the northern horned lark, the migrant shrike by the northern shrike. The common seed-eaters in Wisconsin fields include the slate-colored junco and the tree sparrow. In severe weather the regular winter residents may be joined by such winter visitants as the Lapland longspur, the snow bunting, the pine and evening grosbeaks, and the Bohemian waxwing.

Conservation

Men still remember when virgin forest covered five-sixths of Wisconsin. Today these woodlands are all but gone. In many areas soil has been exhausted or eroded, water levels have shifted, and wildlife and natural beauty have departed with the timber. The effects of exploitation are being more and more widely understood, and public opinion stands back of almost any program that promises to restore what has been lost or maintain what is left.

Closed seasons to protect some species of game, birds, and fish were established as long ago as 1851, and a fish inspector was appointed in 1866. At about the same time John Muir offered to purchase a tract of the rapidly vanishing prairie meadow in Columbia County and to give it to the State as a wildlife sanctuary, but his offer was rejected. In 1867 the legislature authorized a commission to study Wisconsin forest resources but little came of it, for the emphasis of the period was on exploitation. When Carl Schurz, then United States Secretary of the Interior, assailed timber thievery ten years later and proposed the establishment of controlled forestry, such as that practiced in Germany, an indignant Congress reduced the scanty funds already appropriated for an investigation of thefts of Government timber.

As Wisconsin tardily became conscious of its losses, a number of unrelated and inadequate agencies arose, were consolidated, and branched again, until the formation of the conservation commission in 1915 combined most activities under one administration. In 1933 a chair of game management was established at the University of Wisconsin, and independent studies in the biology, botany, and agriculture departments of the University are developing a science of conservation. These studies, together with those made at the commission’s State game and fur farm, are revealing the complex interrelationship of all aspects of conservation work. In 1935 a number of voluntary groups of nature lovers joined themselves into the Wisconsin Wild Life Federation. Despite their great differences in organization and approach, these three agencies have the same end in view. The conservation commission, applying its slogan, Conservation means wise use, seeks to modify the use of organic natural resources into sustained-yield harvesting; the Wild Life Federation seeks to educate people to an intelligent interest in nature; and the University experts explore the delicate system of balances by which one natural resource sustains another. Conservation activities are also integrated with the broader designs of the State Planning Board (see Agriculture, Industry).

An important part of conservation work is forestry, for forests, in addition to their value for industry and recreation, shelter wildlife and hold soil and water. During the years of exploitation the lumber industry steadily devoured itself, and by the 1930’s Wisconsin’s virgin timber, once thought illimitable, was virtually gone.

Great fires accompanied the reckless cutting. The history of almost every northern county records at least one great conflagration that overwhelmed settlements and ravaged forests. The annual destruction, according to the 1880 census, was about 400,000 acres. The Peshtigo fire of 1871 completely swept six counties and killed more than 1,000 people. Axe, fire, and plough drove wildlife northward. Buffalo, elk, wild turkeys, and other species fled or were annihilated. Migratory waterfowl, mercilessly harried by hunters, sought in vain for the wild marshes where they formerly roosted and fed. Plant life likewise retreated north; many native grasses and flowers are now virtually extinct in the State. Unshaded streams became so warm that game fish could not survive; silt, washed from denuded slopes, filled the stream beds, and even carp could not live where once large trout had flourished. The silt thus lost was irreplaceable topsoil which had been millions of years in the making.

The State now owns 187,000 acres of forest and 13,000 acres of fairly well wooded parks; the counties own 1,886,000, and the Federal Government, 1,300,000, including the two national forests, Chequamegon and Nicolet. The greater proportion of actual or potential forest land is held in private or semiprivate tenure in the north. Some lies in poor, half-cleared farms whose owners may at any time abandon them; some is held speculatively in the forlorn hope of sale; much is tax-delinquent. One of the principal obstacles to a comprehensive reforestation program are legal complications regarding land tenure.

