NATIVE AMERICANS
Native Americans migrated into the Dells area about 12,000 years ago, a few thousand year after the Dells were formed, and were the first human beings to see the Dells of the Wisconsin River.
The Wisconsin River and the Dells were home, at various times in its history, to the "mound builders", an ancient Native American culture, and other Native American cultures. The Dells area abounds in effigy mounds and Native American petroglyphs, traces of ancient Native America peoples and cultures.
In more modern times, the Mascouten, Miami, Kickapoo and Illinois nations lived in the area, and each had their own relationship with the Wisconsin River.
But the Native American history of the Dells area is dominated by the history of the Ho-Chunk, who arrived in the region from the lower Mississippi valley about twelve centuries ago.
The culture of the Ho-Chunk is closely tied to the Wisconsin River. The nation's origin stories are tied to the river, and the river's origin is reflected in Ho-Chunk oral tradition, as related by Chief Albert Yellow Thunder in the 1930's:
The people prayed to Earthmaker to give them better hunting grounds, so the Creator sent a Waterspirit to a lifeless land of snow and ice. The warmth of the Waterspirit melted the ice, and by dint of great effort he clawed and bit out channels for streams and lakes. When the melt collected, the Waterspirit churned up from his body all the game that anyone could want. He fired green quills from his skin, and they became trees that stood in their thousands from one horizon to the other. Thus was created the Wisconsin Dells, which is called Nîc-haki-sûtc-ra, "Where the Cliffs Strike Together." When he finished his great work, the green Waterspirit leapt into the bottomless depths of Devil's Lake (De Wákâtcâk). Even though the Hotcâgara were far distant, so great was the shock wave of the Waterspirit's final plunge, they were able to follow the sound to their new hunting grounds.
Others say that the Wisconsin River was created by a great serpent. In origin, he was a denizen of the dark forests that surround Big Lake. His powers made him universally feared. One day he set out for the sea. As he dragged his immense body along the ground, he rent the earth apart, creating a channel as wide and deep as his body. As he moved, water followed in his path, and as he thrashed about his tail, huge torrents of water fell in thunderous splashes to form the countless lakes that dot the landscape. The other great serpents that lived in this distant antiquity were no match for him, and fleeing before him, they too created channels through which the many lesser streams now flow. As he crashed off cliffs to the ground below, he created waterfalls and the deep pits into which they pour. Their great noise is an echo of the primordial crash that created them. Then he came to a wall of solid rock in which there was but a small crack. He pried his way through by a myriad of contortions, creating the meandering chasm that is now the Wisconsin Dells. Thus the name of the Dells is Neechahkecoonahorah, "Where the Rocks Strike Together." Finally, the great serpent reached the Mississippi and his goal.
Ho-Chunk oral history indicates that the nation used the area around Stand Rock for gatherings and ceremonies, and used other areas of the Dells, such as the Devil's Anvil, for such purposes as well.
Before the arrival of the French, the Ho-Chunk enjoyed abundant hunting, gathering, and raised-bed gardening, occupying land from the Red Banks near Lake Winnebago to the waters of the Mississippi and south along the Fox, Wisconsin, and Rock Rivers. In the 1630's, the Ho-Chunk began a period of trading with the French, which provided tools, guns, iron pots and pans and other European goods. This way of life continued for 150 years, until American settlers began reaching Wisconsin.
At that point, the Ho-Chunk were forcibly removed from Wisconsin, and lived in diaspora in South Dakota and Nebraska. Over time, a significant number of the Ho-Chink people returned to the Wisconsin River basin between Wisconsin Dells and Black River Falls, and, eventually the United States reversed its removal policies and the Ho-Chunk were allowed to live in Wisconsin.
The Ho-Chunk are a significant presence in the Dells area, operating a casino and community center south of Wisconsin Dells, living in communities throughout the area, cooperating with local governments on matters of mutual interest and helping to protect the Dells.
TRAPPERS, TRADERS AND MISSIONARIES
The first Europeans to see the Dells were almost certainly French.
French explorers Joliet and Marquette crossed the Fox River to Wisconsin River portage thirty miles to the south of the Dells in the 1670's, but did not travel upriver to the Dells.
During the long period of French domination of Wisconsin, trappers, traders and missionaries traveled the Wisconsin River. Most, integrated into Native American culture, left no written trace of their travels.
