Counties of Wisconsin; 71; Waushara County

Well Sheriff is the county featured on this edition of the counties of Wisconsin. The University of Wisconsin Extension office in Washoe County has three agents. They each invited a guest and met at the courthouse and what to talk about the county and extension program. We'll hear parts of these conversations after reading part of an early history of the county. Because of its proximity to the Fox Winnebago Wisconsin waterway an important route of travel in the early history of Wisconsin. Welsh County was undoubtedly visited early by the French explorers and

missionaries who entered Wisconsin by way of Green Bay. However there is no record of any permanent settlement being made within the present boundaries of the county until eight hundred forty eight. The county was not created until three years after the first permanent settlement was made by an act of the state legislature or county was formed from a part of Marquette County on February 15th 1851. The name was Shera is the English version of an Indian term thought to mean gooder. You know 1848 the territory within the limits of the present Washington County was owned by the Indians. The first settlement within the present limits of the county was made September 12th 1848 when Isaac and William Warrick brothers who had just been discharged from the Mexican War made claim to a piece of land in the present town of Marion. They built an eight by ten log shanty in the fall. Isaac went with two yoke of oxen to

Stephen's point and secured lumber for the erection of a larger and more convenient house. This settlement was made on the Indian lands although the works were repeatedly ordered to vacate their claim by the Indians and the Indian agent. They managed to appease their wrath and became permanent settlers. They notably placated the Indian chief by breaking up some land for a field of corn for him at a place which was on the present side of what Philip Green built a shanty during the winter of eighteen forty eight and forty nine that spring he sold it to a Mr. Atkins who operated a tavern there during the winter for the accommodation of the lumberman and go into the wood. In the early years immigration increased rapidly the settlers crossed the Fox River at Strong's landing burn and selected their locations by blazing or marking the trees. They could not get deeds or titles to the land they simply squatted on it. Subsequently many of the selections were contested often with fatal shootings as happened in the town of Aurora.

Wild animals were abundant. There were many deer and herds of five to ten were often seen. There were wolves foxes bears and some raccoons and badgers. The larger of these predatory animals gradually disappeared. All these pioneers began farming and most of them brought their families with them assisted by their wives and children each family soon had several acres under cultivation. Many others came in one thousand fifty one and fifty two and several settlements were started at different points so that neighbors were not far removed from each other. The sawmills made up an important early industry the first sawmill in the county was established in 1851 at the village of Saks ville. Later one was built at Pine River by freshie and Westover and won it. These mills were all run by water power and located on the banks of the Pine River. There were two large mills run by steam. One of them at

Brushville operated by Katy Wilson and the other at Tustin operated by prominent stars. After the land had been cleared for crops the settlers raised corn wheat rye and buckwheat and many farmers travel to Berlin and other distant cities carrying on their backs a sack of wheat to be ground into flour in 1854 a flour mill was operated by a Mr. Winchell and one at Pine River operated by Doolittle. There were also flour mills that watch Home and Mount Morris. These local flour mills have now become grist mill. Now our first conversation led by the office chairman and agricultural agent Lester van for sure County is located in the central part of the state of Wisconsin we have a very and so I'll type situation right in from my wet clay soils in the east of the you know I eat Lake Stream area in the summertime part of the county and we have some pretty white sands in the western part of the

county that we call the golden sands. Some 25 30 years ago we started with irrigation in this area and it has changed the outlook of Agriculture very very much in the present time we have some 30000 acres under and feel that this has been one of the big changes in the Cali being able to raise the income levels of farm families farm folks. We used to have a low saying years ago all that. The crows kind of carry their lunch when they crossed over parts of this county. They don't have to do that anymore and suffer no one I've got one of our young farmers with me here that is a second generation the irrigation. I think that many of the things that he has on his farm are going to be something a little bit different a little bit unique from what we find many parts of the state of

