April 8, 2009

Voters return incumbents to office in PdC

Despite a last-minute flurry of write-in candidates, all incumbents were returned to office in the Prairie du Chien Common Council elections held April 7. Unofficial voting numbers were as follows:

	1st District, two year term - Becky Hackett, 131; Renee Hampton, 37; other write-in, 1
	2nd District, two year term - Linda Munson, 80; Mike Thompson, 15
	3rd District, two year term, - Kathleen Hein, 99; other write-ins, 4
	3rd District, one year term - Mary Wayne, 90; Virginia Lochner, 19; other write-ins, 4
	4th District, two year term - Sharon Boylen, 96; other write-ins, 3
	4th District, one year term - Karen Solomon, 73; Bob Vance, 33
	5th District, two year term - Frank Pintz Jr., 124; Kathleen Novey, 51
	6th District, two year term - Joe Ruskey, 168; Mike Brouse,15; other write-ins, 5
	6th District, one year term - Judeen Ames, 146; Mary Hannah, 36; other write-ins, 5

Except for Renee Hampton, whose name was on the ballot, all challengers were write-ins.

Incumbents retain seats on PdC School Board

The three incumbents retained their seats on the Prairie du Chien School Board following Tuesday’ election.

Mark Forsythe received a total of 1,082 votes. Ron Quamme had 949 and Brian Edwards had 930. Maureen McCarty, who waged a write-in campaign, received 299 votes. There were seven scattered votes. The top three vote-getters are elected.

The three incumbents were all elected to three-year terms.

All vote totals are unofficial. Canvassing of the votes will be done Wednesday afternoon, after which the totals will become official.

The totals for the town of Eastman, the village of Eastman, the town of Wauzeka, the town of Bridgeport and the town of Prairie du Chien were unknown as of presstime.

Unofficial totals for the city of Prairie du Chien are as follows: Mark Forsythe 717, Ron Quamme 629, Brian Edwards 625, Maureen McCarty 249, and scattered five.

Emerald Ash Borer found in Vernon County
Quarantine also expected in Crawford County

Officials with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection and the Department of Natural Resources today announced that the emerald ash borer (EAB) has been confirmed in Vernon County. The tiny, invasive beetle, whose larva destroys North American ash trees, was discovered in Victory, a small community along the banks of the Mississippi River, about 20 miles south of La Crosse. State officials were made aware of the infestation by an observant property owner.

Vernon County becomes the third infested county in Wisconsin. EAB was discovered in Ozaukee and Washington counties last summer.

Because of the proximity to property managed by state and federal entities, and the short distance to counties in Iowa and Minnesota, developing an area-specific response plan will be a coordinated effort with multiple partners.

Agriculture and natural resources representatives from Minnesota and Iowa will tour the Victory infestation with Wisconsin officials later this week.

One of the first steps in responding to the infestation will be to quarantine movement of hardwood firewood, ash nursery stock, ash timber or any other article that could spread EAB out of the infested area.Federal officials are expected to approve Wisconsin’s quarantine request for Vernon and Crawford counties within days. Following placement of the quarantine there will be a thorough survey of the area to determine the size of the infestation. Colleagues in Iowa and Minnesota are also considering survey options in their respective states.

Area residents can help prevent the spread of EAB and learn more in several ways:

	•Follow all quarantine guidelines. For many people, that will mean not moving firewood out of the quarantined area.
	•If cutting down ash trees for firewood, use the firewood and burn small branches, etc. before mid-May. Do not move firewood or other material from downed ash trees away from the area where the tree was felled for at least two years.
	•If utilizing ash wood to make products other than firewood, follow the guidelines for managing infested wood found at www.emeraldashborer.wi.gov.
	•Learn about the signs and symptoms of EAB infestation, including the characteristics of an infested tree. This information can be found at the Wisconsin EAB Program Web site at www.emeraldashborer.wi.gov.
	•Report suspicious ash trees or request information by calling the Wisconsin EAB Program hotline toll-free at 1-800-462-2803 or filling out the Report EAB form on the Web site.

The adult emerald ash borer is a metallic green insect about one-half inch long and one-eighth inch wide. The adult female deposits eggs on the bark of ash trees. The larvae hatching from the eggs chew their way through the bark, and into the soft layer of wood just beneath. There, they eat their way through the tree’s vascular system, cutting off the flow of water and nutrients in the tree, leading to decline and eventual death of the tree. EAB is native to Asia and is thought to have arrived in the United States in the early 1990s in suburban Detroit.

There are an estimated 765 million ash trees in Wisconsin’s forests and, on average, one in five urban trees is a species of ash.

