WXPR Local Features

Dead Pike Lake, a sparsely-populated lake in Vilas County, has been the source of contention for years. Now, it has gotten political.

Railroad accidents were common in the late nineteenth century. Because safety was an issue, some train robbers in the Northwoods thought they could use it to their advantage.

The Wisconsin River is a tamed river, but in the past, before the dams, the river ran wild, and loggers found Grandfather Falls near Merrill to be a difficult obstacle to overcome.

Tribal members from the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe are getting ready to harvest wild rice from the lakes of Northern Wisconsin. But this year, there's less rice to be found.

Matthew Stapleton was head of one of Rhinelander's oldest and most distinguished families. Stapleton settled in Rhinelander in 1883 and worked as an overseer of the Brown Brothers' boom operation. In 1904 he was elected mayor of Rhinelander and later went on to serve as postmaster. Despite all that, it was his daughter Beatrice who made history during World War II.

Atmospheric PFAS is falling as rain even far away from industrial sites. Plus, a nonprofit has identified 42,000 places in the U.S. as possible PFAS sites.

Ambling down a path through the forest to a serene lake, Greg Krueger explains why he likes this area.

Organized labor's campaign for a ten-hour workday gained momentum in the 1870s and 1880s. The often-violent response to union demands in places like Chicago and Milwaukee served to make the public more open to union ideas. The Northwoods was slow to accept the inevitable, but by 1892 the push for a ten-hour workday hit Rhinelander.

A point of land, sitting on the north side of the Vista Flowage, was Zeke Jonas' favorite spot.

Ole Catfish and his family led quiet, unassuming lives in their home at Lac du Flambeau. They were not remarkable in any way and not the type of people whose names one would expect to find splashed across national newspapers. Yet that is exactly what happened in 1934 when Catfish's life intersected with that of one of America's most notorious gangsters. Historian Gary Entz has more:

On a pleasant morning last week, Sara Sommer and Chris Ester paddled to the deepest point of Luna Lake, a 64-acre lake in northern Forest County surrounded by National Forest.

Wayne Valliere is an artist and award-winning birchbark canoe builder with the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe.

In this month's Field Notes, Susan Knight of Trout Lake Station tells us about the genetics of apples and the real story behind Johnny Appleseed.

On Monday, John Lampereur guided his white U.S. Forest Service pickup truck over bumpy dirt roads in northern Oconto County near Lakewood.

Thousands of children come to the Northwoods each year to participate in organized summer camps. While many camps are storied with long histories, there was one distinctive camp that had a short life but did much good in its nine years of existence.

Many of us have wood interiors in our homes. It is the norm rather than the exception. My home has wood doors, wood floors, wood cabinets, and wood base and window trim. It is a beautiful material, and I really enjoy living with and working with wood.

Steph Shaw starts the outboard motor of the small, flatbottomed boat, and takes off toward the middle of Katherine Lake in Hazelhurst.

On a steamy summer day in early August of 1960, two teenage boys living in Warrensville, Illinois, John Hudetz, age 15, and Peter Jonssen, age 14, were at home and talking about the good times they had in past summers at their uncle Ted Jonssen's Rustic Lodge on Muskellunge Lake just north of McNaughton. While chatting they decided what a great idea it would be to pay Uncle Ted a visit. The two boys took their sleeping bags, a single change of clothes, and slipped them into packs hung over the handlebars of their bicycles. On August 8, three days after coming up with the idea, they hit the road.

A chance encounter with a common bird in an unexpected place inspired the topic for this week's Wildlife Matters with the Masked Biologist.

Last week, ground-penetrating radar sensors glided across the grass near Rhinelander wells 7 and 8, attached to a customized four-wheeled cart.