Two who did, Pierre Radisson and Medard Chouart, almost certainly traveled the Wisconsin River through the Dells en route to the Mississippi, but their description of the journey is fragmentary and inconclusive.
The British, who followed the French, and the earliest Americans, who followed the British, added nothing to the historical record, although it is likely that British and Americans, like the French, traveled through the Dells.
FORT WINNEBAGO
The first written record of the Dells dates to the Black Hawk War in 1831-1832. Following the disastrous battle of Bad Axe, Black Hawk fled northward into Ho-Chunk territory, and, according to official records, Black Hawk was captured "near the Dalles of the Wisconsin".
The construction of Fort Winnebago, near present-day Portage, Wisconsin, in 1828-1829, marked a turning point in the development of the the Dells area. The protection afforded by the fort spurred migration by German and Irish immigrants from the Milwaukee area into the upper Wisconsin River valley, and land patents for farmland in the Dells area were issued in the late 1830's and early 1840's. Few were interested in the Dells, however, because the farm economy did not use the river.
Henry Merrill, the sutler at Fort Winnebago, canoed the Wisconsin River north of the fort in 1840, and was the first to describe the Dells in any detail. A government survey party described the Dells in 1847, and Increase Latham completed a geological survey of the Dells in 1852, making a careful description of the sandstone cliff, pines and oak that characterize the Dells.
THE LUMBER TRADE
The search for Wisconsin's native white pine brought lumbermen to the Dells of the Wisconsin River during the 1830's. The Wisconsin River became a transportation route for lumber harvested in northern Wisconsin.
The first lumber raft transversed the Dells in 1832, and extensive lumber harvesting of the northern pine forests began in earnest in the 1940's. From then until the 1890's, lumber was rafted down river, and the Dells - particularly the Narrows and the Devil's Elbow - presented dangerous obstacles to the 2,000 to 3,000 rafts that made the annual journey in the 1850's and 1860's:
At [the Dells], the river makes a frightful descent in surging rapids through a crooked, rocky chasm only sixty feet in width and fully six miles in length, the water raging and foaming, with an unknown depth, and dashing from rock to rock with indescribable fury. Through this terrific gorge all lumber has to pass.
The lumber traffic brought the first permanent settlement to the river at the Dells. In 1841, Robert Allen built the Dell House, an inn for lumber rafters. The Dell House "bore a hard name" according to a local newspaper, and was associated with bad whisky, loose women, crooked gambling and other rough activities.
THE RISE OF TOURISM
The Dells of the Wisconsin River, difficult and dangerous to navigate much of the year, remained relatively unknown even after the Milwaukee and LaCrosse railroad extended its lines into the Dells area, crossing the Wisconsin River at Wisconsin Dells, a fledgling community founded in 1855 and then known as Kilbourn.
In 1865, H.H. Bennett, a young veteran wounded in the Civil War and unfit for manual labor, returned to the area and took up photography. Bennett was a photographer with great technical skill and artistic sense, and he began to systematically explore the Dells, recording the river and rock formations. During the last half of the century, Bennett's stereoscopic views of the Dells were distributed widely in the United States and Europe, drawing visitors from far and wide.
In the early days, Bennett and other guides took small parties into the Dells by rowboat. As the number of visitors increased, several steamboats - the Modocawando, the Dell Queen and the Champion - were brought to the Dells and fitted out for navigating the narrow, fast waters. By 1875, the Dells became a tourist destination, and over time, a fleet of steamboats began to ply the Dells on a regular schedule.
Over the next decade, walkways were built in Witches' Gulch and Coldwater Canyon, at Stand Rock, and along a number of other ravines radiating out from the river, making it possible for visitors to walk into areas of the Dells not visible from the river itself.
Bennett, the railroad and the river tour operators cooperated during the next two decades to aggressively promote the Dells as a tourist attraction. Visitors became plentiful, the number of boats touring the Dells grew, and with the visitors came hotels, and, eventually, souvenir shops. By the turn of the century, Wisconsin Dells had a dozen tourist hotels, and was an established tourist destination.
THE DAM
The rapids at Wisconsin Dells had always been the dividing line between the Upper and Lower Dells, and became the natural focus of attempts to harness the river for milling and manufacturing and later electrical power.