Main Street is Prairie du Chien’s oldest thoroughfare
With the planned Highway 18 bypass, which will extend from Marquette Road along La Pointe and Main Street to Iowa and Wisconsin Streets, Main Street has been the topic of much discussion in the last few years. Mary Antoine has prepared some information about the street’s origin and history. Due to the length of the article, it will be published in two parts.

By Mary Elise Antoine

Long before recorded history, the prairie that came to be known as Prairie du Chien was a place of seasonal habitation by the Native Americans who farmed, hunted, and traded along the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers. It was Jonathan Carver who first recorded the prairie’s name as Prairie Les Chiens. Carver visited the prairie in October 1766 and later wrote of the three hundred lodges he saw on the prairie built by "adjacent tribes, and even those who inhabited the remote branches of the Mississippi," all of whom had assembled that fall to trade with the French.

As early as 1685, the prairie had become a stopping place for French explorers, fur traders, and voyageurs. In that year, Nicolas Perrot constructed a fortified building on the south end of the prairie, which he and later traders used to store goods and peltries.

In 1773 Peter Pond came to trade on the prairie. He later wrote how several tribes met on the prairie each spring and fall to trade with the French who came from as far away as Illinois and Louisiana. Pond stated that the Indian camp exceeded "a Mile & half in Length."

Within a few years of Pond’s visit some of the Frenchmen from Illinois settled on the prairie. In an informal method, each man chose a site on which to build a house. Some selected land on the large island west of the prairie facing the Mississippi River, and here a village began to take shape. Others made their home on the prairie close to the water, and first one then two villages came into being. Each man also claimed a larger strip of land on the prairie behind the two villages. This was their Farm Lot. By 1780 the Illinois French had established a pattern of settlement at Prairie du Chien. There were Village Lots and long narrow Farms Lots that stretched from the river to the bluffs. Throughout the next thirty years more men settled on the prairie. Most were French-speaking and all were connected to the fur trade. These men came from Quebec and Mackinac. They acquired land next to the Frenchmen from Illinois, and the villages grew and the farm lots increased as more of the prairie was claimed.

Information about the people who lived on the prairie during this time is very challenging to locate. Tidbits of facts and some details are found in probate records, correspondence between fur traders, land transactions registered in Illinois, and church records scattered from Canada to St. Louis. What does exists is fascinating and portrays a way of life built around the seasons of the fur trade and farming.

Though a part of the United States as a result of the American Revolution, few residents of the prairie had much concern for politics. The fur trade provided their livelihoods, so their allegiance was based upon economics. The British merchants in Montreal and the British traders at Mackinac supplied the trade goods and purchased the furs. So, the majority of the residents of the prairie supported the British during the War of 1812. They knew if the United States won the war, the government would manage the fur trade. But the war ended in a stalemate, and the United States sent the Army and a surveyor to Prairie du Chien to take control of the prairie and ensure the loyalty of the residents.

In 1820 Isaac Lee arrived at Prairie du Chien from the Surveyor General’s Office in Detroit. Lee was to find out who resided on the prairie and to take testimony. If the residents could prove that the land they lived on had been occupied and maintained for twenty years, the United States would give a person title to his or her land. Lee took testimony, interviewing men who had lived at Prairie du Chien since the 1790s. He then filed a report and drew a map based upon what he had learned. His map is the first visual representation of Prairie du Chien. It shows how the Native American and French cultures defined the community and are the basis for the layout of the city today.

Isaac Lee’s map platted the entire nine-mile prairie. The only road he found on the prairie was an "Old Indian Trail" stretching from the marshy ground of the Wisconsin River to Rolette’s Mill in what is now Mill Coulee. On the map, Lee called the trail the Highway. It was somewhat set back from the water but followed the contours of the shoreline, passing just east of the Old French Fort and the Old Catholic Burying Ground. On the map Lee documented the location of three villages: one village on the island and two villages located on the prairie. The residents of the villages on the prairie had selected lots that fronted on the Highway.

Eight years later Lucius Lyon arrived at Prairie du Chien. Using Lee’s map, Lyon accurately surveyed each village lot and each farm lot. He kept detailed notes of his survey, recording the mounds, trees, and pile of stones that delineated the corner of each lot. In his field notes, Lyon recorded the names of the villages shown on Lee’s map. On the island was the Main Village. The two villages on the prairie were the Upper Village and the Village of St. Friol. The lots in prairie villages fronted on "the Highway," and "the Highway" was part of each lot description. The Upper Village lay north of the Old Catholic Burying Ground on the west side of the Highway. The Village of St. Friol lay south of the Burying Ground, stretching for almost a mile west and east of the Highway.

The following year soldiers from Fort Crawford began construction on the new barracks. The site chosen for the second Fort Crawford was the high ground just south of the Village of St. Friol. The main entrance to the fort faced the highway and beyond that the Mississippi River.

