by Robert Root
Settlement had a far-reaching impact on every aspect of the natural landscape of Waukesha County, as it did throughout Wisconsin. Marlin Johnson notes the county’s “dynamic vegetation pattern of uncommon richness—maple and oak forests, prairies, oak openings and marshlands.” But, with the influx of white settlers in the 1830s and 1840s, Johnson observes, “Land was judged mainly on its capacity to become cropland. . . . Probably no single acre in Waukesha County has remained unaltered by the agrarian society that dominated the landscape for more than one hundred years.” Agriculture and fire prevention “all but eliminated natural oak openings and prairies from the county,” Johnson says. A sizable portion of farmland has since been further altered by suburban development; much of the terrain, like that seen from Observatory Hill in Marquette County by John Warfield Simpson, is the result of the abandonment of the land the first settlers so thoroughly altered from what they found when they arrived.
In the less than two centuries since settlers arrived at Prairieville, the Fox River has gone through its share of transformations. The mills built near the rapids, where the Frame Park dam still stands, are gone and the millrace has been filled in, but the shape of the river has been altered by commerce, particularly during what is referred to as the Springs Era, roughly 1868–1918. This was, according to the authors of Spring City’s Past, “by far the most fascinating period of Waukesha’s history.” All history since then they label the Post-Springs Industrial Era.
One solid reminder of the Springs Era is the octagonal concrete structure housing Silurian Spring. In 1874, during a period when springs proliferated throughout the city and Waukesha was touted as “the Saratoga of the West,” the Prairieville postmaster found a naturally flowing spring on his property and built a park around it. Spacious, sprawling, and well landscaped, the park had a bathhouse, a pond, a roller coaster, a bandstand, and a bottling plant, and the Casino Theater offered plays in the summer in a building behind the spring.
Today, it’s hard to imagine where all the buildings and gardens and pond might have been. The park, now Waukesha Springs Park, is small, mostly lawn, with a playground, a baseball backstop, and a few picnic tables. Houses line the park on two sides, as well as the parking lots for the YMCA and the post office, and railroad tracks run up the west side, eventually passing Frame Park and paralleling the Fox River north. The splendid pavilion that once stood here is now gone, though it’s been replicated on a smaller scale in the center of the city, overlooking the river and surrounded by a huge parking lot and a bank, where it serves as an attractive but anomalous artifact.
During the Springs Era, according to Marlin Johnson, “Waukesha boasted twenty-two hostelries, five hotels and sixteen springhouses. . . . Three railroads served the city with twenty-five daily trains coming from Chicago alone.” One extravagant hotel, the Fountain Spring House, “could hold 800 guests in 475 fully carpeted rooms and seat 500 people at tables at one time. A full orchestra, bowling alley, a stable, and separate billiard rooms for men and women provided entertainment.” Other accounts refer not only to the glories of Bethesda Spring Park, where the river had been deepened and widened for pleasure boating, but also to the boats that would take tourists upriver a little north of the dam—the river deepened and widened there as well—to visit the park, springhouse pavilion, and entertainment at White Rock Spring. In the period 1868–1918, most of the spring water that made Wisconsin first in production “of mineral waters sold as table water, medicinal water or carbonated drinks (ginger ale)” came from Waukesha. At one point more than twenty local breweries also used spring water.
Of the sixty-five springs that once operated in Waukesha, thirteen are still active—that is, they are not defunct, although they are also not in use. Several are on private property and most have been sealed or enclosed, like Silurian Spring and Bethesda Spring. Minniska Spring is still open on a tiny plot between huge housing units in a sprawling subdivision. Most accessible is the exposed and unimpressive Hobo Spring in Frame Park, which gives no indication that a lucrative and popular tourist destination might have developed out of mineral water springs.