The Forest Crop Law was enacted in 1927 to relieve forest lands from the pressure of general property taxation, which often impelled owners to snatch what profit they could and then abandon the deforested land. If an owner agrees to devote his land to sustained-yield forestry he is relieved from taxes until he harvests timber, paying in the meantime only a small flat acreage fee from which the counties are exempt. Taxes are taken on the value of the timber after it is actually cut; if the cutting is done destructively the taxes are doubled. Counties now own about five-sixths of the land entered under this plan, and their holdings are increasing as more tax-delinquent land is taken up and the State’s new and unique rural zoning ordinances (see Agriculture) become effective.

These operate chiefly in northern Wisconsin where people have reluctantly become convinced that much of the region is worthless for private individual development. Attempts to settle it, they realize, result only in increased costs to local governments and the destruction of natural resources. Large and carefully designated areas, therefore, have been permanently and totally closed to further year-round residence and are deliberately destined to revert to wilderness. In time the region will receive direct communal benefits from forest products, recreational resources, and the less tangible assets of watershed, wildlife cover, and natural beauty.

To protect slowly regrowing forests from fire is of primary importance. There are ten forest protection districts, covering 13,600,000 acres in 30 counties. Fire fighting and fire prevention agencies are mobilized in these areas as efficiently as the conservation commission’s resources will permit. The 122 steel lookout towers are placed so that almost every acre of protected forest region is within the view of two of them, and the system is linked by telephone.

In places where forest growth fails to reestablish itself naturally, young trees are distributed at the rate of twenty-five to thirty million a year from State nurseries. The trees are planted by the conservation commission, the Civilian Conservation Corps, 4-H and school groups, and farmers. Almost 2,978 miles of triple-row shelterbelt have already been planted in six counties of the sandy central plain as part of a program to check wind erosion. This device, now being extensively applied in the dust bowl and elsewhere, originated in Wisconsin where the University has been experimenting with it for a quarter of a century.

There is a growing recognition of the value of types of natural cover other than forests, such as the great peat marsh that once overlaid a large area in central Wisconsin. Here, intermingled with open bog-meadows, the earliest settlers found stands of tamarack which they burned to make place for wild hay. The entire region—bog-meadows, wild hay, and the grainfields surrounding the swamps—formed ideal wildlife cover. But as a result of a series of promotion schemes, ditches were cut to drain the marsh and the dry bogs were burnt off. Now there is danger that the underlying sand will be exposed and will blow over the surrounding land; and aspens, which replaced the earlier lush swamp growth, supply no shelter for wildlife.

To save what is left of the marsh means that the drainage ditches must be plugged. The Federal Government offers labor and funds to block out odd holdings; the State is prepared to operate the tract if restored. But restoration cannot begin until farmers are removed and county governments are satisfied regarding costs and potential revenue. Only then will the experts be able to approach the intricate problem of restoring wildlife under conditions in which it can survive.

Though hunters and trappers were reconciled to seeing wild game disappear with the forests, fishermen somehow expected their sport and business to continue unabated. Dozens of varieties of fish are scattered throughout the unmeasured spread of Wisconsin’s inland and coastal waters. As cool, rapid forest streams were clogged into muddy pasture creeks, and as paper mills and factories dumped poisonous by-products into lakes and rivers, there came an outcry to save the fish. While other conservation efforts were largely at a standstill or proceeding slowly, primitive measures were adopted to protect and propagate game fish.

Such measures were not always well-considered. The most serious mistake was the introduction of carp into Wisconsin streams. Carp are good sewage scavengers and will live in warm or semi-stagnant waters where trout die; in some regions they are considered edible fish. Accordingly 136,409 carp were dumped into southern streams in 1881. As, little by little, conservationists learned to improve fish life conditions in streams and to propagate and distribute more desirable species, they found their efforts made useless by the presence of the fast-breeding and voracious carp. In 1900 commercial fishermen were licensed to remove rough fish from public waters under permit; but they found this so profitable that they often kept the captive carp in pens long enough to spawn before shipping them to markets. After several ineffectual attempts to regulate contract fishing, a more stringent inspection system was begun in 1935, and the conservation commission acquired equipment which enables its own men to remove tons of carp each year. The fish are taken to a cannery set up experimentally in 1936; the preserved meat is fed to adult game fish in State hatcheries and to animals at the State game and fur farm, or it is sold to mink farmers.

