Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1909-09-22
The kickapoO Valley Historic Ground
Written for the Milwaukee Sentinel by Mrs J. S. Earl
(nee Ona Bennett) Rockton girl

La Fargo, a distance of fifty-five miles.
Ii was built as far as Soldiers Grove in
1892 and extended to La Fargo in 1897.
1t is doubtful if Kickapoo train has
ever made trip without the accom-
painment of time honored witticisms
emanating from some important indi-
vidual whose business OF introducing
patent medicine, monographs, or what
not, brings him up the river. s'Well.
I'm disappointed. | expected to see a
few Kickapoogians in paint and feath-
ers. Say, they live IN houses up this
way, don't they?" Or a sight seeing
traveller, coming home from the state
fair or the fat stock show to Buckeye
Ridge or Jug Breek, explaining good
naturedly that he amt in hurry or he
would a. walked.
The numbering interests have not en-
tirely passed away from the Kickapoo
country, but they are no longer para
mount there. The lumber now is sawed
by steam mills and shipped out by rail,
sharing with other industries. Rich
farms, busy factories, thriving villages
with schools, churches, banks, news
papers and handsome homes now exist
where half century egc there was
wilderness. The hills, indeed, remain,
but the cool depths of the forest are
gone. Here and there lone pine tree
stands sentinel over the land where
once his proud race lowered. The river
pursues its devious way, cool and deep
in the shadow of some overhanging
bluff, or sparkling along the open
meadows.
On an autumn afternoon, floating in
little boat one may come on the up
per waters of the Kickapoo to an open
ing where the valley widens to circle,
closed in on every side by towering
hills, rocky heights clothed in all the
richness of October, scarlet of maple,
yellow or oak, the dark and stately
vendure of the pines lightened here and
there by slender birch tree golden
crowned, and over all the vivid, arch
ing blue, cathedral of surprising
grandeur and beauty where the hymns
are chanted by the wind in the tree
tops and echoed by the rivers quiet
flow. Leaving the boat and climbing
to the heights there unfolds before one
a panorama of hill and valley, ridge
and glen, farm and woodland and rolling
in majesty to the far horizon with
! glimpses of the river Fastening on its
winding way.
Many children the Kickapoo after
wide travel III various celebrated parts
of the world come back with exper-
fenced observation and ripened judg-
ment to aver that nowhere have they
found more picturesque beauty than
among the dear hills of home, and
strangers visiting the valley are in
variably enthusiastic IN their praise of
its rugged scenery.
Every season now brings an increas-
ing number of summer visitors campers,
and automobile tourist TO Kickapoo,
and without doubt the time is not far
distant when the summer months in the
| year the entertainment of pleasure
seekers will be one of the chief oc-
cupations of those residents who desire
to engage in it.
The name, "Kickapoogian, so often
applied scornfully by uniformed out
siders, prejudiced by fantastic tales
handed down from the unbridled times
of the old lumber camps, is one borne
with love and pride by all children of
the valley wherever they are found.
seeming to establish common bond of
remembrance and affection for the old
home and its people among those whose
lives lead them elsewhere.
Rich in natural resources, peopled
with an enlightened and energetic class
of citizens, the future will bear abun-
dant evidence of the material and
ethical value of the Kickapoo.