The springs initially lured visitors thanks to claims of their miraculous curative powers. Colonel Richard Dunbar named his spring site Bethesda in reference to a healing pool in the Gospel of John. “I drank of the modern Bethesda,” Dunbar declared; “I was healed of an incurable disease, one that baffled the skill of the most scientific men, here and abroad.” White Rock Spring’s early proprietor, Hiram Colver, advertised that he “was a hopeless invalid for three years; and, by the use of Waukesha Mineral Waters, an enlarged and hardened liver was brought to its natural size, and enabled to perform its healthful functions.” Even after the Springs Era, as a tourist industry ended, some of the bottling plants continued to market and ship Waukesha mineral water across the country.
The irony that underlies all this is that, one hundred years after the end of the Springs Era, the city of Waukesha has depleted its readily available water supply to such a degree that ever deeper wells have been drilled into less healthful, radium-laced waters. Residential and commercial development reduced the opportunity for natural springs to replenish themselves, the proliferation of private wells competed for groundwater, and contamination flowed in from industrial and agricultural runoff. The present water supply comes mainly from wells drilled two thousand feet deep into a sandstone aquifer where water levels have dropped more than five hundred feet in the past century. For the time Sue and I have lived here, the city has been trying to strike up deals to pipe in water from Lake Michigan. In the Post Pure Spring Water Depletion Era that defines the contemporary period, relatively few people seem to be looking back at a golden age of healthful water and wondering whether we might learn something from our profligacy then, something that might benefit us in the future. The Waukesha Water Facility, though it’s been pumping contaminated water for eighty years, has fought the Environmental Protection Agency in court to keep using wells with ever-higher radium levels. It lost but still will use contaminated water until 2018.
While it lasted, the prosperity of the Springs Era not only brought changes in the river but also inspired future changes. In 1891, an editorial in the Waukesha Freeman, apparently reacting to the dredging and widening of the channel through Bethesda Springs Park, called for “dredging and ornamenting the upper part of the stream, a thing that is so commendable and would contribute so much to the prosperity of the town.” The editorial argued that, with railroads passing close to the river, “annually thousands of travelers would be impressed with the added attractiveness” and vacationers might enjoy a “magnificent drive that might be formed along the shore, and facilities for boating.” Thirty-five years later the banker Andrew J. Frame donated fifty thousand dollars to purchase land along both sides of the river above the dam and to dredge the channel, and Frame Park was created. In 1974 a Downtown Development Task Force recommended riverfront development through creation of a bike path, a pedestrian path, foot bridges, water jets in the river, and an outdoor theater, but it wasn’t until 1990 that any concerted effort to achieve these things was set in motion—almost a hundred years after the idea was first raised. In a 1998 promotional publication, The Fox River Corridor Plan, Waukesha, Wisconsin, the introduction blandly mentions that, after the “famous ‘Spring Era’” “the river banks were the home of foundries, machine shops, breweries, and other industries which prospered in Waukesha”; it doesn’t mention the pollution that all those industries and businesses poured into the river, but it does see the city’s role as tied to “regional efforts to clean up the watershed and provide a recreational corridor for the entire region.”
The self-congratulatory note that runs through a document like this plan or the articles in the local newspaper that celebrate the success of the plan tend not to discuss the ways in which development still threatens the health of the river. Pebble Creek, one of its tributaries, is likely to fall victim to a plan for a multilane traffic bypass connecting the i
nterstate highway to the north with the Les Paul Parkway that runs past my neighborhood; lands for residential or commercial sale encroach on the borders of the Fox River wetlands; the shopping plaza near the Fox River Sanctuary has just doubled in size.
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Unlike August Derleth, who often passed through Sauk City to get to his river, I have easy access to mine, visible to me whenever I turn the corner of my row of buildings. My river, however, has to pass through Waukesha to get to me, and what it passes through is not only the existing city but also the city’s history. I knew about the bike route along the river between our neighborhood and Frame Park, in the center of the city; but, after steeping myself in history through my reading, I needed a slower, more attentive approach to the river if I hoped to know it as it is now. I took a few bright, brisk October afternoons to walk as much of it as I could.
To its credit the City of Waukesha maintains more than a thousand acres of public parks. Granted, much of this parkland serves multiple purposes, combining neighborhood recreation with historic or environmental preservation, but the local parks department sets aside almost half of its acreage for “significant natural resources, remnant landscapes, open spaces, and visual aesthetic/buffering.” Walking from Frame Park to the county park behind me, I passed through parks with all those purposes.
