Wisconsin River | |
---|---|
Location | |
Country | United States |
State | Wisconsin |
Physical characteristics | |
Source | |
• location | Lac Vieux Desert |
• elevation | 1,683 ft (513 m) |
Mouth | |
• location | Mississippi River near Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin |
• coordinates | 42°59′22″N91°09′14″W / 42.98944°N 91.15389°W |
Length | 420 mi (680 km) |
Basin size | 12,280 sq mi (31,800 km2) |
Discharge | |
• average | 12,000 cu ft/s (340 m3/s) at mouth |
Official name | Lower Wisconsin Riverway |
Designated | 14 February 2020 |
Reference no. | 2417 [1] |
The Wisconsin River is a tributary of the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. At approximately 430 miles (692 km) long, it is the state's longest river. The river's name was first recorded in 1673 by Jacques Marquette as "Meskousing" from his Indian guides - most likely Miami for "river running through a red place." [2]
Before roads into Wisconsin, the river was canoed, hunted and fished by Indians. [3] Loggers used the upper reaches of the river and its tributaries to drive logs to their sawmills and the lower reaches to float rafts of sawn boards to markets as near as Portage and as far as St. Louis. [4] Today dams along the river generate hydroelectric power and people fish, boat, water-ski and sight-see on the river. [5]
The Wisconsin is the longest river in the state, arising at the Michigan border in the northeast and emptying into the Mississippi River far to the southwest near Prairie du Chien. It originates in the forests of the North Woods Lake District in Lac Vieux Desert on the border with the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It flows south across the glacial plain of central Wisconsin, passing through Wausau, Stevens Point, and Wisconsin Rapids. In southern Wisconsin, it encounters the terminal moraine formed during the last ice age, where it flows through the Dells of the Wisconsin River. North of Madison at Portage the river turns to the west, [6] flowing through Wisconsin's hilly Western Upland and joining the Mississippi approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Prairie du Chien.
Grandfather Falls in Lincoln County was a series of rapids which constituted the largest drop in a short distance on the river. Over the course of a mile and a half, the river drops 89.5 feet. [7] : 81 The river borders Adams, Juneau, Columbia, Sauk, Dane, Iowa, Richland, Grant, and Crawford Counties.
The modern Wisconsin River was formed in several stages. Most recent was the northernmost segment of the river, from the source to around modern Merrill. During the last ice age an ice sheet crept down from Canada, and a section called the Wisconsin Valley Lobe bulged down the valley that would become the Wisconsin River to near Merrill. As the climate warmed and that ice sheet receded about 14,000 years ago, meltwater drained down the valley, eventually cutting a course similar to the modern river. [6]
The next segment, from Merrill to around Wisconsin Rapids, was probably formed as earlier glaciers retreated, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Like the northern segment, the bedrock beneath is pre-Cambrian igneous and metamorphic rock - hard-to-erode stuff that produces frequent rapids. [6] [7] : 10 [9]
The next segment, from Wisconsin Rapids to the Baraboo Hills, flows through a sand plain. Though the last ice sheet stopped around Merrill, another lobe of the ice sheet to the east reached far to the south, butting up against the east end of the Baraboo Hills. With drainage blocked, water backed up north of the hills, forming Glacial Lake Wisconsin, which reached from modern Baraboo north to Wisconsin Rapids. As the ice sheet receded, meltwater carried sand and silt ground by the glacier into the lake, where the water slowed and its sediment settled to form a fairly flat lake bed. When warming began to melt back the ice against the Baraboo Hills, about 18,000 years ago, the flowing water quickly opened the gap and poured through, carving the Wisconsin Dells and cutting the start of the river's channel through the sand plain. Subsequent erosion has further cut that channel through the flat plain. [6]
The lower, westward-flowing portion of the river, between the Baraboo Hills and the Mississippi, is probably the oldest section. Passing through the Driftless Area, it was never covered by a glacier. The western, lower end of the river is narrower than its upstream valley, leading to the suggestion that an ancestor river once flowed east through this segment. [6] [10] [11]
Native Americans had long used the Wisconsin as a highway through the forests, canoeing and fishing it, living along its banks and burying their dead there. [12]
In 1673, French missionary Jacques Marquette, French-Canadian explorer Louis Joliet, five voyageurs, and two Miami guides arrived near the headwaters of Fox River - modern-day Portage. From there, they portaged their two canoes slightly less than two miles through marsh and oak plains to the Wisconsin River. They then continued downstream 200 miles (320 km) to the Wisconsin's mouth, entering the Mississippi on June 17. [2] Other explorers and traders would follow the same route, and for the next 150 years the Wisconsin and Fox rivers, collectively known as the Fox-Wisconsin Waterway, formed a major transportation route between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. [12] [13]
When Marquette's company entered the Wisconsin River in their two canoes, he wrote:
The river on which we embarked is called Meskousing. It is very wide; it has a sandy bottom, which forms various shoals that rend its navigation very difficult.
