Name/Title
Main Streets, Wisconsin and Waupun/ The Military RoadScope and Content
This cronicles the advancement of "Main" street, from the Fox-Wisconsin water way to the building of Military Road, Wisconsin's first state and federal highway. Highlighting the explorers, travelers and builders of the roads that would connect people. It would bring Mr. Seymour Wilcox in 1838 from Green Bay to settle Waupun.
MAIN STREETS. WISCONSIN and WAUPUN.
From 1673 on for about 150 years the Fox-Wisconsin water-way was Wisconsin's only travelled highway from east to west - our first Main street. It was in 1673 that Marquette and Joliet set forth on it to find the Mississippi River. A stream of people - looking for adventure; for wealth, especially in furs and for homes; the old and the young men and a few women who followed them. They were eager and expectant; courageous, too, since they were going through Indian country, into the unknown.
See Waubun by Mrs. Kinzie.
Then in May of 1829, three men with an Indian guide, rode on horseback from Green Bay to Prairie du Chien. They were James Duane Doty, Wisconsin's first judge and later a governor; Henry S. Baird, the first practising lawyer west of Michigan Territory; and Morgan L. Martin, a prominent lawyer and political leader of early Wisconsin. So far as it is known this was the first overland trip to be made between these two points - the ends of the famous waterway route. These men opened up a trail that became the general route for a road built by the soldiers
of the three forts. It came to be called THE MILITARY ROAD. IT WAS a rough trail - simply laid out and marked. That was about all.
Today there are but few traces of this old road. More direct and better routes have long since been established. The part of the highway running on the east side of Lake Winnebago from Green Bay to Fond du Lac is the best remnant of Wisconsin's first state and federal highway.It was advantageous to connect the three forts and in 1830 Congress voted to set aside a certain amount of money for the purpose of building it. From Green Bay to Fond du Lac. From Fond du Lac, a little south of west, crossing the southwestern corner of Green Lake County and arriving at Portage- or Fort Winnebago .From there the road swung south to northeastern shore of Lake Mendota and thence west to Fort Crawford at Prairie du Chien. The portion from the Mississippi R. to Lake Winnebago was finished in the fall of 1835,*' but the task of building from Lake Winnebago to Green Bay was more difficult because it had to be cut through a dense forest of hardwood timber. Finished in 1838. Soldiers from Fort Crawford built the road from there to Ft. Winnebago; Soldiers from Ft. Winnebago built on to Fond du Lac, and the Ft. Howard men completed the task - each group of soldiers working a week at a time.
The road was a crude affair - The track was cleared through the timber about two rods wide. On the prairies they set mile stakes. Sometimes mounds of earth and stones were thrown up as guide posts. On the marshes and other low places corduroy roads were made by placing small logs crosswise on the soft earth and covering them, sometimes with brush and sometines with dirt. A few rude bridges had to be built. It was a difficult road to follow. When a traveler crossed the prairie, he had to judge the course as accurately as he could, and when he reached the timber, hunt up the blazes and proceed. Quoted from Wisconsin Magazine of History, Sept. 1925. One writer said of the road after a heavy rain that it was "as slippery as noodles on a spoon".
As the road was finished in 1838, Mr. Wilcox must have decided to try it for he came to Waupun from Green Bay in the autumn of that year to look over the area and the following March moved his family here, to make the settlement which was to develop into Waupun.
Estimate of Mrs. Wilcox
Document typed as written with some pencil notations of "The Military Road" markers suggesting possible placement at Portage, Lamertine & Brandon, and Fond du Lac.Acquisition
Accession
2016.0083Source or Donor
Waupun Historical SocietyAcquisition Method
Collected by Staff