Inspired by a Curious North question, this week's Wildlife Matters finds the Masked Biologist pondering what might be causing a snapping or popping sound in and around lily pads. The answer may surprise you. If you weren't already aware, WXPR has a great feature called Curious North. You can submit your questions or ideas you have about a variety of topics here in the Northwoods, and staff and feature writers (like myself) help answer them. Today's episode of Wildlife Matters was inspired by a Curious North question: What is the snapping sound that seems to go with lily pads in lakes? As a wildlife biologist, I tend to focus more on terrestrial habitats, as that is where most of my focal species tend to live. However, shorelines are an extremely important habitat for a wide variety of wildlife, especially amphibians, waterfowl and furbearers. To know aquatic plant species is to be able to analyze water quality and wetland health. So, while I admit I am not great at deep water habitats,

Ryder Fox pushes a wheelbarrow full of gravel down a path through the Argonne Experimental Forest near Hiles. He dumps it into a frame where his fellow conservation crewmembers are waiting to pound it down, adding to the interpretive trail. The 15-year-old from Milwaukee is part of the Cream City Conservation Corps. All summer they've been working on conservation work in the city, but for two weeks they're visiting the Northwoods to see what conservation work looks like in rural areas compared to urban. This experience has been a mixed bag. “I just gotta say this is better than yesterday, except for the bugs,” said Fox. For many of the crew members, this is there first time out in this kind of forest setting. The crew is working in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest through the Urban Connections program. The program allows the Forest Service to partner with different urban organizations. Like Fox, the bugs were hard to get over for 14-year-old Messiah Hart. “It's not fun, the

The town of Hazelhurst, like so many others in the Northwoods, got its start through the logging industry. But unlike other Northwoods communities with origins in logging, Hazelhurst's ties to the Yawkey Lumber Company gave it a slightly different trajectory. It was a path that shapes the community to this day. Cyrus Carpenter Yawkey was a nephew of Michigan lumbering tycoon William Clyman Yawkey and grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, where he learned the trade. In 1888, William, Cyrus, and George E. Lee acquired a sizeable tract of land around Lake Katherine and started the sawmill village of Hazelhurst. The three men organized the Yawkey and Lee Lumber Company, and immediately commenced timber cutting in the winter of 1888-1889. Cyrus Yawkey was a teetotaler and did not allow saloons or other disreputable businesses in his new village, and this set Hazelhurst apart from other logging boomtowns. However, not long after the village was founded, a large barge with a building on top of it

There seem to be more red foxes than usual this year across northern Wisconsin. In this week's Wildlife Matters, the Masked Biologist takes an in-depth look at these fascinating canines. Recently a colleague and I were out in a boat doing a survey when we saw some activity on shore. We moved in for a closer look and were treated to a show. A red fox was raiding a snapping turtle nest, carrying off one egg at a time, caching them in different locations nearby. When finished, the fox used its nose to fill the turtle nest back in and trotted away seeming pretty satisfied with a job well done. Foxes are the smallest canines in North America. Here in the Northwoods we have two kinds of foxes. The red fox is the more commonly observed of the two. It likes forest with lots of rabbits and rodents, and open areas such as meadows, hayfields, pastures and marshes. Most of us picture a bright, rusty red or almost burnt orange fox with a white throat, black legs and a white-tipped tail. In fact,

To Ryan Hanson, the proposal for a new building just west of Rhinelander just isn't that complicated. “The actual transfer station is really nothing more than a pole building,” Hanson explained. “It's a metal-sided, metal-roofed building with garage doors on one side, and then a handful of dumpsters.” It would sit about 600 feet off of Highway 47, hidden by a buffer of trees from that road, Highway 8, and Highway K, which are all nearby. Even so, the neighbors don't like it. “Yeah, people are going to be against it even if you check every box,” Hanson said. “But that's not my job to address every single not-in-my-backyard issue.” The plan has faced opposition because the proposal is for a waste transfer facility. It's not a landfill, but a place where people and companies can bring trash to be shipped away, up to a total of 50 tons per day. Hanson is a realtor representing JBM Howard, the company angling to operate it. He wants Oneida County to approve the plan over concerns of odor,

Nicolet is a familiar name in the Northwoods. There are many small businesses that carry the name, a college, and perhaps most important, a National Forest. Most Northwoods residents have heard of Jean Nicolet, but how many know who he really was? Jean Nicolet is a celebrated individual in Wisconsin history and is credited as the first European to set foot in what is today the state of Wisconsin. Schoolchildren are familiar with the famous 1907 Edwin Willard Deming painting depicting Nicolet's first landing near what is today Green Bay, and many have visited Nicolet's statue, erected in 1950 near Red Banks where it is said that he landed. The traditional story goes that Jean Nicolet was an explorer sent west by Samuel de Champlain to find a route to China through the Great Lakes. Turning south into Lake Michigan, he landed near Red Banks just northeast of Green Bay. Making shore at a Ho Chunk village, he dressed in an elaborate Chinese robe, held two pistols in the air, and fired them