A low dam was built at the rapids in the 1850's, but was destroyed by lumber raftsmen in 1860, after litigation failed to remove the dam. A second dam was built on the site in 1866, with an opening in the center for rafts. But, during the mid-1870's, the dam's owners fell into bankruptcy and the dam was slowly destroyed, again by raftsmen.
The dam was reconstructed in 1883; it washed out in 1889. Businessmen interested in starting a woolen mill built yet another dam in 1895. However, two years later a fall flood swept away a large part of the dam, and with it went the last of local efforts to harness the river's power for commerce.
Undeterred, outside planners envisioned a larger, stronger dam for the city - a dam that would raise the water level of the upper Dells fifteen to twenty feet, and provide ample water power for electricity and industrial growth. Bennett and a handful of others fought the dam for environmental reasons, but to no avail.
Construction of the dam commenced in 1906 as a newspaper headline proclaimed, "A Great Commercial Center is Ours!" The dam was completed in 1909.
In marked contrast to earlier dams, the new dam held, despite continual problems that forced extensive repairs in 1935, and the dam and hydroelectric power plant stand today, providing "peaking power" to WP&L's power grid.
TOURISM AFTER THE DAM
The dam raised the water level of the upper Dells seventeen feet and changed the Dells. Cliffs like High Rock were no longer as high, and the Narrows were less canyon-like. The Boat Cave, Bass Cove, Diamond Grotto and Giant's Hand were submerged. Witches Gulch and Coldwater Canyon became more accessible, and Stand Rock could be reached without a long walk from the river. The Narrows was less often a boiling cauldron, and the Dells became more easily navigable.
Tourism in the Dells changed during this period, as well. Tourists began to come to the Dells by car, and the Dells area became more commercialized. Hotels and signs began to spring up along the river corridor in the Dells, and, a road, never built, was proposed along the river between High Rock and the Narrows.
New boat companies sprang up to accommodate the increasing number of visitors, and a competitive "war" arose between the older boat companies - the Olson Boat Company, the Dells Boat Company and the Riverview line - and a host of new, independent operators. By the mid-1930's, over a dozen operators ran boat tours in the upper and lower Dells, competing fiercely for business. The boat operators fought over dock space and over passengers. Hawkers for the boat lines accosted tourists on the streets, and met cars coming into the city to get first crack at ticket sales.
The city tried to control street hawkers through ordinance, but the hawkers so outnumbered the police that the ordinances had little effect. Eventually, the boat operators consolidated sales operations into a few locations, getting the hawkers off the streets.
In the wake of World War II, entrepenuers bought surplus DUWKs - amphibious landing craft used at Normandy and other beaches during the war - to provide tours in the lower Dells. The "Ducks" provided an "adventure" tour of the river - splashing in and out of the river - and quickly became popular with visitors. The Soma Boat Line added "speed boat" tours of the upper Dells to provide "adventure" tours in that part of the river.
CHANGING FOCUS
During the 1950's and 1960's, prosperity brought more visitors and a new focus to Dells area tourism.
Attractions unrelated to the Dells and the river - Enchanted Forest, Fort Dells, the Reptile Gardens, the Sea Lion Village, Storybook Gardens, the Wisconsin Deer Park, the Wonder Spot, among many others - sprang up along "the strip" between Wisconsin Dells and Lake Delton, drawing the focus of the area away from the river and reinventing Wisconsin Dells as a "Wisconsin's Family Playground".
During the same period, Broadway, the main street in the city of Wisconsin Dells, was transformed from a small town street with a mix of businesses to a "tourist strip" dominated by souvenir shops and tourist attractions.
In the early 1950's, Broadway was dominated by local businesses - two drug stores, several variety stores, a jewelry store, clothing and shoe stores, several groceries, a bakery, a barbershop, a cleaners, and so on. By 1970, almost all were gone from Broadway, replaced by candy stores, souvenir shops, T-shirt shops and a variety of attractions.
The focus changed again in the 1980's and 1990's as water parks came into favor with families. The original water parks - Family Land and Noah's Ark - were "outdoor" parks, but large, indoor water parks were developed beginning in the late 1990's.
By the turn of the century, Wisconsin Dells had reinvented itself yet again as "The Water Park Capital of the World", boasting a number of large, self-contained water park resorts north of the city of Wisconsin Dells, along "the strip" between Wisconsin Dells and Lake Delton, and south of Lake Delton.
RESOURCES
Online Resources
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