Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
LINK-UP: THE PORTAGE CANAL
In the early 1800s, travel by water from Green Bay to the Mississippi River was still
impossible; goods were hauled by ox team along a rickety plank road. A canal was
proposed at
le portage,
the half-mile gap between the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers.
Machinations wereunderwayby1829.And,aswithotheropportunistic ventures
of the period, canal-waiters suffered through now-you-see-them canal companies,
joint-venture land grants, and general frontier avarice and ineptitude. Finally, in
1848, the state legislature got involved and, with federal help, rammed through
enough of the project's particulars to get a makeshift canal dug.
Yet by this point, the project was nearly out of money—perfect timing for a fin-
ancial scandal. The state, mired in debt and fearful of not completing the canal,
handed the project to a private investor, whose mysterious golden touch with feder-
al regulators and legislators aroused suspicions. Somehow, by 1851, the canal was
nearly finished, though most river traffic still couldn't get through until major—and
costly—riverside adjustments were made.
During Wisconsin's financial panic of 1857, the project once again ran out of
money. A canal was there, but still no river traffic. Another consortium of interests
wrested control of the project but couldn't finish the Herculean task on the Wis-
consin River side. Enter—again—the federal government, whoseengineers this time
frittered away three years and all of the project capital, while not one commercial
boat passed through the canal.
This comedy persisted until the late 1870s, when enough rough work was done
on the Wisconsin side to allow for large transport barges and ferries. Unfortunately,
and naturally, the railroad had already arrived. Large pleasure boats mostly used the
canal for 75 years, until the locks were filled in to create an earthen dam.
The name says it all. In June of 1673, intrepid Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette, along with
Louis Joliet, happened upon the half-mile gap between the Fox River and the Wisconsin
River, which empties into the Mississippi in southwestern Wisconsin. The Winnebago had
been well aware of the site for centuries, calling it Wa-U-Na, “Carry-on-Shoulder.” When
trappers and traders began filtering through the new territory,
le portage
became a crucial