If I want to connect to the origin of Prairieville-Waukesha, I have to walk the loop around Frame Park. Two parallel pathways now circle the park on either side of the river, one for walkers, one for bikers, merging only at the north and south boundaries of the park where bridges take street and sidewalk traffic across the Fox. We usually walk north up the east side, cross over and return south on the west side, and I like to stop midway both in the hike and on the north bridge, between concrete statues of foxes, to gaze back at the river flowing through the middle of Frame Park. I have once or twice dashed across the street to see where the Fox River comes from. The riverbanks north of the bridge are thickly wooded up to the bend where the river arches out of sight. From here north, the Fox is hemmed in by highway to the west and railroad tracks to the east, with one long stretch beyond highway and railroad scoured by quarrying operations that have dug deeply into the Niagara dolomite that underlies this part of the county. Eventually the woods thicken again and the river meanders through them. I’ve squinted into the distance, wondering how far upriver a man in a canoe might travel, well aware there would be no walking in that direction.
The west side of Frame Park is the narrower side, the footpath running close to the river, the bike path a little further inland. A long stretch of trees camouflages the chain-link fence that closes the park off from the businesses lining St. Paul Avenue. Sometimes it’s hard to ignore the proximity of industry just behind the trees; I try to concentrate on what might be along the river: a flotilla of geese heading upstream, a squadron of gulls sailing in for a landing, a cluster of mallards asleep on the shore, a large willow whose twin I passed at the same point on the opposite bank. Near the end of the walk, close to a large state office building in a quiet plaza, a bronze map of the city is imbedded in the stone underfoot. My neighborhood is too recent to appear on it, but I often look for its absence as we go by.
The east side of the park is more sprawling, more inviting. It offers a well-maintained baseball field, a grassy amphitheater, a floral garden, a picnic shelter, and a large playground. At some distance from the river, off to one side near a parking area and within earshot of the freight trains that rumble past across the road, is Hobo Spring, a nearly dry stone circle indentation in the lawn at the bottom of a slight slope. The Rotary Club Building, a low brick edifice, sits midway along the bank, and in summer a small building in front of it offers snacks and rents boats, bikes, and pedal-powered surreys that often crowd the bike path. Two docks extend off the riverbank, seasonally lined with rental boats, some shaped like a flamingo or a swan or a dragon, others more traditional paddleboats, canoes, and kayaks. The river is wide throughout Frame Park and the current doesn’t challenge novice boaters. Powerboats only appear on some summer evenings when a ramp anchored midriver is the center of a lively water-skiing show and people on blankets and lawn chairs line the riverbank to watch.
Near the south end two midriver fountains spray forcefully into the air. The park narrows here, hemmed in by multistory apartments, parking lots, and a recreation center. The river pours over the dam where the mill once stood, a broad, steady waterfall into a pool that spreads out from its base. Semicircular stone steps lead to the water’s edge, and off to the side, out of the main channel of the river, the statue of a dragonfly on a water lily rises from the pool. I check the statue each time I’m here, measuring the water level by the dryness or wetness of the dragonfly; in high water I’ve seen it nearly submerged. In good weather fishermen often sit on the steps and idlers lounge on benches nearby.
Frame Park ends at the Barstow Street Bridge, where the river narrows and becomes swifter and shallower. The riverbed is rocky and lower than it was above the dam. Two levels of walks run on either side of it. The street-level walks are high above the river, passing through the Riverfront Plaza alley behind Main Street businesses on one side and a vast parking area with large, defunct antique shops on the other. Pedestrian bridges cross from one side to the other, convenient for the farmers’ market on Saturday mornings. The lower walks, closer to the river and sometimes submerged in high water, have plenty of places to sit, where people often snack and lunch and chat on cell phones. At one point on the north bank are statues of a mother bear and two cubs that children often clamber upon. Near the Broadway Bridge, the lower walks end and force walkers up to street level, on one side near an elaborate replica of the open-air Silurian Springhouse pavilion. A tall commemorative clock tower stands across the bridge.
