Knapp Stout Company and Indian Mounds Park

 Mounds Park
Rice Lake, WI

Rice Lake, WI is just a 20 minute drive from our home, and where we do the majority of our shopping. 

Most of the farms in our area were once part of the Knapp Stout Lumber Company holdings. In fact, we are only the second owners of our farm since it was part of Knapp Stout. Before that, it was owned by the State of Wisconsin, and before that, part of the NW Territory (1787) which included all the states now known as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as well as the northeastern part of Minnesota. That territory covered 260,000 sq. miles.

From WisconsinHistory.org:

'Around 1867, John Knapp (1825-1888) bought acres of forest in the area that became part of property owned by the largest lumbering company in the world, Knapp, Stout & Co. The firm owned 115,000 acres and produced 90 million feet of cut lumber annually by 1880.

'By damming the Red Cedar River around 1870, the company created a lake for use as a holding pond. It also flooded the wild rice beds, which angered the Chippewa. To make amends, the lumber company agreed to bring them food, replacing their wild rice diet with one containing pork and flour.

'The village was platted in 1870, 1875 and 1884 by Knapp, Stout & Co. They left a 100-foot wide thoroughfare that became Rice Lake’s business district.'

 Indian Mounds Park
preserves 12 Native American burial mounds

As we were visiting Mounds Park last week, we were wondering if other burial mounds had been displaced by the street and by Lakeside Methodist Hospital, built in 1922, adjacent to the burial mounds pictured above. We'll never know, for that hospital was replaced and later torn down. Now, the land that the hospital and clinic sat on is empty.

 The Bayfield Hiking Trail
takes people near the ancient pipestone quarries,
old rice beds and rice storage pits.

 Skaters. Much of the lake was still frozen last week
when I took the photos.

 Walking on Hard Water

 What a difference four months makes!

Linking to Mosaic Monday

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