Kewaunee County Gold, Silver & Oil: Dreams of Riches

Gold, silver, oil.....and dreams of getting rich. At one time or another, somebody thought there were big bucks to be made in Kewaunee County. Such minerals never brought the expected wealth that the thickly forested county did, though just as a mine or oil well often runs out, the trees were depleted too. Real wealth came from the land

Kewaunee County was set off from Door County in the spring of 1852, however government employee Joshua Hathaway had started surveying the southern part of what would be Kewaunee County in the mid-1830s.

Before long rumors of gold were flying. Today it is almost unfathomable to believe such rumors actually prompted a rivalry between Kewaunee and Chicago. At a time when Chicago had a few people but Kewaunee didn’t have one non-native American, there was speculation about which would be the greater area. Multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor was the richest man in the United States at his death in 1848. Acreage in the middle of the Kewaunee swamp was selling for 500 to1,000 dollars  when Astor invested in 2,625 acres, bought through his agent Ramsay Crooks.  Land speculator and later Territorial Governor James Doty was another of the prominent people who invested in Kewaunee land. Green Bay streets are named for other speculators including Joel Fisk, Peter Grignon, Daniel Whitney and Ferdinand Suydam.

What happened with the '48ers, Sutter's Mill and the great California gold rush is in the history books. As for the gold in Kewaunee 14 years earlier, the only gold there was that which John Jacob Astor and others paid for the land. The stuff was really pyrite.

About the time of the California gold rush, the U.S. Treasury adopted strict hard-money standard, doing business only in gold or silver coin. Accounts of the federal government and the banking system were legally separated. The rate of gold to silver overvalued silver in relation to the demand for gold to trade or borrow and that drain led to the search for gold. The clamor for silver remained.

By 1869 Monarch Gold and Silver Mining Company of Indianapolis was disposing of its Kewaunee County land in Section 1 of Montpelier. As early as December 1866, Edward Decker was asked by the company to examine the land and render an opinion. Decker was asked if the land was timbered and its best market value. He was told he would receive a draft for expenses and fees for survey. Decker had the land surveyed by the county surveyor and told the company that it was heavily timbered though it was so far from market that the lumber was virtually worthless. He went on to say the only timber of worth in "this locality" was white pine, and the particular land didn't have any. Decker did say that half the land was good farming land but since there was a low demand, such land sold for two - four dollars per acre. Why did a gold and silver company purchase Montpelier land about which they knew nothing? At first glance the land appears to have been public land, the sales of which promoted public works' projects. Monarch's was not public land, however Fox and Wisconsin Co. owned Montpelier public land at the same time. It was Spencer Day who patented the Section 1 land in 1855 and his brother Henry Day who sold it in October 1866. When Monarch sold, it did not make money. The company purchased the land for $3,000 and sold to John Duvall in February 1876 for $1,800. Duvall was one of the Kewaunee County people with an income greater than Decker's in 1869.

Then there was the oil. By 1920, there had never been a barrel of crude oil produced in Wisconsin, but there were those who were sure it would happen. For months a group of Scarboro and Luxemburg men were working to organize a drilling company. There appeared to be some evidence of gas and oil near the Scarboro cheese factory and the men had incorporated a company with stock capital of $25,000. They felt that if the 25 thousand wasn't enough, they'd raise 50 or even 100 thousand dollars.

December 1920 saw geologist Ira Bell examining what was then called the Green Bay Structure, several thousand acres running parallel to the shoreline of the bay of Green Bay. Bell felt the oil field would be about 40 rods upriver from the Scarboro bridge in Section 25 in the Town of Luxemburg. A well alongside John Hrabik's store was even producing oil.

Residents were so sure there was oil, and stockholders knew they'd make money. While the company was still raising money eighteen months later, there were stories of river rocks so saturated with oil that they would burst into flame at the touch of a match.

Just as the gold in Kewaunee turned out to be the gold that had been paid for the land, the most oil found in Scarboro would be that in tractors, autos and eventually home heating oil. As for the gold and silver mining in Montpelier, the silver and gold showed up in the gorgeous fall colors of the maple trees, which, in the days of a clamor for white pine, were worth little.

Sources: Map from Here Comes the Mail: Post Offices of Kewaunee Co.; information from Kewaunee Enterprise, Advocate, Decker collection and private files of J.Z.