Kewaunee county’s present-day history begins in the mid-1830s when Major Joseph McCormick and several men from Manitowoc ventured north to today’s Algoma to observe the lands they heard about from the Pottawatomie who populated the area along the western shore of Lake Michigan. Upon reaching the now Ahnapee River, the McCormick party turned into it and sailed upriver to what is now Forestville. At roughly the same time, Montgomery and Patterson of Chicago were struggling to maintain their new sawmill on the Kewaunee River while Government Surveyor Sylvester Sibley, Guerdon S. Hubbard and James Armstrong were trying to establish a sawmill at Red River. It was 1851 before there was a permanent settlement in the county.
Millions of years preceded the county’s printed history. The
much earlier history is written in the rocks and soil, and below those same
rocks and soils. With ever-increasing advances in technology, it is a story
that continues to be written.
Early county historian George Wing – the 16-year-old
co-founder of Ahnapee Record – was interested in all things bygone. Wing
was learned. He wrote his memoirs and, for a time, wrote/edited The Owl,
the Wing family chronicles/genealogy going back to their roots in England. Many of
those volumes can be found in the Menominee, Michigan, history center. Further
information can be obtained through Menominee Public Library.
On January 12, 1912, Algoma Record reported that The
Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian asked Mr. Wing to do a paper on
aboriginal remains. Wing did, and his paper was published. Within Wing’s writings, there was much on geology.
Chamberlain said his examinations revealed
something not known earlier, saying the “Potash Kettle” region which went
north and south through southern and central Wisconsin extended as far as
Kewaunee County and ran through the hills of the Town of Casco* He said he
geological formation of Kewaunee County was not much different than other lake
shore counties and that the lake counties had the ability to make the
finest lime in the world.
Chamberlain found two outcroppings of such lime, one at Footbridge and the other at Wilmott’s. He talked about the shell marl island in Little Lake in Pierce and said it was the largest and purest deposit that he’d found. He didn’t see it as being great for plaster but did see it as fertilizer.
1876 Kewaunee County Plat Map: Towns of Kewaunee showing the
location of Cory hill, the Wilmott property, and the Town of Casco showing the
location of J. Wilmott’s property. The top quarter of the map is Pierce. A map showing Little Lake is below.
Chamberlain said the geological nature of the area precluded hopes of finding enough valuable ores for a payback. He divided the county into classes of red clay, heavy marly clay and a little sandy soil, claiming soil wears out in other areas but with the rich, fertile, heavy marly clay subsoil, Kewaunee County soils had high agriculture capabilities.
The Enterprise told readers that Wisconsin law demanded the
results of the geological surveys were to be presented to the governor by
January 1 each year.
In 1878, it was said Lake Michigan was “steadily advancing at the snail’s pace of one foot a year.” The article went on to say that the county’s
most distinguishing feature was that the northern terminus of “the famous
potash-kettle range” was in the town of Casco.
Explaining the
range, the paper described it as mounds of drift going through Kewaunee,
Manitowoc, and Sheboygan counties to near the state line, then going west and
north to the head waters of the Wisconsin River, thus governing the drainage of
Wisconsin.
Wing said a well-defined beach extended across the peninsula near the valley of the Kewaunee River indicating that at one time all the land north of that valley was either submerged or formed islands, the center of the Town of Red River being the most prominent.
Kewaunee County Plat Map, Town of Luxemburg, 1912: Casco Junction is in Section 24. Scarboro is in Section 25 is at left..
Two feet beneath the surface at the Nast Lime kilns (now Bruemmer Park) in West
Kewaunee were the complete remains of a snake in solid lime, although Wing felt the
snake was not evidence of antiquity because animal and vegetable matter petrify
fairly fast.
Wing discussed Carlton where there was lowland covered with
vegetable matter from which a farmer cut blocks with a spade. Then the squares
became as hard as stone when they were exposed to the air. The squares became a
barn foundation. A piece of a block showing beech nuts, acorns, and other
forest refuse was in Wing’s possession.
A May 1878 Ahnapee Record published an article
describing Professor Chamberlain’s geological report of the fine shell marl
deposit in Sections 17-20 in the Town of Pierce.* The marl was found around the
edges of a small lake with a shoal. Drainage that Chamberlain called ”recent”
caused the shoal to become an island. Record editor Capt. DeWayne Stebbins*
said there was extensive marl of the same kind at Ahnapee. Stebbins described
it as mixed with peat and alluvium in places while other places saw pure shell
debris. Chamberlain noted there were places in Door and Shawano Counties with
such deposits, usually associated with peat, although in lesser quantities.