Beyond the tower, the river runs barely visible below high concrete walls and behind parking lots on either side; it continues under the four-lane Wisconsin Avenue Bridge, out of Historic Downtown Waukesha. From Moreland Boulevard to Broadway, a mile-long stretch, the riverbanks are often bustling, an amiable retreat from downtown; from Broadway to Wisconsin Avenue the river runs largely unheralded and almost invisible. Once it leaves the commercial district, its presence becomes less marked, less explicit, less a part of the community.
Just past the Wisconsin Avenue Bridge the river’s eastern bank is closed off by a concrete wall below an antiques building and a residential parking lot and then becomes briefly accessible only to owners of some large backyards. On the western bank, Grede Park is open to the water’s edge, but the combined pedestrian-bike path winds through a wide strip of green lawn and sporadic trees on the far side of a block-long street that provides passage through the park to a sizable cluster of apartments. The park is small, little more than three acres, with only a couple of picnic tables; it ends where the apartment complex begins. The day I walked the narrow strip of lawn close to the riverbank, the only other person I saw was a woman at an unshaded table, eating her lunch and reading, comfortably sleeveless on a sunny and warm afternoon. The river widens again here, and in the shallows near the opposite bank several ducks appeared to be miraculously standing right on top of the water.
The path turns at the end of Grede Park to cross the street and climb onto a metal footbridge leading into Bethesda Park. Beyond Grede Park the riverbank is lined with trees and bushes and, even as they block the view of the apartments from Bethesda Park, they must block the view of the river from the balconies attached to every apartment. I followed Riverwalk Drive to its end at North Prairie Avenue, where the shrubbery thickens and the river turns south. A small hawk burst out of the bushes, crossed in front of me, and sailed into a thick low spruce nearby, prompting small birds to dart out of the spruce—unexpected confirmation of the natural world going about its business in the middle of the city.
Here the land rises to meet a railroad bed, where the river passes below a trestle, turns southwest again, and flows under the Prairie Avenue Bridge in
to the Fox River Sanctuary. That afternoon I looped back across the river on the railroad trestle. Below me on the riverbank, two teenage boys talked as they shared a large bag of tortilla chips. They ignored me when I slid carefully down the stony slope into Bethesda Park. It’s a broad, open space, nearly two-thirds the size of Frame Park but quieter. A woman in a T-shirt and shorts did paperwork at a picnic table close to the river; further on, two men sat in camp chairs near propped fishing poles. Trees scattered across the lawn were mostly bare and stark but tall and some seemed very old. A covered picnic area and a playground stand near the street. Nearby is a red octagonal concrete block structure with no windows, securing Bethesda Spring, the one that started Waukesha’s Springs Era.
In 1868, while visiting in Waukesha, Richard Dunbar drank from this spring and rested under a nearby oak. He suffered from diabetes and by his own account had expected to die soon, but the spring water had a restorative effect. He wrote that, after drinking six tumblerfuls, he “immediately sought rest under the shade of a wide-spreading oak which then stood and now stands overlooking the spring, like a guardian angel watching it.” He developed Bethesda Springs, with advertising featuring an angel hovering over the spring, which he claimed offered a miraculous cure “for all kidney diseases, Bright’s disease, diabetes, torpid liver, dyspepsia,” and so on. In time the park had a magnificent pavilion, a pond, a formal garden, a bathhouse with separate wings for men and women, and a widened and deepened riverbed for boating.
The tree that Dunbar rested under was celebrated for more than a century as the Dunbar Oak, and it stood long after the Springs Era ended and all the development in the park was gone. When a 1994 storm blew the tree over, it was found to be three hundred years old. Past the concrete housing for the spring, a historical marker near a small oak tree identifies it as a clone of the Dunbar Oak. Beyond the oak and the sealed springhouse are only restrooms and a bike rack and the open lawn of the park, nothing else to suggest this was once a bustling and popular place. As at Waukesha Springs Park, only the present is here.
