Steps Milestone

By Drew Hanson

Last spring, I decided to up my pedestrian game. I set a goal of getting a minimum of 10,000 steps each day. I missed a day here and there for the first few months but not again since July 5th. That means I have been able to get over 10k steps for 187 consecutive days—every day for over six months. That’s not an average. It’s a minimum that equates to at least four miles per day.

My neighborhood rail-trail

Some days I drive to a trailhead for a hike. Some days I add a walk to a driving errand. Other days my work in outdoor recreation gets me steps. About half of days, though, my steps come from within my home neighborhood. Having a rail-trail nearby is helpful and is one of the reasons I chose our house.

In spite of WalkScore.com’s surprisingly low walk score of 45 for my home, in various directions within a comfortable 0.7 mile walk of my home are a grade school, middle school, hardware store, public library, parks, playgrounds, and a few restaurants. My family and I frequently walk to these and other destinations. (I first wrote about walk scores in 2014 in Move Reveals Walk Score Flaws.)

Attaining at least #10kStepsPerDay satisfies something I was seeking for a decade. I wrote about it in 2012 in A Daily Walk. Goal accomplished!

The #10kStepsPerDay routine has me feeling more energized, more positive, and I lost a few pounds. Give it a try and follow #10kStepsPerDay.

How long can I can keep this streak going?

Lost Hike

By Drew Hanson

The Badger State has little-understood but impressive hiking foundations. Few states can claim a share of the legacies of John Muir, Gaylord Nelson and other giants, as Wisconsin can. Plus, we have important groups with noble histories like the Wisconsin Go Hiking Club, founded in 1924, Izaak Walton League, which took critical steps in the 1930s-1950s to support hiking, and the Ice Age Trail Alliance, founded in 1958.

As much as there is here to celebrate, there are also mistakes from which to learn. In this installment of Pedestrian View, let’s look at a classic Wisconsin hike that was lost to short-sightedness.

On October 15, 1922 a group of Milwaukeeans took a hike in neighboring Waukesha County. Their story was captured for posterity a few days later in the weekly newsletter of the Milwaukee City Club. Records saved by the Wisconsin Historical Society and other online resources show it being a typical outing of its day.

The group called themselves, “the Outdoor Lifers,” and included Jerry Sweet, Henry Hase and William Foster—an enthusiastic bunch, no doubt.

Creation of the Kettle Moraine State Forest was still 15 years in the future so the Outdoor Lifers hiked across private land in an era before ubiquitous “No Trespassing” signs. It’s what everyone did who hiked in those days. It was a normal 1920’s outing.

The story of their day begins, “Sunday was a day to set the blood a-racing—blue sky, stretches of sear fields, and woods bursting with autumn color—and when the Outdoor Lifers stepped off the train at Nagawicka, Hase bounded to the top of the ski jump to vent his spirits. The hikers struck across to Government Hill and South Wales. Foster was growing prodigiously hungry and became fearful whether he had instructed Sweet to bring enough food. (The rest of the Outdoor Lifers were groaning under the weight of their provision packs.) Powerful thing, imagination! Bryn Mawr, Welsh for ‘Big Hill,’ was reached at noon.”

After a lengthy scenic hilltop lunch, the crew continued their saunter. They “reached North Prairie by dark and stopped at a billiard hall a half block from the station to wait for the train. No sooner had Jerry Sweet remarked that he never knew a Milwaukee Road train to be on time than it came tearing in. There was a mad scramble for the station.”

It sounds exhilarating, like the kind of thing many of us would enjoy today—actually, do enjoy when visiting other places in the U.S. and Europe. These days, we must struggle to find all-day hikes in southern Wisconsin. Indeed, a few weeks ago a friend emailed me about his daughter and her friends’ interest in a 3-day hike within an easy drive of Madison as a transition from summer break to college. I informed the friend that the only meaningful 3-day hikes, or even all-day one-way hikes, in southern Wisconsin are in the Kettle Moraine State Forest. Compounding the problem is that backpacking in the Kettle Moraine is so popular that it requires reservations at rustic shelters that are booked months in advance. The Black River State Forest might technically fit the bill but its preponderance of motor vehicles is enough to keep away those who enjoy hearing predominantly sounds of nature.

