Profile of La Crosse, "Wisconsin Communities

[organ music]

[organ music]

STANLEY: In the heart of the coulee region where three rivers meet, nestles a town.

Surrounding it, strong in their grandeur protectingly the hills look down.

Extending from the valley far back into the hills like probing fingers,

Are the peaceful coulees with their gently sloping land, where night lingers.

Between the blue hazed bluffs, the Mississippi flows on to the sea.

Oh, it is the loveliest place on this great earth for me to be.

[organ music]

ANNOUNCER: The Wisconsin College of the Air Presents a profile of La Crosse, the final program of the recorded series entitled "Wisconsin Profiles." Here's your narrator, Ray Stanley.

STANLEY: In the profile of La Crosse, we're using again a combination of two techniques. We're going first into history to meet some early residents, to find out what they did for the community. In the second half of the program, we'll meet a few persons from the La Crosse of today. The embryo of a community, is a diverse thing: it comes from many places. Part of it is ages old, ages devoid of the stark, sudden changes wrought by man. In this category lie the coulees, the rivers, and the bluffs. The bluffs now seem to stand immovable, regimenting the rivers and refusing to admit that they were carved out by the waters, which move with modest pliability, carrying with them disintegrated landscapes. These are 00:02:00the factors which give a community its natural beauty. These are the factors you can see, and feel, from the top of Grandad's Bluff, the magnificent stone sentinel which dominates everything in La Crosse. These are the factors which moved Elizabeth Wiley to write "The Coulee Region," the poem which opened our program. But, these were also the factors which gave La Crosse its economic potential, the magnet which attracts men.

[organ music]

SAILOR: Uh, let's see, one horse, one cow already aboard. Eh, ye ever been up there before? Mr.--

LEVY: Levy, John Levy. For several months, yes. Long enough to convince me it isn't as desolate a place as you seem to think.

SAILOR: Course, I only go by what I see from the river. That ain't much. Eh, let's see, some hogs, one, two, how many? Four?

LEVY: Five.

SAILOR: Five. Eh, company making us write stuff down nowadays. Eh, I can only see about, oh, three shacks from the river, only the tops, I [unintelligible]. One crate o' chickens. Hey, whatcha got tied to the crate, a coon?

LEVY: That's right, a coon.

SAILOR: Well, it ain't none of my business but, uh, he's gonna eat them chickens. Four trunks, couple o' sacks already aboard. How many people ye got?

LEVY: Only my wife and son, besides myself.

SAILOR: Hmmm, like I was sayin', ye can't see much from the river 'cept the people. I know they ain't more than oh, nine men and four women up there that can walk. They all come down every time we dock. That's a laugh. They ain't got no dock, what ye can call a dock. It ain't gonna be easy unloadin' this stuff. None o' my business, mister, but what are ye plannin' to do up there?

LEVY: Oh, quite a number of things. For one, I think I may build a dock.

SAILOR: Build a dock? Well, now you' re talkin'. They ain't nothin' they need more. Ye can't pull up to a rickety old pier with the boats they're buildin' nowadays. Eh, let's see, anything ye takin' along that ye ain't mentioned yet?

LEVY: That's all, except for two cats and a dog. That completes our family.

SAILOR: Alright mister. Ye can get aboard now, if ye feel like it. We'll be loaded and ready to head up inside half an hour.

[organ music]

STANLEY: These men were pioneers on the river. One remained anonymous because, 00:06:00from his vantage point on the steamboat, La Crosse was just another stop. The other is included for what he did to make the river more useful to La Crosse. It was 1845 when John Levy left Prairie du Chien, to move with his family and his menagerie to a new home. History records nothing about their trip, except to indicate what they brought with them, plus the fact that several of the chickens were eaten by the coon. John Levy was a product of European civilization. He was born in London and educated in Switzerland. He spoke five languages. In America, he left civilization behind and started to build a new one. His first project at La Crosse was a frame house. The first frame house between Prairie du Chien and Red Wing, Minnesota. And soon after that came a project requiring 50,000 bunches of willow sprouts.

DEININGER: Ja, ja, that's right. 50,000, anyway, 50,000. Remember I have built 00:07:00this many times before on the Rhine. I know these things. You have mark out one hundred and thirty-six long, a hundred and sixty deep, and twelve high. For this, we need anyway 50,000. And they must be fat ones, like this. Fat! Anyway, a hundred sticks in it.

LEVY: Well, I have no doubt we can find enough willows around here to make all the bundles you want, but--you will excuse me if I am still a bit skeptical, I've never been exposed to anything like this before. How do you propose to fasten them together?