Stebbins said the debris was soft, light, porous and pulverulent (powdery or crumbly) on the surface although underwater it was soft, somewhat granular and a clay like mass made up of carbonate of lime with lesser carbonate of magnesia, silica and organic matter, making it valuable for fertilizer in areas lacking lime. The same information was part of an article a month earlier that called the “small lake” referenced by Stebbins as Detloff Lake.
In late December 1959, more of Wing’s work was reprinted
though significantly edited for length. That article again said northern
Wisconsin was practically a new land. It and other articles described the
buried forests.
Joseph Pavlat was the first county resident to find evidence
of a buried forests. Pavlat was a Bohemian settler who lived just above the
Cory hill in the Town of West Kewaunee. He bought his forested land, cleared
it, built a house, and began to dig a well. At 60’ down, he found a bed of hard
blue clay and came to a tree trunk about 10” in diameter. He sawed through it
and took a piece to Kewaunee. A few years later, Charles Kinstetter was also digging
a well when he found buried tree trunks in solid clay at a depth of 70-80’.
Kinstetter lived across the river less than a mile of Mr. Pavlat. It was within
a dozen years that the well-digging issue at Casco Junction occurred.
Wing felt that since similar wood deposits found at depths varied from 30’ to 120’ at Columbus, Ohio, and Bloomington, Illinois, archeologists placed the drift period at 30,000 years earlier, thus indicating the trees unearthed by Pavlat, Kinstetter, and Seymour were the same age.
There were other geological finds in the county.
The Enterprise of July 7, 1891, informed the public
about the important and valuable bed of
shell marl at Detloff Lake near Alaska. It said the real practicality of the
discovery was only learned a few days earlier when Albert E. Cline arrived from
NY where he represented two Syracuse cement companies. Cline initially let it
be known he was in the county for the fishing, however he engaged Civil
Engineer Rooney of Kewaunee. Cline was
busy examining the substance, specimens of which were sent to the companies.
The specimens were said to be the finest marl in existence, and Cline was
authorized to buy the Detloff Lake property. He took options from John
Buettner, Albert Teske, August Detloff and J. Kopetsky. The paper went on to
say the price for all was about $6,000. A day later other speculators showed
up. But it was too late. One of the companies represented by Cline employed
about 1,700 men and the word was that its plant was going to be relocated to
either Alaska or Kewaunee. It was felt a pure quality of clay could be found in
Kewaunee, and, if so, the factory would be moved there. Marl would come from
the Detloff Lake area via a railroad the company would build.
Kewaunee County Plat Map, Town of Pierce, 1895: The map shows Sections 17-20, property owners 4 years after the options were taken, and Little Lake/Detloff Lake. The options list Kopetsky while the map shows Kopecky.
The Enterprise discussed the analysis and described an article in Geology of Wisconsin saying the marl deposit was in Sections 17, 18, 19, and 20 in the Town of Pierce and around a small lake, and upon a shoal within it. The shoal had been recently drained to become an island. In some places the shell marl was mixed with peat and with alluvium in others, but the shell debris was said to be almost perfect on the island. It was described as soft, light, porous, and pulverulent on the surface. Material brought up from below the water level was soft, a bit granular and clay-like mass. A pole sunk 9’ down indicated the material did not change. The analysis was published in the paper. What happened with the project?
Again in early 1903, a Mr. Lunack from a Chicago cement
company was in Alaska investigating the extensive marl bed that was in one of
the lakes. Lunack was trying to secure purchase options. The Record
reported that if the marl was “right”
and if Lunack could purchase the property, Alaska could incorporate as a
village. That investigation appeared to fizzle as the earlier one did.
On November 14, 1946, Kewaunee Enterprise told
readership about the state officials investigating the Lake Michigan shore from
Point Beach State Forest north toward Two Creeks. The Manitowoc County Town of
Two Creeks borders the Town of Carlton in Kewaunee County.
The investigators ran into an interglacial forest bed that
was once a flourishing spruce forest,* a significant find in the U.S.
Twenty-five thousand years earlier an exposed bank was washed by lake waves during
a period of high water. Geologists explained that the ice sheet came from the
northeast and that logs showed violent twisting and the bend of live trees
before they fell. The ice carried millions of smooth, round boulders, hills of
logs, dirt, gravel, and glacial debris. Thousands of years later, the ice
receded leaving behind what it carried. Then came another ice avalanche with a
red tinge. It was thought that ice ran over iron ore areas thus picking up the
red color. The red till provided an excellent protective covering for the Two
Creeks forest bed. The ancient spruce trees found by the geologists were much
like those found in Wisconsin in the 1940s. Geologists L.R. Wilson’s report was
published by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.
Current geological research and papers can be found by
Googling. Reading about the Two Creeks buried forest on the National Parks’
site and Wisconsin DNR is certain to prompt a trip.
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