It was not supposed to be this way. The State of Wisconsin had a plan, including a project boundary approved by the legislature, to acquire the lands needed to protect this classic hike and others. Approved in 1937 the plan was rescinded in 1965. The about-face was one big step backward not just for hiking but also for land and water conservation. What followed was the slow conversion of most of the lands we today call the Mid Kettle Moraine from large family farms to cookie-cutter subdivisions. The result: Waukesha is running out of clean water and a classic hike between Nagawicka and North Prairie is gone.

Instead of sticking with its 1937 plan to conserve the Kettle Moraine, the State of Wisconsin has acquired over a million acres of public access lands elsewhere. How many public places in southern Wisconsin today allow a person to take an all-day hike without walking in circles? You can count the number on your fingers.

(Tangentially, considering the public transit used for the classic 1922 hike, how many all-day hikes in southern Wisconsin are today served by public transit? Zero. A 1916 railroad map of southeast Wisconsin showing the extensive public transit options available to anyone planning a hike in 1922 is available from the Wisconsin Historical Society here.)

In spite of Wisconsin’s impressive hiking foundations, both major and insidious mistakes were made in the decades since 1960 that have severely limited hiking opportunities in southern Wisconsin. Sad. Short-sighted. But don’t lose hope. The future still holds opportunities.

Under Governor Tommy Thompson, in 1990 for the first time State funds were earmarked for the purchase of Ice Age Trail lands and in 1999 the longest segment of Ice Age Trail in history was protected in a single acquisition. Under Governor James Doyle, between 2003-2010, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources made Ice Age Trail land acquisition a priority and solid progress was made. With political will, momentum could be regained.

In 2009, Congress gave the National Park Service the authority to acquire land for the Ice Age Trail from willing sellers. But to date, NPS has not used this ability to purchase even a single parcel. With political will, this too could change.

Where the land can be acquired for the public, the Ice Age Trail Alliance’s Mobile Skills Crew has shown it can build the highest quality hiking trail.

The 2018 Wisconsin Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan (SCORP) shows hiking/walking/running on trails to be the most popular outdoor recreation activity in Wisconsin, with 68% of state residents participating at least once in the last 12 months. Will that significant majority lose or gain hikes in the future?

Sidewalks are for People

A major courier delivery services company wants to use wheeled robots instead of people to deliver packages. Groovy sci fi imagery aside, this is a really bad idea.

Sidewalks are for people. Will the wheeled robot step aside for a grandmother in a wheelchair or neighbor with MS who needs the full width of sidewalk? What will the robot wagon do when it tips over?

People have legal rights to sidewalks. Wheeled robots do not and should not. As urban landscapes continue to grow, sidewalks are one of the last refuges for millions of people to engage in humanity's oldest form of locomotion.

Instead of pouring gobs of money into robots, marketing and lobbying, a good company would do the right thing that is leaving sidewalks for people.

A Green New Deal

By Drew Hanson

We in the United States obsess too much over cutting taxes. The problem is not how much we spend, it is how we spend it.

It is not wasteful for our neighbor to have a living wage job, or to make our communities vibrant, or to ensure we have safe drinking water, or to keep our bridges from crumbling, or to head-off increased flooding.

At the height of the Great Depression, when most of the country was penny pinching out of dire necessity, the United States launched several New Deal programs that were the opposite of cost cutting. Opponents at the time said we could not afford them. But the Civilian Conservation Corp (better known as the CCC), the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and other progressive programs put millions of people to work investing in the future. They built public structures out of stone to last, painted amazing murals in buildings like post offices, created some of our favorite public parks, and much more.

A crowd-sourced, interactive map and database of New Deal projects is at https://livingnewdeal.org/ Check it out! Many of these projects created facilities that are among the most enduring and popular public works of the 20^th century. Many of them continue to be gifts from our grandparents that keep on giving.