DEININGER: Ah, you have not noted that the willow branch falls to the ground and sticks to a place where there is moisture, it takes root and grows. So it will be with your dock. The grains of sand, the water will carry them into the nooks and the crannies, and the willow shoots grow and cling themselves together.

LEVY: You mean the dock will eventually be all in one piece?

DEININGER: Ja, ja, all in one with the ground that La Crosse is itself built on.

[organ music]

STANLEY: Valentine Deininger brought to La Crosse a dock building technique that people on the Rhine river had been using for centuries. In the enterprising John Levy, he found a customer for his technique. And the result was La Crosse's first steamboat dock. Mr. Levy had great faith in the future of the river as a transportation medium. He built the town's first frame hotel to accommodate river traffic. And near his willow dock he built the first steamboat warehouse. Most of these developments took place in the middle fifties before the railroads came, when steamboating was near its economic zenith. But steamboats prospered only because communities were growing the river banks. They 00:09:00stopped at La Crosse only because people there were buying things and selling. But why did the people settle there in the first place? Well, a few of the very first came to trade with the Indians, who for countless years had been gathering here to play a game the French named "lacrosse". A few came to farm on a small scale, for here was a rare stretch of prairie, in a locale where tall bluffs crowd the river closely. Others, like John Levy, came for no reason obvious now; perhaps visions of future prosperity. As it did in most communities in the northern half of Wisconsin, prosperity came to La Crosse with the saw mills. Most of the equipment unloaded on John Levy's willow dock was consigned to saw mills. The Black River joins the Mississippi at La Crosse, and along the Black River were stands of beautiful white pine. The lumber didn't last long, but it 00:10:00served to settle the community, and it speeded up the development of transportation facilities. The first railroad from Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul, reached La Crosse in 1858, giving the community its first overland contact with large industrial centers. The population of the town at that time was only about one thousand. And it was easy to get the tracks close to the center of town, without crowding too many citizens. Twenty-six years later, when the second railroad came to town, the population had increased by some fourteen thousand. And the Burlington Road needed a good deal more than engineering strategy to lay tracks through the middle of town.

[knocking]

LOSEY: Come in, come in.

MALONEY: General Maloney sir, reporting for duty.

LOSEY: What?

MALONEY: You're a Mr. Joseph Losey, aren't you?

LOSEY: Yes?

MALONEY: Well, I got a hundred men sir, waiting for their orders.

LOSEY: [laughs] I'm sorry, I'm a bit slow tonight. Did they tell you to expect a 00:11:00fight down here?

MALONEY: Not exactly, but you never can tell. It just seemed a little like a military operation, sneakin' the men in here like this, and I can't see no reason for that many men just to lay tracks, especially when you got two full crews just outside of town already.

LOSEY: There's plenty of track to keep 'em busy without time off for a fight.

MALONEY: Maybe so. How do we stand with the folks on Second Street?

LOSEY: On the east side, fine. On the west we haven't gained an inch.

MALONEY: Edwards?

LOSEY: Edwards.

MALONEY: So we stay in the east?

LOSEY: Strictly.

MALONEY: All the stuff ready?

LOSEY: It's waiting for you. North crew has ties and South has rails, and they should have extra tools if you need 'em.

MALONEY: Let's see. How about straw bosses?

LOSEY: Job's all yours. You're the boss.

MALONEY: Do they know it?

LOSEY: They're ready for you. You know, of course, that you're starting tomorrow?

MALONEY: That's what I understood. No objections.

LOSEY: Good. See you in the morning. And good luck, just in case.

[organ music]

MALONEY: OK boys, let's get going here. Yeah, that's the stuff.

[sounds of construction gang, orders given, call for materials]

LOSEY: Good morning Frank.

POWELL: Don't good morning Frank me, you cheap shyster. You're cuttin' this town in half. Now tell these outlaws to stop before I--

LOSEY: I'm sorry mayor, I'm sorry, we're perfectly within our rights.

POWELL: Oh, rights!

LOSEY: Oh, remember now, you were quite eager to have the Burlington come here.

POWELL: Do you call that rights to take over? Did anybody say he was eager for you to take over practically the main street of the city? I know a half dozen 00:13:00men here, property owners on this very street, who have not given permission for you to go through here yet.

LOSEY: And they're all on the west side of the street. Did you notice the tracks don't touch the west side, you notice that?

POWELL: Well, what of it?