Making national headlines, the 17-year cicadas were making a ruckus throughout eastern parts of the US leaving me to wonder, why don't we see cicada swarms in the Northwoods of Wisconsin? Cicadas have a limited and mostly eastern distribution in the United States, reaching as far north as New York state, down to Louisiana and Georgia in the south and barely extending into Kansas and Oklahoma in the west. They hatch on 13- or 17-year cycles and specific cohorts, which are also known as broods, hatch in offset years. The recent batch of cicadas is part of Brood X, the largest cohort of 17 year cicadas that occurs in the US. There are 12 cohorts of 17-year and 3 cohorts of 13-year cicadas. Brood X began erupting from the ground in mid-May, predominantly in Washington DC, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio and Tennessee. The next big hatch will take place in 2024 and will include a brood of 13 year cicadas that will hatch out in the central southern part of the US and a 17 year cohort

Another Fourth of July holiday has come and gone. It was a happy experience for almost everyone in the Northwoods. A few people, though, yearn for the good old days when more potent fireworks were available. But did that make the holiday any better? Historian Gary Entz looks back at early earlier Fourth of July celebrations. A recent glance through a newspaper revealed this lament: “The small boy of today doesn't know what he's missing—though his father does. For the Fourth of July ain't what it used to be. An American tradition—fireworks—is only a dim but fond memory in most of the country.” That quotation came from 1955, which begs the question: what was so unacceptable about events sixty-six years ago that the writer felt it did not measure up to expectations? In 1955, the Fourth of July celebration in Rhinelander was called the Hodag Log Jamboree. It was a three-day festival that started on Saturday July second and culminated on the evening of the fourth. Saturday events included

One of the benefits of having experts like the Masked Biologist as a WXPR contributor is that you get the latest breaking wildlife news, good or bad. Unfortunately, this week's Wildlife Matters has some bad news, and the Masked Biologist is asking you to keep your eyes open for birds with their eyes pasted shut. Passion for natural resources can be an emotional roller coaster. You can get some good news one day, bad news the next. Lately, it seems more bad news than good, seeming to last longer. We hear bad news about white nose syndrome wiping out bats, for years, then get a glimpse of good news that maybe some bats are showing signs of resistance or adaptation. That's the way it goes anymore. Unfortunately, I have more bad news today. There is a new bird disease. It is crippling and so far 100% fatal. It is very new to us here in Wisconsin, in fact this may be the first you are hearing of it, but it will not be the last. It seemed to have started out, in all places, in the Washington

Last October, the end of the school year seemed a long way off for Rhinelander mother Leanne Vigue Miranda. “I live day by day because, otherwise, that prospect of, oh my gosh, I have to continue this for eight more months is super scary,” she told WXPR back then . Miranda is the registrar at Nicolet College. She decided it would be safest to keep her kids, fourth-grader Phoebe and kindergartener Luna, in remote learning this past year because of pandemic concerns. We talked to her again after the school year ended. We wanted to check in with the parents we interviewed in the fall. How did a year of remote work and remote learning go? Miranda said juggling her work at home with the kids' at-home education caused high-level stress, all the way to the last day of school. “That has definitely been reduced since the girls finished their schooling. I feel a lot less stressed,” she said. “When it finally all ended, it was a big celebration day.” Phoebe and Luna spent hundreds of hours in

Summer is camping season, and Summer Camps in the Northwoods are guiding young people to embrace an appreciation for the outdoors. One of the more storied camps in the area is Camp Birchrock, which was founded by the local Girl Scouts. How the Girl Scouts and Camp Birchrock came to be is worth remembering. The Girl Scouts are a storied organization with roots dating back to the Progressive Era. The group was formed in Savannah, Georgia, in 1912 under the tutelage of Juliette Gordon Low. Low was a Progressive reformer and in 1911 had been introduced to the Girl Guides, the English offshoot of the Boy Scouts, while on a visit to Great Britain. She embraced the idea, and once back home in Georgia Low gathered eighteen girls around her and began teaching them the values of their own individuality, strength, and intellect. Like with the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts hiked, swam, camped, and engaged in physical sports, but Low also wanted them to learn how to read the world around them.

