Farming the Cutover
Farming the Cutover

Author: Robert J. Gough

Publisher:

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13:

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Farming the Cutover describes the visions and accomplishments of these settlers from their perspective. People of the cutover managed to forge lives relatively independent of market pressures, and for this they were characterized as backward by outsiders and their part of the state was seen as a hideout for organized crime figures. State and federal planners, county agents, and agriculture professors eventually determined that the cutover could be engineered by professional and academic expertise into a Progressive social model and the lives of its inhabitants improved. By 1940, they had begun to implement public policies that discouraged farming, and they eventually decided that the region should be depopulated and the forests replanted. By exploring the history of an eighteen-county region, Robert Gough illustrates the travails of farming in marginal areas. He juxtaposes the social history of the farmers with the opinions and programs of the experts who sought to improve the region. Significantly, what occurred in the Wisconsin cutover anticipated the sweeping changes that transformed American agriculture after World War II.

North Woods River
North Woods River

Author: Eileen M. McMahon

Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

Published: 2009-10-20

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0299234231

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The St. Croix River, the free-flowing boundary between Wisconsin and Minnesota, is a federally protected National Scenic Riverway. The area’s first recorded human inhabitants were the Dakota Indians, whose lands were transformed by fur trade empires and the loggers who called it the “river of pine.” A patchwork of farms, cultivated by immigrants from many countries, followed the cutover forests. Today, the St. Croix River Valley is a tourist haven in the land of sky-blue waters and a peaceful escape for residents of the bustling Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan region. North Woods River is a thoughtful biography of the river over the course of more than three hundred years. Eileen McMahon and Theodore Karamanski track the river’s social and environmental transformation as newcomers changed the river basin and, in turn, were changed by it. The history of the St. Croix revealed here offers larger lessons about the future management of beautiful and fragile wild waters.

On the Hunt
On the Hunt

Author: Robert C Willging

Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society

Published: 2008-12-18

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 087020405X

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On the Hunt is the story of deer-hunting in Wisconsin, from the spear-throwing Paleo-Indians to the sportsmen of today. On the Hunt covers subsistence and sport hunting, deer camps, changing deer management policies, and recent developments and controversies, from human encroachment on deer habitat to CWD. Drawing from Department of Conservation papers, hunting magazines, newspapers, historic photos of classic deer camps, and the personal stories of hunters and deer managers, On the Hunt offers a fascinating glimpse into a distant and not-so-distant past, when the hunt joined men in almost mythical unity and bucks were seemingly larger than life.

When Horses Pulled the Plow
When Horses Pulled the Plow

Author: Olaf F. Larson

Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

Published: 2011-06-01

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 0299282031

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In 1910, when Olaf F. Larson was born to tenant livestock and tobacco farmers in Rock County, Wisconsin, the original barn still stood on the property. It was filled with artifacts of an earlier time—an ox yoke, a grain cradle, a scythe used to cut hay by hand. But Larson came of age in a brave new world of modern inventions—tractors, trucks, combines, airplanes—that would change farming and rural life forever. When Horses Pulled the Plow is Larson’s account of that rural life in the early twentieth century. He weaves invaluable historical details—including descriptions of farm equipment, crops, and livestock—with wry tales about his family, neighbors, and the one-room schoolhouse he attended, revealing the texture of everyday life in the rural Midwest almost a century ago. This memoir, written by Larson in his ninth decade, provides a wealth of details recalled from an earlier era and an illuminating read for anyone with their own memories of growing up on a farm.