Wisconsin as well as the rest United States. We have Larry spiv to his grandson. He's married and has three children. Is father started the mout irrigation way back when we first started salt already doing this afternoon they're very good. Hi was my dad and I are farming in partnership. We have been for the last 11 years. We have approximately 130 acres of irrigated vegetables. We have mostly bulk of our acreage is in snap beans irrigated snap beans. We have 60 acres of strawberries that will be pick your own this next year. We have approximately 50 acres of pick your own vegetables. Mounting the 14 different vegetable crops that we know raise. We started to pick your own strawberry operation 15 years ago and it grew from a two week enterprise to the present 60 acres in the pick your own vegetables we

began. We tried this approximately four years ago and it's been growing at a slower rate than perhaps strawberries did but is now gone from approximately 10 acres to forty five to 50 acres. And we see growth in the future. Some of the problems we've encountered with the pick your own range from finding a market that is. Quite distant from us. Most of our people are they come for pick your own income approximately 60 miles from the Fox River Valley. Needham and their shelf on the lack ice guy show where 75 percent of our customers come from. And to pick your own vegetables we have a much wider range of people or a much broader area that these people come from. We get more of the Northern people we get people from Wausau and a goal Rhinelander in this area for pick your own vegetables. We also are drawing many people from the Fox River Valley. And I think our growth in vegetables has been more. From the

north because of the short growing season in that area and people who wish fresh vegetables will come to our operation and pick their own. We have a greenhouse in which we grow most of our own plants with a vegetable operation. We grow our own peppers and cabbage. Transplants tomato transplants and we're probably looking at trying some melons another year. But we were buying our. Vegetable Klansmen local grower and decided to put up our own greenhouse because of. Perhaps a little more economy in our part. We get our strawberry plants from Salisbury Maryland and grew up there. We had very good luck with. And we have to plan every year to maintain a strawberry beds. I think one of the things that's been very interesting in our operation is that we get to meet many new people. And we have a different operation and we have some days we've had up to twelve hundred cars go through our farm on

strawberry day. If you average out two people two a cars quite a few people. So we have a very very interested in this field we're expanding intend to expand our particular operation. But we also intend to stay in large use of snap beans in the near future. We don't see any great changes in our farming operations fires changing from one crop to another. Warrior of a couple of things I'd like to have imagined rather quickly I think a bit unique. Motorcycles or motor bikes and so forth are used by a lot of kids but you use them on the farm. What do you really use them for. We use them to go between the fields into the various farms with irrigation if you had to drive in a truck or a car. It's very clumsy to drive in the field have to turn around or you can't cross irrigation lines you can't go down the field. So we use we have for motorcycles. That the hired man use myself. That we drive to the fields and we can get down the field and go across the pipe we can get the

materials the plates moved in the switched much faster and thus be much more much more efficient in our geisha operation the county home economist is Diane bender. She led the next conversation. I worked with many different groups in the county. Such things as starting the prenatal classes with the motto Monday sets and the county nurse. This is the one thing we've started. I've also done some babysitting clinics for the social services and brownies and many other organizations that we tend to get involved with. Part of my job is working with the Home Economics area the 4H program. And I find this to be a very enjoyable part. One of the main groups that I have contact with is the county extension homemakers and I have with me today the past president of the county organization and she is Mrs. John P. ASCII Marilyn as I know her and she has three

children and is from around granite. Marilyn would you like to tell us a little bit about the extension homemakers organization here. Yes thank you Diane. The extension homemakers in was Shera County have grown tremendously in the last five years. We have come from three hundred fifty members to our present 440 members. And each year it's very evident when we have our county chief meant that it is an organization that the women are very much interested in. We have even had to turn people away from achievement night because we did not have the facilities to have that many people present. So we are proud of our growing membership. The one extension homemakers organization came to our rescue when the courthouse blast around it square all the ones from Dutch elm disease and we didn't have any of those big beautiful shade trees anymore. And the extension

homemakers started a project for the benefit of this Marilyn and she lived to tell us about this project. When the idea was brought to our attention at the county. Homemaker extension council meeting that the elms would be removed from the county courthouse lawn. We decided that this would be a project that would be a real monument to the extension homemakers. So we decided to provide maple trees to be placed on the courthouse lawn and not after all the decisions were made the home makers purchased the trees and were present when the trees were planted and there were pictures taken so we will long remember that the maple trees that are on the courthouse lawn came from the extension homemakers. These trees aren't just the standard little trees that we usually get from green houses they were right from the woods and so they were in big trees that one take of many years to grow

