140 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
roads. In the early ? 50’s stage lines and other plank roads were 
developed connecting tl principal places and diverted considerable 
of the river passenger traffic. 34 In 1857, the Milwaukee and 
Prairie du Chien Railroad, crossing the Wisconsin River three times, 
was completed to the Mississippi River. In 1862 the Chicago and 
North Western Railroad reached Green Bay, 35 so before the wa¬ 
terway had reached its highest stage of improvement, powerful 
competitors entered the field and drew the trade into new channels 
before the route had been fully tried out. The railroads were able 
to accomplish this in spite of the fact that for the greater part of 
the route, or from Spring Green to Oshkosh, no railway parallels 
the waterway. In 1887, R. G. Thwaites made an excursion through 
the waterway and has painted a vivid word picture of fallen 
grandeur and prosperity. He says, 4 ‘The canal, like the most of 
the Fox-Wisconsin improvement, is fast relapsing into a costly 
relic. The timbered sides are shaky and worm-eaten, and several 
moss covered barges and a stranded old ruin of a steamboat turned 
out to grass tell a sad story of official abandonment.” 36 
Today the dream of a commercial waterway is past, but the 
scheme has added a very pretty pleasure route to the beauties of the 
state. There can be no doubt that this project, though a failure 
in itself, was of great advantage to the state, in that it attracted 
attention to the importance of the region. The route did serve as 
an avenue of early access to the settlers and the agitation and partial 
improvement hastened the coming of statehood. To the villages and 
cities along the route, the failure of the Fox-Wisconsin to become 
a great commercial highway was a bitter disappointment, but the 
results of such delusions must inevitably be shared by all those 
whose hopes for commercial greatness are tied to a small inland 
waterway. 
34 Warren, p. 40. 
35 Whitbeck, p. 32. 
36 Thwaites, Down Historic Waterways, p. 144. 