LOSEY: Well, the law says the road doesn't have to pay damages to owners on the far side. And everyone, everyone on the near side here has agreed, we're perfectly in the right, and that's the law.

POWELL: I can use a little law myself, Losey. Did you ever hear of an injunction?

LOSEY: I have.

POWELL: Alright then--

LOSEY: I have also heard that you can't get an injunction on Sunday, and this happens to be Sunday. Have you heard that?

POWELL: Yes, and I've heard that Sunday is always followed by Monday, and on Monday I'll be here with an injunction as solid as Grandad's Bluff.

LOSEY: It won't do you any good because the tracks will be finished, and if you come down on Monday you'll...

[angry voices fade into organ music]

STANLEY: Post script. The road was complete through town before Sunday was ended, so there was no injunction. There was no bloodshed either, or so much as 00:14:00a fist fight, even between J. W. Losey, lawyer and railroad expert, and Mayor D. Frank Powell of La Crosse. Looking back on the incident from a distance of sixty-six years, it's difficult to find fault with either Powell or Losey. The real fault, perhaps, was in the law which made it unnecessary for a railroad to pay damages on both sides of the street. The Burlington probably never would have tried to go through Second Street, if it had been required to deal with property owners on both sides. As a direct result of this incident, the law was changed by the next legislature. The man instrumental in getting it changed was B. E. Edwards, one of the property owners on the west side of Second Street. A more positive result was a third railroad for La Crosse. When the Burlington came to town, the Northwestern decided to come also, and La Crosse found itself with incredibly good transportation for a town of less than twenty thousand. 00:15:00River traffic was fading fast in 1884 when the Burlington came to La Crosse. Trains did in a few days what took a steamboat weeks. Trade that had once made John Levy prosperous moved inland to the railroad peoples. Steamboat warehouses emptied, and docks decayed. Riverfront properties spent depreciative summers growing miscellaneous weeds. But railroads did not alone eliminate the steamboat. The river itself assumed a new and undependable behavior. In the early days of river traffic, northern watersheds possessed an army of trees which delayed the precipitation to be rationed out to the river in quiet springs during seasons of dryness. After lumbermen removed the trees, rains fell uninhibited and went wastefully down the river on a temperamental binge. Engineers eventually made the river suitable for traffic again, and a 00:16:00little later we'll talk about what the river means to La Crosse now.

[organ music]

STANLEY: This is the turning point in our program. We've been talking about people from La Crosse history. Now we start talking with and about people living there today. However, we'll continue on the general topic of transportation, because this seems to be the most important aspect of La Crosse. Transportation employs only a little more than 10% of the working people in town. That's an unusually high percentage for any town. But 90% are still unaccounted for. How do they make their living? Well, most of them work in manufacturing. They make farm machinery, auto parts, rubber goods, air conditioning equipment and dozens of other products. But La Crosse lacks many of industry's basic needs. Water 00:17:00power and coal are not near at hand. Neither is steel and other raw materials; neither are the markets. The only thing that can compensate for such deficiencies is transportation, and therein lies the strength of La Crosse. When the lumber industry collapsed near the turn of the century, La Crosse already had three railroads vying for trade. Why did they happen to be there? Let's ask a railroad man.

CONWAY: I think the principle reason for that is our location between large centers like Chicago and the Twin Cities, and en route to the Pacific coast, the traffic to the Pacific Northwest must necessarily go through this area because of the natural water level route we have through here along the Mississippi.

STANLEY: That was James Conway, a ticket agent for the Burlington. We talked with him in the Burlington's beautiful new depot at the foot of Grandad's Bluff. 00:18:00He mentioned a few of the materials used to build it.

CONWAY: The sidewalls are Travertine marble. The Montana Travertine are mined there along our right-of-way out in Montana, and the floors, terrazza, and the fireplace at the south end of the station, the stone in there is Abilene stone. And the outside wall of the station is lannon stone.

STANLEY: A ticket agent can seldom carry on a conversation with one person for ten consecutive minutes. There's always a telephone call to divert his attention. Here's Mr. Conway's half of a telephone conversation, as overheard by the microphone.

CONWAY: Burlington. We have nothing that that arrives that early, unless you ought to go the night before. Earliest train leaves La Crosse 4:50 in the morning and arrives in Minneapolis at 9:25. And if you were to go the night 00:19:00before, the evening's set for 8:07 getting in at 10:45.