This is the first mention of the name that evolved into "Wisconsin," which the state ended up taking. Sieur de La Salle misread Marquette's 'M' as "Ou" and wrote the name as "Ouisconsin." In the 1800s, Americans anglicized the spelling to "Wisconsin." [2]
The meaning of Meskousing/Wisconsin has long been sought. Indians and early French residents have offered meanings ranging from "stream of a thousand isles" to "gathering of waters" to "muskrat house." In 2003 Michael McCafferty, who specializes in the Miami language, argued that Meskousing is a rendering of "river running through a red place" in the language of Marquette and Joliet's two Miami guides. They were probably referring to the reddish sandstone along the river, like at the Dells. [2]
The fur trade reached up the Wisconsin and its tributaries, with traders like John Baptiste Du Bay establishing posts along the river where they traded goods like knives and beads with Indians for furs. [12] [14] Indian territories shifted over time, but just prior to European settlement, the Ojibwe dominated the upper section above modern Wausau, the Menominee the middle section from Wausau to Portage, and the Ho-Chunk the lower section from Portage to Prairie du Chien. [15]
In the 1830s and 1840s loggers started using the river to drive logs downstream from northern forests to sawmills in new cities like Wisconsin Rapids and Wausau. They built dams on the river to power their sawmills [16] : 56,126-127 and to raise water levels to float logs downstream. [17]
Later, in the first half of the 20th century, more dams were constructed to provide for flood control and hydroelectricity. [18] The dams also spurred tourism, creating reservoirs such as Lake Wisconsin that are popular areas for recreational boating and fishing. Today, the Wisconsin River is the hardest working river in the nation. [19] Twenty-five hydroelectric power plants operate on the upper part of the river, above Prairie du Sac. In total, these power plants use 645 feet of the river's drop to generate nearly one billion kilowatt-hours of renewable electricity a year — enough energy to power the homes of over 300,000 people - with minimal pollution. [20]
Despite this, a 93-mile (150 km) stretch of the Wisconsin between its mouth and the Prairie du Sac Dam is free of any dams or barriers and is relatively free-flowing. In the late 1980s, this portion of the river was designated as a state riverway, and development alongside the river has been limited to preserve its scenic integrity. [21]
The Wisconsin River is a "navigable river of the United States." This designation primarily means that the federal government has jurisdiction for dams on the river. Dams that include hydropower facilities are regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Courts have ruled that despite the fact that the river lies entirely in one state, it nevertheless historically carried goods to markets in other states and therefore is subject to the commerce clause of the United States Constitution. Courts have also ruled that raw logs, even if merely carried via log drives to mills within the state, constitute commerce. On the basis of these judgments, the Wisconsin River is considered a navigable waterway throughout its entire length. [22] This designation does not generally have bearing on recreational use of the river. Boat registrations and fishing licenses are obtained through the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, for example. [23]
The Lower Wisconsin River State Riverway is a state-funded project designed to protect the southern portion of the Wisconsin River. It extends 93 miles (150 km) from Sauk City to the point where the Wisconsin River empties into the Mississippi, about 3 miles (4.8 km) south of the city of Prairie du Chien. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources manages protected lands of over 75,000 acres (300 km2), including the river itself, islands, and some lands adjacent to the river. In 2020 the riverway was designated as a protected Ramsar site. [1]
There are no dams or man-made obstructions to the natural flow of water between the hydroelectric dam just north of Sauk City and the confluence of the Wisconsin and the Mississippi. This long stretch of free-flowing river provides important natural habitats for a variety of wildlife, including white-tail deer, North American river otters, beavers, turtles, sandhill cranes, eagles, hawks, and a variety of fish species.