into the chic trees that we have. In addition to this. We plant the urns in front of the courthouse every year with flowering plants so we can beautified our county landmark. One of the other programs I think had a big impact on the county and it was something that was a little different than what we usually do. They had a program. What can you do for heart disease. And this is open to the public naturist extension homemakers and we tended to have a different kind of group than we usually reach turn out to this program. Marilyn could tell us a little more about what actually took place. We had approximately 200 people in attendance at these clinics. They were from different areas of the county. We conducted the program and poise and hand power. And in what Tomas. And there were many husbands and wives

present. People who were concerned with extension homemakers were trying to reach all groups of people to make them aware of the Hart program. We did have a doctor and a nurse present at the clinics and they took blood pressure and I'm sure that many younger homemakers found out that they should be concerned about their blood pressure. I smile when I say that because I'm one of those the foreach and youth agent is Debbie Schrader who discusses that program with her guest. We have 21 clubs in which your county for each and also of our four age population is located in what Toma and to the eastern side of the county. But I'm happy to report that in the western part of our county particularly in the Hancock area which is rather sparsely populated we have a for each car the four corners for each car which is really growing by leaps and bounds.

Today I have this is Barbara Foster one of the key leaders in the club and also their craft leader and she is here today to talk about some of the activities they have four corners 4-H Club has planned for the coming year. Bart thank you Debbie. Well the main area of concern for our 4-H Club is helping to try County area schools. After our drastic fire. Most of the members of our club helped clean up the school. They also set up new classrooms. We collected books and games and donated to the school. And that is really our main concern for this year. I think the Four Corners 4-H Club is quite unique. We like to see a lot of parent involvement with our foreach members and we're always encouraging parents to serve as practical leaders in fact this is one of our main

thrust for the county 4-H program. BB you have a good ratio of members to leaders. Yes we have 26 members 7 junior leaders and 14 adult leaders. They have I might add some help from the area great school teachers. Two of them are sir currently serving as practical leaders in fair. We have some new foreach materials in the natural science area which one of the leaders can tailor who is a seventh grade science teacher will be using in his classroom as well as with the 4-H Club members. And I think this is one thing we feel good about the fact that the 4H can serve the purposes of our standing our educational systems. The four corners for each club has done a lot of program planning and starve and I were talking a few minutes ago we talked about a new thing that they're going to try in a clump of your 4-H Club parents night which I like to tell us a

little bit about their bar. Yes kids decided that they've appreciated their everything that we have done for them sole. For parents night after failure. They plan on cooking the whole meal for us and him serving a meal and special awards for us at the end of our four each year. In fact this year. The members decided that they would like to be dismissed the leaders from the room for a few minutes and they voted and outstanding for each leader for the year and I think this is a nice gesture on amp part and guess who got the award. There was bar she's being kind of modest right now she won't acknowledge it. There are seven junior leaders in the Four Corners freights crowd in bar you hear two youngsters of your own who are. Of a junior leader age and this coming Saturday we're having our older use interviews for selecting.

Awards and trips. Could you tell us a little bit about how your youngsters as well as some of the other older youth have been involved in junior leaders. While my oldest oldest one is a girl Genie and this is Mitchell's first year so he really hasn't been involved other than achievement night and what we know what happened their age and get ready for the skip in time. But a. Genius carrot Actually I think the whole responsibility of Four Corners 4-H Club she has come up with most of the planning for what we have done throughout the year actually with the help of all all of our other kids too but she has mainly been the driving force behind our club. I had the opportunity to visit the four corners for each club last January and I watched Jeannie in action she was the club president and I might see that she is a very enthusiastic president and does get the younger members interested and involved.

Are all her youth as we call them in Scouting future leaders like to do programs outside of recreational things for instance when they go on canoe trips in the summer. We like to do community service programs and also work in the area green schools. We feel this is an effort to interview for their future leaders to be put in a teaching role. It gives the audience a chance to learn some new things and everyone seems to be out of the series producer Ralph Johnson had some final questions for Lester VAN LOON. The office Chairman. Just I think in these conversations we skipped over a couple of areas particularly I'm interested in the total economic profile of this comic The latter has changed substantially a few years ago I did some work on the equalised assessed valuation of the county and how will I get at changed from 1950 and we've had probably about a 6 to