Since 1936 the distribution of fry from the State’s 34 hatcheries and the numerous rearing ponds maintained by groups that cooperate with the conservation commission has been expanding at an unprecedented rate; during 1937 the conservation commission stocked creeks, lakes, and rivers with approximately 1,096,000,000 fish, and in 1938 with 1,124,000,000. Formerly these were sent to untrained volunteers to be dumped into neighborhood streams, but the mortality rate was so high that in 1935 the conservation commission inaugurated two methods of improving the system of distribution. It permits fry to attain some growth in rearing ponds before they are planted, and the planting is supervised by agents of the commission.

The environment in which fish grow and breed has been given careful study, and the regulation of disposal of sewage and industrial waste has greatly reduced stream pollution. Civilian Conservation Corps crews and other agencies have restored miles of streams by shading barren banks, building spawning beds, and placing log V-dams. Small fish, hatched in shallow ponds at flood time and stranded when rivers recede, are rescued in millions and replanted in inland streams. Refuges are established where fish habitually swarm to prevent their mass destruction. Laws regulating size, bag limit, seasons, and licenses are continually revised on the basis of a flow of information from wardens and volunteers. In this way protection is adjusted to the needs of localities and species.

In dealing with wildlife, problems of protection and propagation are as difficult as in the case of fish. The Federal Upper Mississippi River Wildlife and Fish Refuge, lying partly in Wisconsin along the river’s bottom land, is of continental importance as a resting and breeding place for migratory waterfowl. The State has set aside 400,000 acres as deer refuge and has established fish and fowl refuges, while local governments, too, have game refuges. During closed season for deer the refuge area is more than doubled. Farmers and other private individuals cooperate by hatching the eggs of upland game birds and caring for the fledglings until they are old enough to be released into the woods. In winter they set up rough shelters and provide grain for birds and hay for deer. Equally important to some forms of wildlife is food and shelter on the farms themselves. It has been found that by the accident of ordinary use most southern farms have either food or cover, but only a fourth or less have both. With little change in farming practices, each farm could harbor wildlife.

Both the commission and the University carry on some study of animals and birds, and many volunteers assist with game censuses and reports on field conditions. At the State’s game and fur farm at Poynette (see Tour 7) experts experiment with cross-breeding and study diseases, parasites, and the adaptability of exotic specimens to Wisconsin conditions.

Some attention is being given to the mysterious ebb and flow in wildlife population called the game cycle. At one time certain birds and animals flourish, and at another they are so infested with diseases and parasites that as many as 90 per cent of a species may die. The geographical extent of this phenomenon and the range of species it afflicts are, like its causes, unknown. Some attribute it to sunspots; others point out that it affects least those species which maintain a saturation level or are susceptible to other natural checks on population. Though too little known to be of much use to conservationists, the cycles are roughly considered in relation to limitation of seasons and other protective measures.

Erosion control is recognized as an essential phase of conservation work. Wind erosion is sometimes severe in the light soils of the flat central plain, and the ravages of water have been particularly noticeable in the hilly region of the southwestern driftless area, where a single heavy rain has been known to remove more than an inch of topsoil. Such loss of soil capital far exceeds the value of a season’s crops.

At Coon Valley, near La Crosse, Federal and State agencies, working with 315 cooperating farmers in an extensive demonstration area (see Tour 20), have studied erosive action, the efficacy of various devices for checking it, and ways in which erosion control can be integrated with the rest of the conservation program. They have found by measurement how much soil of any given local type is carried off from slopes of various pitch covered with different kinds of growth. They have learned when terracing is sufficient protection and what kinds of crops must then be used; when pasture gives better protection than crops; how forest cover is sometimes useless as a check against erosion; how gullies may be stopped from forming and how they may be filled once they form; how to build check-dams and culverts; and many other facts by which farmers may save their soil. At the same time they demonstrated methods of integrating and reorganizing the use of farm land so that game, fish, songbirds, plant life, and scenery may be protected, while the interests of forestry, soil conservation, and flood control are advanced by practical but scientific farming. So successful was the experiment that