Recreational opportunities on the lower Wisconsin River range from fishing and canoeing to tubing and camping. Canoe camping is particularly popular because of the abundance of suitable sandbars along the riverway and because no permits are required. On summer weekends, naturists can be found on Mazo Beach which is north of the village of Mazomanie. According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, two thirds of river users can be found on the stretch between Prairie du Sac and Spring Green. [24]
The Mississippi River is the primary river and second-longest river of the largest drainage basin in the United States. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it flows generally south for 2,340 miles (3,766 km) to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains all or parts of 32 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains. The main stem is entirely within the United States; the total drainage basin is 1,151,000 sq mi (2,980,000 km2), of which only about one percent is in Canada. The Mississippi ranks as the thirteenth-largest river by discharge in the world. The river either borders or passes through the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Portage is a city in and the county seat of Columbia County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 10,581 at the 2020 census, making it the largest city in Columbia County. The city is part of the Madison Metropolitan Statistical Area.
The St. Croix River is a tributary of the Mississippi River, approximately 169 miles (272 km) long, in the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Minnesota. The lower 125 miles (201 km) of the river form the border between Wisconsin and Minnesota. The river is a National Scenic Riverway under the protection of the National Park Service. A hydroelectric plant at the Saint Croix Falls Dam supplies power to the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area.
The Fox River is a river in eastern Wisconsin in the Great Lakes region of the United States. It is the principal tributary of Green Bay, and via the Bay, the largest tributary of Lake Michigan. The city of Green Bay, one of the first European settlements in the interior of North America, is on the river at its mouth on lower Green Bay.
Glacial Lake Wisconsin was a prehistoric proglacial lake that existed from approximately 18,000 to 14,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, in the central part of present-day Wisconsin in the United States.
The St. Joseph River is a 210-mile-long (340 km) river that flows in a generally westerly direction through southern Michigan and northern Indiana, United States, before emptying into Lake Michigan. The St. Joseph River drainage basin covers 4,685 square miles (12,130 km2), and is the third largest watershed draining to Lake Michigan. The land within its bounds is primarily used for agriculture. The river and its tributaries provide a variety of paddling and fishing environments. Historically, the river served as an important canoe transportation route for various Native American tribes, and for French Canadian Voyageurs.
The Fox–Wisconsin Waterway is a waterway formed by the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. First used by European settlers in 1673 during the expedition of Marquette & Joliet, it was one of the principal routes used by travelers between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River until the completion of the Illinois and Michigan Canal in 1848 and the arrival of railroads. The western terminus of the Fox–Wisconsin Waterway was at the Mississippi at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. It continued up the Wisconsin River about 116 miles (187 km) until reaching Portage, Wisconsin. There travelers would portage to the Upper Fox River, or eventually, use the Portage Canal. It continued about 160 miles (260 km) down the Fox River, following it through Lake Winnebago and continuing on the Lower Fox over 170 feet of falls to the eastern terminus of Green Bay.
The Driftless Area, also known as Bluff Country and the Paleozoic Plateau, is a topographical and cultural region in the Midwestern United States that comprises southwestern Wisconsin, southeastern Minnesota, northeastern Iowa, and the extreme northwestern corner of Illinois. The Driftless Area is a USDA Level III Ecoregion: Ecoregion 52. The Driftless Area takes up a large portion of the Upper Midwest forest–savanna transition. The Blufflands refers to the eastern section of the Driftless area in Minnesota, due to the steep bluffs and cliffs around the river valleys. The western half is known as the Rochester Plateau, which is flatter than the Blufflands. The Coulee Region refers to the southwestern part of the Driftless Area in Wisconsin. It is named for its numerous ravines.