Are we ready to give our children the tools they will need to face environmental challenges in the future, or are the tools we've always used good enough for them? The Masked Biologist tackles the toolbox question in this week's Wildlife Matters. I learned to rebuild a car engine when I was five. My father, in addition to working a couple of jobs, had a vehicle repair business. If I wanted to spend time with him, I had to be out in the shop evenings and weekends. His interest became mine. When I was about ten years old, my dad gave me my first toolbox, a big rusty one. It was one of his first toolboxes when he started working on cars. I sanded it down and painted it red, and loaded it with any tools he would give me. I hauled that toolbox with me everywhere I went for over thirty years. When my oldest son turned ten, I gave him that toolbox. I told him where it came from, that he was the third generation to get it, and that he could make it his own just like I did. He said he wanted to

Last week, Diane Dodge closed her doors for the last time as the owner of Diane's Frame Shoppe in downtown Rhinelander. She's owned and operated the frame shop since setting out on her own in 2005, struggling through a lean first few years. “There were a few times we had to borrow to keep everything going, but we felt that it was going to be worth it, so we just kept going,” she said. “It was worth it.” Through Diane's work and the help of her husband, Ray, the successful business has now served thousands of customers. After 16 years of ownership, though, the couple decided the time was right to retire this year. But the frame shop, the business they worked so hard to build? Diane felt she owed it to her customers, to the community, to herself to see that it lived on. “It's a good business. The people have become friends, close friends, the customers have been. It's a very good business, and I think it's needed here yet,” Diane said. “I was very passionate about trying to find someone

Indigenous people have made significant contributions to every war the United States has ever fought. In twentieth-century conflicts, we often hear about the heroism of individuals like Ira Hayes, or of groups like the code talkers. What we rarely hear about are contributions from indigenous people on the home front. Members of America's First Nations have fought in every major military battle in U.S. history. Of all those conflicts, World War I was a defining moment for how the U.S. government approached Tribal Nations. While many Indigenous peoples were drafted into the Great War, most who served volunteered. The hope was that fighting for democracy overseas would help in the fight for civil rights and full citizenship at home. More than 12,000 Native Americans served in the war, mostly in the army, although a few served in the Navy. Those who did not serve in combat helped the war effort just as other Americans did, by growing victory gardens, hosting fundraisers, buying war bonds,

Here in Wisconsin, almost all our snakes are non-venomous, and rely on deceptive defense measures to scare off potential threats. The eastern hognose is one such snake and has slithered onto center stage in this week's Wildlife Matters. Last month I came across an article about eastern hognose snakes that immediately captured my interest. Snakes tend to cause concern and fear in many people, and understandably so. Their appearance, movements, and behavior are entirely different from ours, and from many of the birds and mammals average people enjoy. Eastern hognose snakes will never win any popularity contests, or beauty contests, but they might win awards for best dramatic actor. Hognose snakes get their name from their upturned snouts, and like hogs, they use them to root around in soft soil in search of food, especially their favorite—toads. They are thick-bodied snakes that can reach lengths of two to four feet, depending on where you are in North America. They can get quite large

Blades of helicopters slice incessantly through the western Wisconsin sky. “Security Forces is finding people in a search and rescue exercise. They're finding people and they're evaluating their needs and they're sending them out on helicopters, in case they need medical care,” explains Lt. Col. Sarah Ashley Nickloes of the U.S. Air Force and Tennessee Air National Guard. National Guard soldiers and airmen, alongside civilian emergency crews, lift mannequins and live actors onto stretchers. This is PATRIOT 21 at Fort McCoy and Volk Field near Tomah, a disaster simulation that brings together more than 1,000 people from 26 states. “So, we had an earthquake, a notional earthquake, that happened just south of here,” Nickloes says of the situation. “We're receiving locations so that we can respond to the people that are nearby and the people that are flowing into the area.” Some of the camouflage-clad National Guard soldiers and airmen have been deployed overseas in the past. But the Guard

