THE PASSING OF AN HISTORIC WATERWAY 
BY P. E. WILLIAMS. 
The early development of any country depends primarily upon 
the avenues of entrance to its interior. The opening of the in¬ 
terior of the United States was largely balked by the eastern moun¬ 
tains, which served to divert the entrance to northern routes. It 
was natural that waterways should be sought, because of the greater 
ease of travel in the canoe than on foot. With the practically 
continuous water route of the St. Lawrence, Ottawa and the Great 
Lakes, at their disposal, explorers soon found their way into Wis¬ 
consin. As early as 1634, Nicolet, following the north shore of 
Lakes Huron and Michigan to Green Bay, thence the Lower Fox, 
Lake Winnebago, and the Upper Fox reached a point in the vicinity 
of Berlin, Wisconsin. 1 In 1655 Badisson and Groseilliers 2 crossed 
from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River following the Fox- 
Wisconsin waterway which was for many years one of the most 
used highways in the northwest. Probably some of the coureurs de 
hois and voyageurs had earlier passed this way as we know it was 
a path much used by the Indians. It soon became a regular route 
for the French fur traders and Green Bay became one of the most 
noted fur depots of the northwest. Along it came the great mot¬ 
ley procession of adventurers, explorers, priests, traders, trappers, 
and soldiers who paddled their canoes and rowed or poled their 
batteaux or, in later years, their Durham boats. “Throughout 
127 years of French control, down through the 25 year period of 
English control, and on to the days of the American railroad in the 
’60’s, this nature-made highway of travel between the Great Lakes 
and the Mississippi was a link in a great continental waterway—a 
part of a Pathway of Empire.”* 
1 Thwaites, Reuben Gold, Wisconsin, The Americanization of a French Settle¬ 
ment, New York 1908, pp. 20-32. 
a Ibid, p. 40. 
s Whitbeck, Ray Hughes, The Geography of the Fox-Winnebago Valley, BulL 
XLII, Wis. Geol. & Nat. Hist. Survey, Madison, 1915. p. 27. 
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