THE HISTORY OF DEVILS LAKE, WISCONSIN 



ARTHUR C. TROWBRIDGE 



University of Iowa 



The vicinity of Devils Lake, Wisconsin, has long been used as a 

 field of instruction in geology in the Middle West. The pre- 

 Cambrian igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks, the 

 Paleozoic history, the economic products, the general results of 

 glaciation, the origin and history of the lake, have all been reported 

 in a general way. 1 It has been the privilege of the writer to con- 

 duct several courses in the district, to work over the data collected 

 and reported by previous investigators, and to work out additional 

 points not completed by them. He finds that the general history 

 of the district may be incorporated in an account of the history of 

 the lake and its basin. 



The purpose of this paper is to bring together all the events 

 in the history of the lake basin, and to include some heretofore 

 unpublished conclusions as to the history of the lake, its past and 

 present sources of supply, and outlets once established but now 

 abandoned. This involves repetition of some facts already pub- 

 lished, and leads beyond the present boundaries of the lake basin. 



LOCATION AND DESCRIPTION 



Devils Lake is an almost rectangular body of fresh water i T V 

 miles long in a north-south direction and \ mile broad, situated in 

 Sauk County, Wisconsin, 3 miles south of Baraboo, 40 miles north 

 by northwest of Madison, 80 miles southeast of LaCrosse, and 100 

 miles west by northwest of Milwaukee. 



The district in which the lake lies is one of extraordinary high 

 relief for the central Mississippi Basin (about 800 feet) and of con- 

 siderable irregularity. The topography is dominated by two 



1 R. D. Salisbury and W. W. Atwood, Bull. No. 5, Wis. Geol. and Nat. Hist. Surv., 

 pp. 51-55; Samuel Weidman, Bull. No. 13, ibid., pp. 109-14; Lawrence Martin, Bull. 

 No. 36, ibid., pp. 177-78. 



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