STANLEY: A moment ago, we mentioned that a little more than 10% of the working people in La Crosse are employed in transportation. Chiefly responsible for this high percentage is the Milwaukee, La Crosse's first railroad, and the Burlington, both of which maintain repair centers here. Railroad maintenance, like all other types of mechanical work, has been extensively complicated during the past few decades. A corps of electricians and diesel engineers have been added to the terminal crews to service the ever-increasing diesel-electric power units. A visit to a modern terminal brings you to a fuller realization of the upsurge in use of the diesel-electrics. A realization that may invoke a little twinge of sadness, if you've been thrilled by the music of the steam locomotive, and if you resent the raucous arrogance of the diesel horn.

[sound of diesel horn and other noise in the terminal]

LOUDSPEAKER: Prairie du Chien, Dubuque, Savannah, Oregon, Aurora, and 00:20:00Chicago. Chicago passengers will board the train directly in front of the ticket office windows; all other passengers one car south.

[organ music imitating train]

STANLEY: The transportation business is probably gifted with a larger number of distinctive sounds than any other field of endeavor in our mechanical civilization. Here's one that's not as unmistakable as a train, but one hearing should narrow your choices down to only two.

[truck engine accelerating]

STANLEY: It would take an extremely mobile imagination to get anything but a truck or a bus out of that. In this case it's a truck, operated by one of the 00:21:00nation's largest trucking companies, the Gateway Transfer Company with headquarters in La Crosse. Here's Henry W. Setzer, Assistant Secretary and Treasurer of the company.

SETZER: I might give you some idea of the extent of the Company's operations today. We go through, we have routes extending through and into five states. Those are Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa and Missouri. We have about seventeen terminals. We operate just about or close to six hundred units of equipment. That you might contrast again with what M. P. Murphy started with in 1896. It was said by a writer some years ago that Mike Murphy had four mules, two horse blankets and Earl Morgan when he started. Today that's eight hundred or more employees.

STANLEY: Here's what that means in terms of dollars.

SETZER: At the present time, the Company is operating at the rate of about 00:22:00$6,300,000 sales per year. That's an estimate for the year 1950.

STANLEY: The Company, as M. P. Murphy first conceived it, was purely a local cartage company, powered by four horses and two mules. In 1927 the Company began what truck men call "over the road" operation. And now you can seldom spend a half hour on the highway without seeing a Gateway truck.

[highway noise]

[organ music]

[airplane engine]

STANLEY: The airplane has a distinctive sound too, but not distinctive enough for us. We failed to get our airlines straight and suffered a little embarrassment. Listen closely to this conversation with airlines pilot Herman Lurdow and you'll see what we mean.

STANLEY: And what's your position with United? Or with Northwest?

MURDOW: Northwest. Captain. Flying captain.

STANLEY: How long have you been flying with Northwest?

MURDOW: I've been flying for Northwest, be nine years this fall. In fact it's over nine years now. I've been in the business twenty-three years.

STANLEY: You been flying transports?

MURDOW: Yeah. Just happened to go through my 13,000th hour a week ago.

STANLEY: For a few words about the facilities of La Crosse airport, we talked with Frank Muth, airport manager.

MUTH: It is built on an island, which is formed by the Mississippi and Black Rivers, approximately five miles north of the business district in La Crosse. We 00:24:00have three runways, each 5,300 feet long and 150 feet wide, paved with asphalt, and each is lighted with contact and range lights. There are 50 foot taxi strips parallel to the runways, which are built to converge all traffic into the administration area.

STANLEY: During the few minutes that Herman Lurdow's plane stood on the ramp, we noticed the loading of many bundles and boxes, too bulky to be passengers' baggage. Later Frank Muth told us about freight shipments.

MUTH: La Crosse industries have used air service, especially freight and express, to the extent that we have built up an enviable record of cargo moved by air for a city of this size.

[airplane taking off]

[organ music]

STANLEY: River transportation was the first type we mentioned on this program. It's also the last, because that's exactly where it lies chronologically. It tapered down to almost nothing during the early 1900's, and now it's coming back. Here are a few of the men using river transportation in La Crosse. First, R. H. Pierce, purchasing agent of an air conditioning and heating equipment plant, the Trane Company.

PIERCE: I think that you'll find that river traffic at the turn of the century did wane, but I also think that you'll find it has picked up in the last few years. I've seen a tremendous amount of merchandise traffic go up to be delivered to Minneapolis or the Twin Cities. There's been a lot of coal hauled 00:26:00to Winona long before we ever had a terminal here.

STANLEY: And here's Ed Yerley, fuel distributor.