April 6, 2009

PdC woman enters not guilty plea in murder case

A 47-year-old Prairie du Chien women pleaded not guilty April 1 in Winona County District Court to charges involving the 1985 killing of a Winona woman.

Linda Mae Parrish is charged with two counts of aiding and abetting first-degree murder. She is being held in the Goodhue County Jail on $2 million bail.

Parrish is accused of being associated with Jack Willis Nissalke, 43, who is charged with stabbing Ada Senenfelder to death in June of 1985.

Nissalke was indicted by a grand jury in July on four counts of first-degree murder. He has a jury trial scheduled to begin on May 18.

Another alleged associate of Nissalke, James Raymond Bolstad, 62, has also been indicted for aiding and abetting murder.

Bolstad was serving one-and-a-half years in prison for a 2008 weapons conviction when he was erroneously released in February of 2009. He was arrested in La Crosse on March 19 on a probation violation.

FWS to raise mussels in river

As part of a program to restore aquatic life in rivers and streams, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) will be placing mussel culture cages in the Mississippi north of the St. Feriole Island beach and boat landing this summer.

Tony Brady, mussel propagation biologist at the Genoa hatchery, explained the process at last week’s meeting of the Prairie du Chien Common Council. Mussels, said Brady, cocoon on the gills of fish, and, just as monarch butterflies need milkweed, certain mussels can live only on certain fish.

Compatible fish are raised at the Genoa hatchery, and at the proper time, the fish will be inoculated with the mussel larvae or glochidia. To do this, Brady said he puts on scuba gear and dives into the river to obtain the mussels. The glochidia are collected, then introduced to the fish in a bucket of water, at much higher concentrations than would be found in nature. They try to average about 250 glochidia per fish, he said.

The glochidia, which Brady said resemble little Pac-men, clamp on to the gills of the fish. The skin cells of the gill then form a cocoon around the glochidia.

After the fish have been inoculated, they will be held at the hatchery until some point in mid-May, when they will be put into cages with sand on the bottom. About 30 four to six inch fish will be placed in each cage. The cages measure 3 feet by 2 feet and are one and a half feet high. Scuba divers will then place the cages in selected locations, of which the river near St. Feriole Island is one.

The cages are kept in the river rather than at the hatchery, Brady explained, because the river is the best place for this step of the breeding process. The river produces everything a mussel needs for food.

The cages, he said, should be five feet below water even when the river level is low, so they should not interfere with the water ski shows or with boat or barge traffic.

Hatchery personnel will monitor the cages, and when the mussels have completed their metamorphosis and dropped off the fish, usually in mid-June, the fish will be released from the cages. Brady said the glochidia do not harm the fish, and, he added, "It may actually help the fish fight off other parasites."

The mussels will remain undisturbed until October, when divers will sift through the sand at the bottom of the cages and retrieve the mussels. Brady said they will probably be taken to overwinter at another site, and their ultimate destination will be research projects across the country or restoration of the mussel population in Iowa.

The success of the project Prairie du Chien project will be assessed at the end of the growing season. Brady said they will try two or three different species of mussel which have been raised fairly easily n the past. They will not try the Higgins Eye clam or pearlymussel this year, since it is an endangered species.

BAK Principal resigns, district seeks counselor

B.A. Kennedy Principal Joan Wick has announced that she has accepted a position with another school district and will be leaving the Prairie du Chien School District at the end of the school year.

"Joan wears many hats for us and will be greatly missed," said Drew Johnson Prairie du Chien Superintendent of Schools.

Joan announced this to the staff on April 3. Johnson stated that an internal plan is already evolving to cover the school’s needs. On top of this has been the ongoing lobbying of a group of people to add another counselor at Bluff View Intermediate School.

Johnson said, "It is very possible that we can make everyone happy by adding a counselor and move duties around to make that happen."

In addition to Wick’s announcement, another probable teaching staff resignation, that has not been announced, is known to be coming. "Given these two looming changes, the administrators feel that by moving a number of duties around, we can fully utilize a counselor position. As is done with any open position, we view this as an opportunity to re-prioritize needs and obviously look for ways to become more efficient within our system," Johnson said.

At the next board meeting, administration will present a plan and that plan will most likely include adding a full-time counselor into the mix. Prior to that, a tentative positing for a full-time counselor to start next school year is being put out. "If our restructuring plan receives the green light from the board, we will probably be interviewing and hiring for this counselor position in about three to four weeks," Johnson said.

These moves are not projected to add cost. "In fact, this will almost assuredly be less cost as we will most likely be shaving down our administrative team even further to make this happen, and we will have to shift some of the other duties around, but overall we feel we can make this happen, keep people happy, and save some money too," said Johnson.

In 2000, the school had 7.5 administrators. This year, the school is down to only 5 total administrators and only 4.5 administrators are charged to the operating fund.