Summer is baseball season, and many Northwoods residents enjoy playing the game in local leagues or watching professionals on television. A few of those professional players have found the Northwoods equally appealing, and more than one has called the town of Three Lakes home. One of them was first baseman Fred Luderus. Frederick William Luderus was born in Milwaukee in September 1885. The son of German immigrants, Luderus grew up in Milwaukee's German American community and as a teenager gained a reputation as a talented athlete. He loved the game of baseball and played first baseman in Milwaukee's sandlot leagues. While he enjoyed baseball, he had to earn a living and apprenticed in the plumbing trade. From 1905 to 1907, Luderus played minor league baseball in the Northern Copper Country League. During those three years he played for Sault St. Marie, Grand Forks, and Winnipeg, but after each season he was back in Milwaukee working as a plumber. The Northern League folded after 1907.

Full hides of brown and black leather are draped over a cart and wheeled by a worker from place to place in the maze-like Weinbrenner Shoe Company factory in Merrill. “Not everybody realizes what goes into making the shoe. I always tell people, if you get a chance to tour a shoe factory, take it,” says Rick Hass, a costing engineer serving as a tour guide of the factory floor. The factory, which produces premium shoes and boots sold under the Thorogood brand, dates to 1936. It has low ceilings, some dark corners, and worker after worker focused on their task. Some solve a sort of puzzle, operating machines that cut the leather into different shoe parts while maximizing every inch. Others put temporary staples in the shoe, easing the way for binding the soles to the uppers. The stitching is done with a steady hand, with both speed and precision in mind. Dozens of people handle each shoe along the path, producing thousands of pairs per day. “We look to make it as streamlined as possible.

One of the more colorful aspects of Northwoods history is that 1930s-era gangsters such as Al Capone, Baby Face Nelson, and John Dillinger spent time in the region. But they were just visitors. One famous gangster from that era found the Northwoods so appealing that he made it his permanent home. Al Capone was the crime boss of Chicago during the Prohibition era and remains one of the most recognizable names in Chicago gangland history. Nevertheless, while Al was the most notorious of the Capone family, it was his older brother Ralph who made the longest-lasting impression on the Northwoods. Ralph Capone was born in 1894 in the Italian province of Campania. His family immigrated to the United States while he was still an infant and arrived at Ellis Island in 1895. The Capone family settled in Brooklyn, which is where Ralph and his eight siblings grew up. By 1920, Al Capone had already moved to Chicago to become part of the organized crime mob known as the Chicago Outfit. He invited

Here is an old story and a new story. Unfortunately, both involve the death of some of our favorite birds because of complications resulting from aquatic invasive species. Maybe you have heard about loons dying in Lake Michigan due to a tangled story about the lake's food web. Lake Michigan has been hugely taken over by quagga mussels, a bivalve that by now covers almost the entire floor of Lake Michigan – nearly shore to shore. Like zebra mussels, the quaggas filter water, consuming all the phytoplankton, or floating algae out of the water. This clears up the water, so that light can penetrate deep into the lake. The quaggas release quite a bit of poop and so the very bottom of the lake is rich in nutrients. This encourages a bloom of Cladophora, an alga that likes to live on hard substrates like rocks (or quagga mussels) at the bottom of lakes. After the Cladophora dies, it uses up all the oxygen as it decomposes. In the oxygen-deprived environment, certain bacteria go to town,

In this episode of Wildlife Matters, the Masked Biologist looks at a news story from the west coast that involved bears, dogs, people, and at least one bad decision. If you were watching television or cruising social media at all last week, you may have seen a story and video clip about a teenage girl who drove off a bear that was engaged in a scuffle with her dogs. Now I don't normally tear stories from the headlines, but when I saw the commentary from reporters and comments from the public at large, I felt that maybe this would be an opportunity to address the topic of intentionally engaging with bears. If you haven't seen the video yet, I'll describe what I saw. In California, a brown bear with two cubs were walking along the top of a block fence between yards, walking toward a house where there was a camera, maybe a security camera as it is fixed and shooting from above. Multiple dogs come running from the house barking at the bears, sending the cubs running back the way they came.