YERLEY: Along in '36 they completed most of the new dams on the river, that brought about a nine foot channel. And it was shortly after that that the first oil barge was moved up to Minneapolis, which they didn't think could be done. With the new channel, which allowed larger boats and larger barges, the movement of coal began on a small scale.

STANLEY: La Crosse's first bargeload of coal went to Ed Yerley in 1945. And since then, both oil and coal have been coming in steadily increasing quantities. Here's one of the main advantages of barge transportation from Ed Yerley's standpoint.

YERLEY: River transportation is fundamentally I'd say a bulk commodity type of transportation. In being able to get large quantities of, say coal, into La 00:27:00Crosse, we protect ourselves against the weakness of rail transportation in the middle of winter, when you get frozen cars, and rail movement is slowed down because of snow and ice, which you've all seen happen. Having large quantities of coal moved in the summertime, we've got a reserve supply that protects us against conditions in the wintertime.

STANLEY: That would seem like heavy competition for the railroads, but Mr. Yerley indicates a compensating factor.

YERLEY: A lot of petroleum moves out of La Crosse on a reshipment basis, both by tank car and by transport. In our terminal across the way, we ship out a lot of it by rail, and we ship out a lot of it by transport; in fact, it all has to go out by some other means of transportation but river. We get it in by the river, but from that point on it has to move by railroad or transport.

STANLEY: Although a preponderance of river cargo thus far has been oil and coal, the future holds promise of more diversification. The trend may have started 00:28:00last fall, when the Trane Company got its first shipment of steel. Purchasing agent R. H. Pierce explains why his company finds barge transportation advantageous.

PIERCE: Production in our normal steel market, in Chicago, is only sufficient to take care of the needs of about 50% of that which is required in this district. It is necessary, therefore, for us to go to another market in order to supply these needs. The Pittsburgh district, on the other hand, only requires about 60% of their production. Due to river traffic, we are unable to supply our needs by purchasing requirements from the Pittsburgh district, transporting by barge, and allowing us to remain competitive with steel purchased from the Chicago market.

STANLEY: Although river transportation is coming back, the steamboat isn't, and the gaudy gaiety of those craft will never be recaptured. There's little romanticism in the push boats that churn the Mississippi now. They look like 00:29:00belligerent iron tails wagging with calm deliberation; lifeless, floating dogs. But that's the perspective one gets looking from the bank into the stream. Reverse the position, and watch the shoreline. After a while it will matter little whether you're traveling on a showboat or a rowboat. Listen as Ed Yerley describes one of his favorite vacations.

YERLEY: Well, we had a boat of oil come into the terminal, and I knew the fellow who owned the towing company, so the three of us decided we'd take a little jaunt down the river on the boat and look things over. To me it's one of the most fascinating trips in the world. You sit there, you have nothing to do because you can't work, and you watch the scenery go by. But I was never so relaxed in my life as just sitting there in the sun and enjoying the scenery, and I didn't have a care in the world, business was a million miles 00:30:00away. If you ever want to relax, it's about the nicest way to do it. Then of course, every twenty miles, we went through a set of locks and there's always some people around who are watching you go through. You're right there where the thing's happening, so I'd like to do it every summer.

[organ music]

STANLEY: Even if you've never seen the Mississippi, much less travelled down its length, you may find something in Ed Yerley's recollection that swells in you the nostalgia of a reborn memory. If so, set that memory up in plain sight and say to it aloud, "Mark Twain, here's a man you'd like to meet." Perhaps it seems that the river has consumed a disproportionate amount of this program, but our purpose has been not to show the various facets of the community in their correct proportions, but to emphasize the things which make La Crosse different from other Wisconsin Communities. That same purpose made the profile of La 00:31:00Crosse a feature story about transportation. In no community we've studied has transportation played a more important role than in La Crosse. The town's economy depended first on lumber, and transportation rose to serve it, first the river and later the railroads. But railroads did not recede with the pine forests, as they did in so many other communities. La Crosse happened to be in a direct line between the Twin Cities and Chicago, so the trains continued to run, and their convenience attracted other industries. In recognition of La Crosse's position on one of the nation's greatest travel routes, the people there have chosen to call their city the Gateway to the Northwest.

[organ music]

ANNOUNCER: That concludes the Profile of La Crosse, Production by Carl Schmidt 00:32:00and script by Les Nelson. Ray Stanley was the narrator. Music by Don Vegly, sound effects by Myron Curry and technical assistance by Ben Rosse. This has been the final program in a series entitled--