He moved again, this time to the State of Washington in 1914, where he once again named his new town, Onalaska. All three areas were similar, with the natural beauty of heavily timbered bluffs and valleys. Today, the tall timbers are almost gone, but the rich farmlands and the city, nestled between the bluffs and Lake Onalaska give a feeling of restful, unspoiled beauty that is not easily forgotten. Onalaska is built on a ridge over-looking Lake Onalaska and the Black River and beyond the wide Mississippi to the Minnesota Bluffs three miles away. The museum boasts exhibits that cover thousands of years of area history, from the Ice Age to recent local history.
Exhibits change regularly, so there is always something new to see.
The artifacts include ancient bones, tools, weapons, pottery and other items that tell us about life in the area many years before Thomas G. Rowe found this spot on the Black River in the heart of Wisconsin's logging country and gave it a name. Onalaska is today. Naturally, the museum often features exhibits that help bring Onalaska's days as a logging boom town to life. The Black River Boom Town display includes photographs and paintings depicting a loggers life, as well as examples of the tools of the trade, from yokes for the oxen that hauled the logs to the river to 5-foot saw blades that sliced the logs into lumber for construction. Paintings by a young Austrian, Franz Holzhuber, show what the early settlers found when they came to the Coulee Region.