700 percent increase in total value of property in the county. This has come about through a gain in value from irrigation property. Twenty five years ago you could buy this land for a five to ten dollars an acre. Today it's selling far anywhere from four hundred fifty to seven hundred dollars an acre and we're talking about the same land. Another aspect of economic importance is the tourist industry of the central part of the county here where the lakes and streams are located. We have a lot of. Summer homes and cottages and rental homes trailer park. Campsites and so forth that are in the county are mainly based on the water of larger accounting. The dairy industry has decreased substantially 1950 we had probably a little over sixteen hundred dairy herds in the county. As of now we've got about three hundred and seventy herbs left all all

when you look at the number of head of dairy cows. The number of collars isn't a great deal smaller than it used to be in our total no production for the county is actually greater than there were last Busters it's still an agricultural economy basically. Or is there a growing industry growing tourism. Well the tourism is growing and it's a little hard for me to put my finger on what the income from the tourism is. I can tell you what the income from agriculture is and that's about 28 million dollars a year right now. Tourism certainly helps you talk to the right people and they'll tell you it's the the biggest industry occurs. Is there any substantial lumbering still going on. No not in March we have a sawmill at Wildrose And when you say lumbering want to if you would change it to forestry then I'd say that

we have all changed just of course. OK we've planted much of this sand land to trees there's about 40000 acres of implanted sense. World War 2 and these trees now range of seed to 35 years old and some of the stans are in need of thinnings And now these standings are growing as pulpwood and we're seeing the growth of a new industry of harvesting pulp or I'm just going with our Christmas tree industry as large as we have. One of the largest Christmas tree operators in the world here they all and some over 10000 acres in the county the biggest factor in accounting and manual way better than a half a million Christmas trees out of this area. Is this a comedy in which there is opportunity for young people or is there of

migration of young people and a growing number of elderly. We have an over state average of elderly people in this county who are ranging just over 20 percent and I think the state figures are probably somewhere in the neighbor of neighborhood of 14 15 percent 65 years and up. Many people all were born and raised here or went to the stage and made their fortunes and have come back here to live. One final question Lester. What do you see as the future of this county in economic terms and growth in terms of. Population and industry and tourism and any other areas. When you ask an awful big question there are problems I have got to have already answered or if I thought like that. I always look to wash our economy to be a growing county the population is now increasing again. Back in the 50s and 60s we were

losing population not very rapidly like some counties did but it turned around in the 60s and are now again. As far as the irrigated agriculture is concerned we have a feeling that we probably are irrigate in the bottom half of the potential acres that could be irrigated so that lives can double from what it is now. And I mentioned before others about 30000 acres already are gated and this could go to 60. These trees that have been planted are maturing and is going to become a forestry industry that we hadn't had before. Tourists tree most likely well increase. We have a lot of clean air a lot of clean water and consequently it's that kind of a place that a lot of people have wanted to come. The more that come the last we're going to have of what they wanted most of all. I think we have a feeling on the part of some people that we've got enough people in

Osher County now and let's not spoil what we've got. I don't really know where the answer to that one is as far as agri nomic crops and so forth. We do have a life style situation the last two years the drought has affected them quite severely and where I will have to gauge our agriculture to make use of the rainfall that we've got the dairy industry is never going to be big or growing slowly it was some cattle there are probably about a hundred and sixty hundred seventy farmers now that have a few head of beef cattle on them and they are calving Gabs and raisin the animals and selling it as fact cattle we don't find many pewter gavel being sold out of this area. Well that's kind of I found El Scotch of my feelings what's going to happen I think we've got a bright future for central Wisconsin. One thought just occurred to me when you're talking about the. Forestry Arthur

County or federal forest lands in this county know all of the planning that was done is done. Private property. Been different in many of the counties of the state that had a lot of text you might call it landed went to county lands and state lines so for us we for some reason or other maintained all of our land you know private ownership even though there was a lot of tax delinquent land at one time and many non residents bought these land some of that was some high hopes of raising our Christmas trees and selling them. And we had some in some cases where some real money was made a lot of 20 years ago. Very rapidly. Norway pine and white pine being used for Christmas trees. Well they kind of faded out of the market and the market is changed to the skies by now it's been a long mule breeders used workers from strays. And this takes

a. Lot of sharing a lot of care insect control now Disease Control. We didn't know of a few years back. It's a very specialized sort of a business and we have three or four major companies that are in the Christmas tree business and they're a real commercial. Christmas trees you pig farms and extension programs.

All part of Washoe County. Today is county of Wisconsin this bicentennial series is produced at WHL a radio a service of the University of Wisconsin Extension.