North Country Trail office moves from Madison to Lowell

After two decades in Madison, Wisconsin the National Park Service (NPS) recently relocated its North Country National Scenic Trail office to Lowell, Michigan. For years federal staff for the North Country Trail (NCT) shared an office with Ice Age National Scenic Trail staff on Madison's west side. The two trails even shared some staff, which provided some administrative efficiencies. But those efficiencies were wiped out by the travel required anytime North Country Trail staff needed to be on or near any part of the NCT itself. Plus not having a shared federal office will provide an emotional boost to both National Scenic Trails, especially for NCT volunteers who now have their own office and staff located on the NCT.

The kind of synergy of having federal and non-profit offices for the Appalachian Trail located in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia can begin to benefit the NCT in Lowell. I applaud the move.

For more on this story, see http://www.mlive.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2011/11/world_traveler_now_in_lowell_t.html

One of the Top 100 Great Outdoors Projects in America

By Drew Hanson

A new report from the U.S. Department of the Interior highlights the Ice Age Trail as one of the country’s most promising projects designed to protect special places and increase access to outdoor spaces. The full report is at http://www.slideshare.net/USInterior/americas-great-outdoors-fiftystate-report

In a news release about the report, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar stated, “We have listened to the American people and their elected representatives about the most important things we can do to conserve our land and water and reconnect people, especially young people, to the outdoors. These projects represent what states believe are among the best investments in the nation to support a healthy, active population, conserve wildlife and working lands, and create travel, tourism and outdoor-recreation jobs across the nation.” The report lists 100 projects nationwide—two in every state.

One of the goals of the America’s Great Outdoors: Fifty-State Report is to "expand the Ice Age Trail through strategic conservation easements”.

USA Today mentioned "completing gaps in Wisconsin's Ice Age Trail" in the first paragraph of an article about the report that appeared at, http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2011/11/americas-greatest-outdoor-spots-feds-pick-top-100/1

This sounds like good news! Fifty-three years after Ray Zillmer first called on the federal government to help acquire the land needed for the Ice Age Trail, maybe it’s finally about to happen. Let’s hope so.

For more on the subject of National Park Service land acquisition for the Ice Age Trail, see http://pedestrianview.blogspot.com/2011/04/national-park-service-land-acquisition.html and http://pedestrianview.blogspot.com/2011/03/protecting-route-and-resources-of-ice.html

Trail Improvements in Taylor County

I was able to spend only a day with the trail crews, but from what I saw and heard I'd say the Ice Age Trail's Wood Lake and (part of the) Rib Lake segments are in the best condition they've been in for years. The Ice Age Trail Alliance's Mobile Skills Crew delivered another winner. From August 18 - August 21, volunteers from Wisconsin and Illinois made numerous trail improvements. Other volunteers made sure everyone ate well. Great fun! Less than 10% of it is constructed tread so hike it while it's fresh!

An email from the Ice Age Trail Alliance summed it up well with the following:
"The Rib Lake and Wood Lake Segments of the Ice Age Trail received some much-needed TLC and a reroute to boot. On the main stage, volunteers constructed about 1,600 feet of new trail, including more than 100 feet of boardwalk. Volunteers stole the show by turning a muck-covered oyster into a beautiful pearl. On the second stage, immediately to the east, volunteers held the spotlight by mowing over two miles, clearing the trail of debris and updating signage. On the third stage at Wood Lake, volunteers wowed the crowd by constructing a 56-foot boardwalk extension and performing more than a mile of trail maintenance and signage upgrades. On the outer stages volunteers provide TLC for about eight more miles, including cleaning up signage, mowing, chainsaw work and other corridor clearing activities.

All together, 88 volunteers contributed more than 2,400 hours. The time and effort volunteers put into these segments of the Ice Age Trail will be greatly appreciated by its users and maintainers for years to come. Thanks to all who contributed for your great performance in creating a safer, free-flowing, beautiful trail for audiences on the Rib Lake and Wood Lake Segments. Take a bow...we applaud you!"

I applaud you too. Thank you!

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?

Cut the Deficit without Betraying our Founding Fathers

By Drew Hanson

There’s a lot of discussion these days about the deficit. Rightfully so. The United States is in debt to the tune of something over $12,000,000,000,000. That’s twelve trillion dollars. And because our economy is still emerging from the worst economic disaster of the past 80 years, that number is going to get bigger before it gets smaller. It is a problem we need to address.

Unfortunately, too much emphasis is being placed on cuts to what some call “domestic discretionary spending”, that is for things like public education, public radio and television, and public health. These are programs that contribute to the quality of life for nearly all Americans. These are programs that distinguish rich countries from poor countries. These are programs worth fighting for.

Let’s not forget that the United States remains a wealthy nation, perhaps still the most wealthy nation on the planet. Our deficit is a big number but there is great wealth here and we have the exceptional ingenuity to fix the budget issues. So let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

A sensible approach to cutting the deficit would look at three things: our country’s mission, where the wealth of our nation resides and where we might make government programs more efficient. In this short essay I’ll explore the first: our mission.

The government of these United States has a wonderful mission statement, contained in the preamble of our constitution and written by our founding fathers. It reads, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Given our large deficit, if a federal government program does not directly help to satisfy this mission, we must look at cutting the program.

Two parts of the federal budget that do not directly serve our mission are, first, having far too many American military service personnel stationed overseas and, second, the continued development of many military weapon systems. Military service personnel should be paid fairly and on time, protected with the best safety equipment, given excellent health care and if they are injured in the line of duty provided with health care coverage for life. But stationing them in far off lands, sometimes for decades, does not satisfy the mission of our government as delineated by our founding fathers and is an unnecessary expense we can no longer afford.

America needs to be exceptional for its own citizens again before we can afford the job of global police. It is time other nations police the world and, if necessary, topple brutal dictators.

The trillion dollars we have spent on Iraq was…, well, how do you think it squares with our nation’s mission statement when our own citizens have basic health and education needs? The same holds for recent military operations in Libya. The more than 160 tomahawk cruise missiles we shot at Libya during one week last month cost about $1 million each. Without factoring the other associated costs, that operation dinged US taxpayers over $160,000,000.

The next time you hear someone complain about a million dollars for the Ice Age National Scenic Trail, for instance, or other beneficial education or public health project for our own people, point out that our government spent that much on just one bomb in Libya. What’s more in keeping with our government’s mission, securing “the blessings of liberty” for our own people with a public health resource like the Ice Age Trail or attacking a sovereign nation that posed no threat to the citizens of the United States? Especially when we are over twelve trillion dollars in debt, our military should “provide for the common defense” of the citizens of the United States only.

Make no mistake about it, there is plenty of waste in the military weapon systems our government is building. More than a trillion dollars in boondoggles were recently described in the New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/03/13/opinion/13opchartimg.html?ref=opinion

Part of insuring “domestic tranquility”, promoting “the general welfare” and securing “the blessings of liberty” is embodied in our public education system, public radio, public television, public health programs and in relatively small programs like our National Park System (including the Ice Age National Scenic Trail), transportation enhancements and the Smithsonian Institution. These are things that give our civilization value and meaning.

It is time for a peace dividend to help pay down the deficit. By bringing home most overseas American military service personnel and by cutting certain military weapon systems we could save trillions of dollars without trashing our constitution and betraying our founding fathers.