Hans Breitenmoser Jr.'s mother and father came to northern Wisconsin as Swiss immigrants, searching for the American Dream. “My parents started here in 1968. I was born in 1969. They made their career of this farm,” Breitenmoser said Wednesday. “They started out with 20 cows.” The Merrill-area farm grew, and so did the family's passion for the land, the career, and each other. “My father just passed away in February at age 82. He's buried right over there,” Breitenmoser said, choking up as he pointed to the road. “He made a good career.” Golden Dawn Farm now has 450 dairy cows, farming 1,300 acres. It's doing well. On Wednesday, the farm with decades of stories added one more, as Breitenmoser gave Gov. Tony Evers a tour. He introduced his 12 employees. Workforce difficulties mean all but one them are from Mexico. He's been hiring from Central America for at least 20 years. “I don't want to say it's the only people that are available, but it's pretty close to that,” Breitenmoser said.

An equilibrist is an acrobat who performs daring feats of uncanny balance. This includes tightrope walkers, trapeze artists, tumblers, or any sort of skilled human balancing act. A daredevil is a recklessly and often ostentatiously daring person. When the two are combined you get Rhinelander's own Daredevil Dault. Adelard and Victoria Dault moved to Rhinelander from Merrill around the turn of the century. Their son, Albert Henry Dault, was born in Rhinelander in January 1902. Albert was a fun-loving child who earned the nickname “Bolly.” During his childhood, Bolly Dault was well known around Rhinelander and could often be found on Brown Street earning nickels from local shoppers as he performed handstands and other tumbling tricks. As Bolly Dault got older, his tricks became more daring. He began doing handstands on the backrest of kitchen chairs and on the tops of ladders. In his late teens, Bolly Dault worked for a short time at the paper mill, refrigerator plant, and Thunder Lake

Visitors to the shop floor at AirPro Fan in Rhinelander are greeted by a wall of sound and activity. Forklifts dart here and there, welders send sparks flying, and industrial fans are moved from one place to another by ceiling-mounted lifts. “What you’re going to see is all sorts of things going on, welding, machining, all sorts of things,” said AirPro’s Lori Miller on a recent tour. One worker was slathering thick grease on a fan, applying the finishing touches. “Just greasing the coupling, then put the coupling housing on it. This ought to be good to go,” he said. “Everything’s all torqued to spec, and then it will hit the trim rack and they run it.” This fan is roughly the size of a small boulder and is headed to a Wisconsin-based customer. That’s rare, actually. Most fan products are shipped all over the country and even internationally, each serving a specific purpose. “We move air,” Miller said of the products made at AirPro. “It can be for all sorts of reasons.” Food producers,

Memorial Day was established to honor those who have died in American wars. There are many images that people look to when remembering those who served, but few images are more iconic than the Marine Corps War Memorial that depicts the flag raising at Iwo Jima in 1945. For many years it was thought an Antigo native was part of that photo, but was he? John Bradley was born in 1923 in the town of Antigo. He began his schooling in Antigo, but when he was nine his family relocated to Appleton. After graduating from Appleton High School in 1941 Bradley began an 18-month apprenticeship with a local funeral director. In 1943, Bradley enlisted in the U.S. Navy and completed training as a Hospital Corpsman. In 1944, he was assigned to the Fleet Marine Force and received combat medical training to serve with a Marine Corps unit. After training, Bradley joined the 5 th Marine Division and was assigned to Easy Company, 2 nd Battalion, 28 th Marine Regiment of the division. The 5 th division saw

Although still somewhat unusual, sightings of sandhill cranes in fields, meadows and wetlands of the Northwoods are increasingly common. Sandhill cranes are currently a nongame species, but could that change? Generally speaking, sandhill cranes are a familiar sight—and sound—in much of Wisconsin. They are less concentrated in the Northwoods, but you can find them in rural areas as well as locations like Woodboro Lakes, Thunder Marsh, Powell Marsh, and many shallow wetlands and wild rice beds. You can usually see them in larger groups in the early spring and again in fall, while in the process of migrating. This time of year, you can see them in smaller family groups. They are usually out in pastures, grasslands, wetlands and farm fields foraging for seeds and other fodder. Sometimes they will eat berries, even smaller live prey like frogs, insects, snakes, and small mammals. I have even had first-hand accounts of cranes raiding other birds’ nests in spring and eating eggs or nestling