Dells of the Eau Claire, one of six CCC project areas on the Ice Age Trail

Unfortunately, these far-sighted programs ended in World War II. A reshuffling of our nation’s priorities ensued. The selective obsessive cost cutting that followed turned into what our grandparents might these days call penny wise and pound foolish.

Today, while some of our roads, bridges, national parks and national scenic trails desperately need help, we lavish public dollars on sports stadiums and huge corporations like Foxconn and Amazon. What would our grandparents say? I think mine would say we’re being damn foolish.

America needs a New Deal for the 21^st century that creates the public infrastructure for the next 100 years. We need programs to address the backlog of projects on our national scenic trails such as having seasonal trail crews on the Ice Age Trail. Instead of more dams, long-distance transmission lines, and fossil fuel pipelines, we need investments in local renewable energy that do not alter the planet’s fisheries or climate. We need to reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund. We need more sidewalks and bike lanes. We need to prevent invasive exotic species from over-running our lands, waters, and us. We need a Green New Deal.

Before Bears Ears

by Drew Hanson

For weeks conservationists have been fretting over the President’s low regard for the Antiquities Act. The concern is justified. Stripping protections from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments is not only legally questionable, it opens these areas to irreparable damage. Sad as it is, this is not the first time a treasured place has been diminished by short-sightedness and greed. Long before President Trump’s controversial actions, a revered Wisconsin landscape also suffered a loss of protections.

1959 USGS Hartland topo map

The Southern Kettle Moraine State Forest (or “Southern Kettles”) was established in 1937 by the legislature to protect a long, narrow belt of glacial ridges in southeast Wisconsin. Its original boundary stretched between Whitewater Lake and the village of Hartland. In the decades that followed, acquisition of lands progressed too slowly for southeast Wisconsin conservationists and supporters of a long-distance hiking trail. But too quickly for others.

Completion in 1956 of the first segment of interstate highway 94 from Milwaukee to within five miles of this part of the Southern Kettles increasingly opened doors to the development of exurban residential subdivisions. The skids of Milwaukee’s white flight were greased. Rural landowners and residential subdivision developers began calling for an end to land acquisition for the Southern Kettle Moraine State Forest.

Bowing to the local pressure, in 1965 the State reduced the boundary of the Southern Kettles by 9,000 acres--a reduction of more than 25%. The reduction decapitated the State Forest, eliminating the portion between highway D near Hunters Lake and the village Hartland. Unsatisfied, the critics kept up their drumbeat of opposition.

1965 reductions to the Southern Kettles shown in red

At a 1968 public hearing in the Eagle Village Hall regarding the future of the Southern Kettle Moraine State Forest, Harlan Clinkenbeard, Assistant Director of the Southeast Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission stated, “The Kettle Moraine represents one of the most significant natural resource areas in Wisconsin.” He highlighted the many values of the area from recreation to recharge of the groundwater aquifer and concluded his remarks with, “The importance of the Kettle Moraine to the seven-county region in which 42 percent of the state’s population resides is immeasurable and the loss of this area to urban development may cause irreparable damage to both the land and water resources of the region.”

His warning went unheeded. Again succumbing to pressure, in 1970 the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board voted to remove an additional 1,970 acres from the Southern Kettle Moraine State Forest. The reduction lopped off another area from the northern tip of the Southern Kettles.

1970 reductions to the Southern Kettles shown in black

Every time I drive interstate highway 94 between Madison and Milwaukee I think about these removals from the State Forest. I see scars where a public forest was supposed to be. I feel disgust and grief.

Some will say the loss of protections for lands in Wisconsin is easier to accept than the loss of protections for lands in Utah. But that’s just Mountain Majesty Bias.

Today, most of those nearly 11,000 acres are either large lot residential subdivisions or one-story commercial developments. If the Natural Resources Board had not reduced the State Forest by almost 11,000 acres, perhaps the groundwater recharge area for Waukesha would have been safeguarded. Perhaps Waukesha would not have needed to request water from Lake Michigan. Perhaps the Ice Age Trail would have passed through a State Forest corridor for an additional 12 off-road miles. Who were the winners and who were the losers?

