lumberjack reporter, Paul, too, must have been longer, 

 much longer, than a mere 50 feet. 



Anyone making his new home in Wisconsin who was 

 not accustomed to tobacco in some form would have 

 been a rare person. There simply wasn't enough local 

 tobacco to meet consumer demand. Tobacco crops from 

 numerous small plots were very limited and the 1850 

 census reported the state total as only 1,268 pounds. 

 Around 1854 over 840,000 pounds of tobacco, chiefly 

 from Virginia and Connecticut, was entered at tlie port 

 of Milwaukee to help supply the rapidly growing market. 



-Lobacco agriculture builds towns 



Tobacco as a cash crop began to be grown by eastern- 

 ers and Norwegians in the region around Viroqua, by 

 others near Edgerton, Oregon and elsewhere in the 

 state, bringing prosperity to these settlements and devel- 

 oping villages into towns. Edgerton's produce, shortly 

 after 1854, became abundant and profitable. By 1860 

 Edgerton tobacco farmers were able to ship their crop 

 (500 cases of 400 pounds each) to Milwaukee, Chicago 

 and markets in eastern states, after supplying local needs. 



The Civil War gave a stimulus to production. The 

 major producing areas centered at first in Rock and Dane 

 Counties ( the Southern Wisconsin type ) and later in the 

 century in Vernon and Crawford Counties (the Northern 

 Wisconsin type). Production of cigar-leaf tobacco, 

 originally used as wrappers for Havana fillers, totaled 

 87,000 pounds in 1860, most of it from Walworth County. 

 In 1869 a close estimate showed a harvest of a million 

 pounds of leaf, with a total cash value of $187,000. All 