Walk into any restaurant in downtown Minocqua or Eagle River, and chances are it’s understaffed. “If you drive around town, you’ll see pretty much every business has a ‘We’re Hiring’ or ‘Need Help’ sign out there,” said Stephen Coon, whose family owns Coontail Market in Boulder Junction and stores across Northern Wisconsin. Coon is struggling to find enough employees this season. “It’s always hard just because of the nature of seasonal business, but this year seems especially hard,” he said. “Everything is way busier than it typically is, and being short staffed is not a good thing in that landscape.” Coon is not alone; other local business owners across the Northwoods are in a similar position. The U.S. government recently reported that employers added 266,000 jobs in April. That’s a step in the right direction toward economic recovery, but those gains fell far short of what experts were predicting, especially in the hospitality and retail industries – where there are far more job

Many people in the Northwoods have gotten vaccinated against Covid-19, but a significant minority continues to resist vaccination. The reasoning against vaccination usually revolves around uncertainty for health and safety, and for reasons of civil liberties. These are old arguments, and not so different as those used during the smallpox epidemic. Our ancestors had to cope with the specter of disease and the possibility of death in ways that most of us cannot comprehend. There was a near constant fear that smallpox, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, cholera, diphtheria, pneumonia, and any number of childhood infections could strike and kill without warning. Of these maladies, smallpox was the most widespread medical terror of the past, and it was a particular concern in the Northwoods where it spread throughout the lumber camps. There was a nationwide smallpox epidemic at the turn of the twentieth century. Hundreds of people died in major cities across the United States, and smaller

In recent days, a report titled “Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful” was released in response to one of President Biden’s first Executive Orders. The Masked Biologist pulls this report apart and shares some highlights in this week’s Wildlife Matters. Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful is a brief but important document. It is a preliminary report to the National Climate Task Force from the US Departments of the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, and the Council on Environmental Quality. This report was triggered by Executive Order 14008 titled Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, signed January 27, 2021 to kick off a government-wide endeavor prioritizing clean energy, economic recovery and job creation while attempting to turn the tide of climate change. This is a very brief report, only 24 pages including endnotes. However, there is a lot of content. I thought I would call attention to the highlights most pertinent to us here in the Northwoods. A phrase

A florist cuts lush, green stems to the proper bouquet length in a well-lit work area. Nearby, her coworker snips sharp thorns off of a rose about to go into an arrangement. At the same time, Josh Jameson takes yet another phone call, chatting easily with a customer. Jameson manages Flowers from the Heart on 5 th , situated on 5 th Avenue in the center of Antigo’s downtown. Last year, the flower shop opened downtown and then moved to this new, bigger space next door just three weeks ago. “I guess the big thing is, when you walk in from the outside, we want to take you someplace,” Jameson says. The rustic décor, local products, and fresh flowers accomplish their mission. “We doubled the size of our cooler. That’s huge,” Jameson says. “if you look at this [cooler], it’s really hard to describe, but it’s flowers floor to ceiling.” They need the inventory, Jameson says, to keep up with demand. Many Northwoods communities like Antigo share at least one thing in common: downtowns that have

History can be a challenging undertaking. To uncover evidence, a historian must be part journalist and part detective. But when historical recollections devolve into myth the historian must become a revisionist and upset local legends to tell a story accurately. Such is the case of Willie Dickinson and Old Man Mudge in Florence. During his lifetime, Nelson P. Hulst was known as “America’s Greatest Iron Hunter.” Born in New York in 1842, in 1870 he accepted a position as chemist for the Milwaukee Iron Company and began hunting for iron ore deposits. He found nothing in the southern part of Wisconsin, so in 1872 he headed north and almost immediately discovered what became the Vulcan mine in the Menominee Range. As general superintendent for the Menominee Mining Company, Hulst developed mines at Norway, Quinnesec, Iron Mountain, and Florence. The latter was named for his wife, Florence Terry Hulst. In 1882, when the county was organized from parts of Marinette and Oconoto Counties, the