Perhaps Bears Ears will fare better.



Click on maps to enlarge them.

Denver Delivers

by Drew Hanson

If you are looking for a city with great walking, Denver delivers.

Multitudes of wonderful walks are easy to find in the Mile High City thanks to a well-designed multi-modal transportation system and more than 80 miles of greenway trails.

No need for a car in Denver. The city's light rail system is fantastic! It is clean and quiet and costs a fraction of a taxi ride. The A-Line connecting the downtown to the airport is one of five spurs emanating from the downtown. The trains are further integrated into the city's transportation network by allowing bicycles on-board, an Amtrak stop at Union Station and some train stations with enough parking for the park-and-ride commuter. These trains can take you to all regions of the city to begin whatever walk you create.

light rail leading west from Denver's downtown

Downtown Denver has complete sidewalks, secure pedestrian crossings of nearly every street, great restaurants and a hoppin' night life. Most notably, the downtown's 16th Street Mall is a 1.2-mile pedestrian promenade that is off-limits to automobiles except for free buses. It is a lively, bustling strip for your walking pleasure.

16th Street Mall

A main line of Denver's greenways is the South Platte River Trail, which follows the main body of water through the city. While walking this trail, it is easy to get lost in thoughts of this river flowing east, through Nebraska, to the Missouri River, then Mississippi and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico.

South Platte River

One of the most heavily used greenways in Denver is along Cherry Creek. Trails flank both sides of the creek that passes along the downtown. The trail on one side is for pedestrians. The other side for bikes and rollerblading. It connects Confluence Park, where it meets the South Platte River Trail, with Cherry Creek State Park, a distance of 12 miles.

pedestrian side of the Cherry Creek Trail

One of the more scenic greenways in Denver is coursed by both the Lakewood Gulch Trail and the W-Line rail. It offers distant views of the downtown to the east and mountains to the west.

Lakewood Gulch Trail

Wayfinding signage on the greenway trails includes simple icons within arrows painted on the pavement at major intersections. Click here for more information about the city's urban trails.

handy painted icons point ahead to downtown and back to mountains

On a recent trip to Denver, the pedometer app on my phone told me I walked 9.7 miles the first day and 17 miles the second. Bliss! And so much more left to explore.

35,765 steps, or about 17 miles, in Denver makes for a good day

Move Reveals Walk Score Flaws

by Drew Hanson

We moved recently. The new house provides us a higher quantity and quality of nearby walks. But walkscore.com rates it 32 points less walkable than our former home. That’s not right.

A couple years ago an article appeared here which bemoaned a decrease in daily walks. Posted at http://pedestrianview.blogspot.com/2012/04/walk-each-day.html, it ended with the goal of a life with walking recast in a central role. We now have that. But in the process of finding our new home, flaws in the “walk score” used by many real estate web sites were uncovered.

According to Walk Score’s website, “Walk Score measures walkability on a scale from 0 - 100 based on walking routes to destinations such as grocery stores, schools, parks, restaurants, and retail.” The web tool “measures the walkability of any address using a patented system. For each address, Walk Score analyzes hundreds of walking routes to nearby amenities. Points are awarded based on the distance to amenities in each category. Amenities within a 5 minute walk (.25 miles) are given maximum points. A decay function is used to give points to more distant amenities, with no points given after a 30 minute walk. Walk Score also measures pedestrian friendliness by analyzing population density and road metrics such as block length and intersection density. Data sources include Google, Education.com, Open Street Map, the U.S. Census, Localeze, and places added by the Walk Score user community.”

Sounds good. So how could my old address receive a walk score of 77, or “very walkable”, while my new address scores only 45?

My old address was on a busy, commuter street through a traditional neighborhood with houses close to each other and the street. Weekday traffic counts averaged over 10,000 cars per day. Its two lanes of traffic were narrow and book-ended by on-street parking on both sides. Traffic tended to include a fair number of aggressive drivers who sometimes unsafely passed slower or turning traffic on the right or left. Getting in and out of a car’s driver’s side while it was parked on-street was scary thanks to unruly drivers—especially when trying to get a child in or out of a car seat.

Because of the preponderance of disrespectful, unsafe and unlawful driving habits on our former street, about half of bicyclists rode on the sidewalk instead of in the street which further diminished its walkability. There were four automobile-related deaths on the street within three blocks of the former house in the past ten years. For these and other safety reasons, we rarely let our children play in the front yard or walk unchaperoned to neighbors’.

From the former house, walking our kids the half-mile to elementary school involved crossing our own busy street plus a street that carried 14,000 cars per weekday. There were no signalized crossings of our street and drivers rarely stopped for pedestrians entering a crosswalk.

Our new home is in a less densely populated neighborhood even though houses on our block are as close or closer together as they were at our previous address. Fewer than 1500 cars pass our new home on an average weekday. Our children are now free to play in the front yard and walk alone to neighbors’ as far as five houses away.

Whereas a walk to the library from the former house took 3 minutes, it now takes 20. Whereas a walk to the pharmacy from the former house took 4 minutes, it now takes 24. Within 5 minutes of the former house were two restaurants we liked and within 20 minutes were several more. We have to walk 12 minutes from the current home to arrive at a restaurant we like, 24 minutes to a second one we like and more than 30 minutes for any others.

For a hardware store, however, it is a 13 minute walk from the new house. A walk to a hardware store from the former house was more than 30 minutes. The former house was closer to most commercial amenities but the walk to many of them meant the unpleasant hassle of crossing and/or walking along our street.

Walking our children to school is where things get more interesting. Like the walk to their former school, the new one is about a half-mile away. But instead of crossing a street with 10,000 cars/day with aggressive drivers who rarely yield to pedestrians and a second busy street with 14,000 cars/day, we now have to cross a boulevard with 22,000 cars/day. This would be six in one, a half-dozen in the other were it not for the fact that drivers on the boulevard very often yield the right-of-way to pedestrians in a non-signalized crosswalk. Accounting for such driving habits is missed by Walk Score.

The most significant difference in walks between old and new is the presence of more nature near our new address. There are more and larger parks, trails and native trees. Our former street terrace was dominated by less interesting young-to-mid-aged locust and ash trees while our new street and neighborhood have many inspiring mature oak and maple. Our former address had parks nearby but they were mostly small or with more developed areas like baseball fields. Our new address is near a large nature park and a walking/biking commuter greenway that are both great for walking. As discussed at sites like http://wellnessiis.com/2011/05/30/forestbathing/ and http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/easing-brain-fatigue-with-a-walk-in-the-park/?_r=0, walks in nature are good for our physical and mental health. An accurate walk score would account for these factors.

In general, Walk Score apparently omits several positive and negative attributes of good walking. The score seems to be based overwhelmingly on simple distance measurements.

Walking/Biking Path and Greenway Behind Our New Home

As an aside, walkscore.com also provides bike scores. But this rating can be inaccurate too. Riding a bike on our former street was unpleasant at best. Amazingly our former address received a bike score of 99 for “biker’s paradise”. That’s just wrong. By comparison, our new street is nice for biking and our backyard is along a walking/biking path that extends for tens of miles in each direction including to the downtown of our city of a quarter-million residents. Our new address garners a probably accurate bike score of 89.

Walk Score may know something about New Urbanism. But people who know walking know there is more to walkability than proximity. For families with young children shopping for a different home or anyone attuned to walk quality, beware of potentially misleading Walk Score (and Bike Score) numbers.

A Neighborhood Ice Rink

by Drew Hanson

Madisonians will know it as the Union Corners rink, perhaps someday anyway. That big snow that lasted a few weeks was followed by a warm week and now this flash freeze—perfect conditions for creating a shallow frozen pond. It made a delightful swath of ice for a five year old to learn to skate and then stamp around in winter boots. It's only a one block walk from our home.