Jay Cooke State Park is a state park of Minnesota, United States, protecting the lower reaches of the Saint Louis River. The park is located about 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Duluth and is one of the ten most visited state parks in Minnesota. The western half of the park contains part of a rocky, 13-mile (21 km) gorge. This was a major barrier to Native Americans and early Europeans traveling by canoe, which they bypassed with the challenging Grand Portage of the St. Louis River. The river was a vital link connecting the Mississippi waterways to the west with the Great Lakes to the east.
The Baraboo River is a tributary of the Wisconsin River, in south-central Wisconsin in the United States. Via the Wisconsin River, it is part of the watershed of the Mississippi River. The Baraboo River also has one of the longest stretches of free-flowing river in the United States, with the removal of four dams in the 1990s leading to 112 miles of unimpeded river flow.
The Namekagon River is a tributary of the St. Croix River. It is 101 miles (163 km) long and is located in northwestern Wisconsin in the United States. Its course is protected as part of the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway.
The Baraboo Range is a mountain range in Columbia County and Sauk County, Wisconsin. Geologically, it is a syncline fold consisting of highly eroded Precambrian metamorphic rock. It is about 25 miles (40 km) long and varies from 5 to 10 miles (16 km) in width. The Wisconsin River, previously traveling in a north to south direction, turns to the east just north of the range before making its turn to the west towards the Upper Mississippi River. The eastern end of the range was glaciated during the Wisconsinian glaciation, while the western half was not, and consequently, marks the eastern boundary of Wisconsin's Driftless Area.
The Wisconsin Heights Battlefield is an area in Dane County, Wisconsin, where the penultimate battle of the 1832 Black Hawk War occurred. The conflict was fought between the Illinois and Michigan Territory militias and Sauk chief Black Hawk and his band of warriors, who were fleeing their homeland following the Fox Wars. The Wisconsin Heights Battlefield is the only intact battle site from the Indian Wars in the U.S. Midwest. Today, the battlefield is managed and preserved by the state of Wisconsin as part of the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway. In 2002, it was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
Wisconsin, a state in the Midwestern United States, has a vast and diverse geography famous for its landforms created by glaciers during the Wisconsin glaciation 17,000 years ago. The state can be generally divided into five geographic regions—Lake Superior Lowland, Northern Highland, Central Plain, Eastern Ridges & Lowlands, and Western Upland. The southwestern part of the state, which was not covered by glaciers during the most recent ice age, is known as the Driftless Area. The Wisconsin glaciation formed the Wisconsin Dells, Devil's Lake, and the Baraboo Range. A number of areas are protected in the state, including Devil's Lake State Park, the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, and the Chequamegon–Nicolet National Forest.
The 2002 Wisconsin gubernatorial election was held on November 5, 2002. Incumbent Republican Governor of Wisconsin Scott McCallum, who had assumed office upon the resignation of Tommy Thompson, ran for his first full term in office. McCallum won his party's nomination by defeating two minor candidates, and Attorney General of Wisconsin Jim Doyle won the Democratic primary with a little more than a third of the vote in a highly competitive primary election. In the general election, the presence of Ed Thompson, former Governor Tommy Thompson's younger brother, the Mayor of Tomah, and the Libertarian Party nominee, held both McCallum and Doyle to under fifty percent of the vote, enabling Doyle to win with 45% of the vote, defeating McCallum. As of 2022, this is the last gubernatorial election in which the Democratic candidate carried Taylor, Langlade, Marquette, Manitowoc, and Racine counties, and the last in which Juneau County did not vote for the Republican candidate, instead voting for Thompson.
This article covers the water based Canadian canoe routes used by early explorers of Canada with special emphasis on the fur trade.
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The Prairie du Sac Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Wisconsin River just north of Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin. It is owned and operated by Alliant Energy. The dam forms Lake Wisconsin. It is the last dam on the Wisconsin River before its confluence with the Mississippi River about 92 miles (148 km) downstream, and it marks the upper end of the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway.