A BIT OF OLD WISCONSIN 



By Asa K. Owen 



President, Wisconsin Lakes and Parks Association 



TTARD driven, in the distracting haste of modern 

 -*--'- development, we easily forget. We scarce can 

 realize that, within the span of lives as yet unended, 

 there spread across our Northern States, for near a 

 thousand miles, a great, unbroken forest, one of the 

 wonders of the world. Nowhere, through all this vast 

 expanse, stood timber more majestic, or of finer qual- 

 ity, than that within the borders of Wisconsin. 



The writer, not yet old, has talked with men who 

 helped to blaze the early trails, avenues of our present 

 commerce. Before them, our lakes and rivers were 

 the pathways of the fur trade, of the Indian and the 

 voyageur, our woodlands trodden only by the hunter 

 and the trapper. Behind them came the lumbermen, 

 imagining the supply would never end, slashing, burn- 

 ing and wasting, taking only the choicest, in compe- 

 tition on a glutted market, a market which meant, in 

 fairness, not alone added employment, but cheap ma- 

 terials for the building of the then new West. 



And the wonderful forests of old Wisconsin, like 

 those of other states, went down before the needs of 

 the people, and are today well nigh exhausted. Only 

 a few scattered tracts, of comparatively meager extent, 

 haunted by a harried wild life, now r^piain, and these 

 last remnants unless something be dofie to stay, in 



part, their destruction will, within a few more years, 

 likewise have gone the way of the ax and gun. 



That is why, beginning a little less than two years 

 ago, a movement has been growing here in Wisconsin, 

 as similar movements have grown in New York, Minne- 

 sota, South Dakota, Ca!ifo,mia and other states, and 

 in connection with the setting aside of our national 

 parks, to save, intact, for ourselves and our children, 

 some distinctive bits of our unspoiled best, to typify 

 the land that was. 



Of recent years, about most of our surviving beauty 

 spots, the more alert and fortunate have built their 

 summer homes, and erected, almost too frequently, at 

 each approach, the warning, "Private Grounds Keep 

 Out." And so we are working to secure, first and 

 foremost, before the opportunity be forever gone, one 

 spacious corner of the State, the finest of our natural 

 playgrounds, where creatures of the wild may still find 

 sanctuary, where the old Wisconsin may still be seen 

 and enjoyed by the sons and daughters of the new, and 

 where the lame, and the halt, and all but the blind, 

 may read, throughout the years to come, the welcome, 

 "Public Preserve Come In." 



This, in a few words, is the meaning of the cam- 

 paign, which has attracted wide attention, to save the 



DOWN THROUGH ONE SIDE OF THE NORTHERN LAKES PARK AREA WINDS THE HISTORIC FLAMBEAU. WHICH 

 OPENED A NEW VISION TO THE EARLY EXPLORERS AND WHICH HAS CARRIED ON ITS BROAD BOSOM IN YEARS 

 GONE BY UNTOLD MILLIONS OF WHITE PINE LOGS. IN THE FALL OF THE YEAR ITS FLAMING WALLS OF GOLD 



AND CRIMSON SUGGEST THE ORIGIN OF ITS NAME. 