For those who don’t know the 11-acre area, just a decade ago it was a Kohls grocery and old battery factory. A developer had plans to transform it into a new neighborhood that became a casualty of the recession. The city bought it a few years ago to guide its future. It is a future that would be especially nice for families with kids if it included a small ice rink. Wouldn’t that be a sweet neighborhood destination and gateway feature along East Washington Ave/Highway 151?

Better Walking for Raleigh?

It's really hard to get around some American cities without a car. Neighborhoods built roughly 1945-1985 usually have no sidewalks. Some cities are tackling the problem. There's a short video at click here showing the situation in Raleigh, North Carolina. What do you think?

Ancient Trail between the Great River and Great Lakes

By Drew Hanson

Fueled by new modes of transportation and shifting economies, human travel routes change with the passage of time. Most of the changes result in routes being improved. But occasionally an old route is abandoned. This essay is a story about an ancient overland trail across what is now southern Wisconsin and a place that still evokes a sense of what it might have been like thousands of years ago.

The first book ever published by the Smithsonian Institution was Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, by E.G. Squier and E. H. Davis. It appeared in 1847, one year before Wisconsin became a state. Chapter five, Monuments of the Northwest, notes an ancient trail that is the geographic riddle this story strives to unravel:

“The great Indian trail or ‘war path’, from Lake Michigan near Milwaukie [sic] to the Mississippi above Prairie du Chien, which has for the most part [emphasis added] been adopted as the route of the United States military road… [T]his great natural pathway, which has been for ages and must forever remain the route of communication between the Great Lakes and the Great River,” is along “… a high open prairie, on the dividing ridge between the waters of the Rock and Wisconsin rivers.”

Can we find this ancient trail today? The end points are clear: at the mouths of major rivers where the cities of Milwaukee and Prairie du Chien now stand. Various sources show the ancient trail passing through points where other communities grew, including Pewaukee, Lake Mills (Aztalan), Madison and Mt. Horeb. Connecting the dots between Madison and Milwaukee, nearly all of the ancient trail is now either modern highway or developed residential neighborhoods with grid street patterns. The same is true between Mt. Horeb and Prairie du Chien, where we can travel the route today but the tread of the ancient trail was obliterated by the earth moving needed to create highway 18 and the railroad grade that became the Military Ridge bike trail. Between Madison and Mt. Horeb, the location of the ancient trail is less obvious.

Roughly between the Mississippi River and the village of Mt. Horeb, the ridge that divides the waters of the Rock and Wisconsin Rivers is called the Military Ridge. It takes this name from a road that was improved by the U.S. military in the early 1830s. East of Mt. Horeb, the same dividing ridge follows an arcuate course northeastward and then southeastward to the edge of the Driftless Area near a small road named Timber Lane. Since the ridge east and west of Mt. Horeb is the same ridge, I refer to the entire ridge as the Great Dividing Ridge–a name applied to it by Increase A. Lapham in 1861 (Martin, L., The Physical Geography of Wisconsin, 1932).

The eastern edge of the Driftless Area near Timber Lane is marked by a terminal moraine known as the Johnstown Moraine. It was deposited by the Green Bay lobe of the Laurentide ice sheet roughly fifteen thousand years ago. The Ice Age National Scenic Trail and National Park Service Interpretive Site encompass part of this area because of the geologic contrast between glaciated and unglaciated landscapes the place provides. The area holds another distinction as well.

I submit that between Mt. Horeb and the eastern edge of the Driftless Area, the ancient trail may have continued along the Great Dividing Ridge instead of along the present route of the Military Ridge bike trail, the present route of highway 18-151, or other routes of the Old Military Road through this area. Except perhaps during dry periods, the modern routes east of Mt. Horeb may have been too wet and included too many topographic changes to provide a good route for pre-eighteenth century foot travelers. The Great Dividing Ridge east of Mt. Horeb would have provided a reliably high and dry walking route without steep climbs for thousands of years and is a likely segment to which Squier and Davis were referring when they used the qualifier, “for the most part.”

So why was the part of the ancient trail along the Great Dividing Ridge between Mt. Horeb and the eastern edge of the Driftless Area abandoned as a travel route through the area? We know that the primary draw for European and American settlers into Wisconsin during the early 1800s was the lead mining of the southern Driftless Area. The principal community of the lead district was Mineral Point. Other important lead mining communities were slightly farther south. The growth of these lead mining towns forced the creation of new transportation routes and altered those previously in existence.

Mineral Point is situated approximately eight miles south of the Great Dividing Ridge. One of the effects of its growing economy was to attract commerce and its requisite transportation routes into the community. At least some of the traffic through the region was thus redirected across the lower lands south of the Great Dividing Ridge. After the territorial and state capital became fixed at Madison, the shortest distance between the main communities reinforced the route shift generally south of the Great Dividing Ridge and with a smaller percentage of transportation being done on foot, the water crossings of the upper Sugar River basin (part of the Rock River system) were rendered insignificant.

During the 1830s, U.S. government surveyors were delineating the grid of the Public Land Survey System in western Dane County. In addition to marking township and section corners, the original surveyors took copious notes on the distance from each corner to the nearest tree. More important to this story, they sometimes drew trails and roads on their maps and noted distances in their notes. The maps and notes of the original surveyors show that by the 1835, the primary travel route between Mt. Horeb and Middleton (just west of Madison) was located on the military road south of the Great Dividing Ridge.

In the decades following the work of the original government surveyors, lands were sold in rectangular 40-acre units. The lands were eventually settled by farming families. With evolving transportation technologies and as a matter of convenience to landowners, most travel routes were gradually straightened along survey lines wherever practicable.

During Wisconsin’s first half-century, important roads were often named for the community at the other end, such as, Green Bay Road in Milwaukee, Madison Street in Beaver Dam, Milwaukee Drive in New Holstein, and many others. As transportation routes change, sometimes road names become applied to only vestiges of different earlier travel routes. In other cases, newer straighter roads are assigned names of earlier nearby roads, even if the straightened road no longer reaches its namesake, such as Mineral Point Road on the west side of Madison that no longer leads to the city of Mineral Point.

Does anyone today drive Blue Mound Road or Capitol Drive in Milwaukee and Waukesha counties to reach Blue Mounds near Mt. Horeb or the Wisconsin Capitol? Could either Capitol Drive or Blue Mound Road be part of the ancient trail between the mouth of the Milwaukee River and mouth of the Wisconsin River?

The road name “Stagecoach Road”, just south of the village of Cross Plains, presumably refers to its early history as a stagecoach route. The nearby road named “Old Military Road” appears to not entirely follow the route of the 1830s military road through the area, but perhaps it marks some vestige of a partially straightened military road of an intermediate era?

During all the years since the lead mining days, the Great Dividing Ridge east of Mt. Horeb had no road of importance along its crest. New modes of transportation and shifting economies redirected traffic away from this part of the ancient trail. It fell from dominance as “the route of communication between the Great Lakes and the Great River.” The “high open prairie” became a high, mostly open agricultural field.

Extending east from the Great Dividing Ridge, where the Johnstown Moraine defines the edge of the Driftless Area, one of Middleton and west Madison’s main roads begins. Just as the modern names Mineral Point Road, Capitol Drive and Blue Mound Road hint at their origins, the ancient trail provided Dane County with the name for one of its modern roads. Honoring a Native American Nation that lived in this region and had its primary village at present day Sauk City, the road is named Old Sauk Road.

The march of civilization has left the Mt. Horeb to Johnstown Moraine segment of the Great Dividing Ridge largely without improvements. For the moment at least, one can still grasp the scene that has remained for ages. But it may not last for long. Residential development and quarrying threaten this link to our past. How long before new homes, quarrying and paved roads obliterate this last vestige of the ancient trail? How long will these vistas last?