Jane Carter oral history interview

              INTERVIEW WITH JANE CARTER

JULY 1, 2003 BY ALAN FULLER AND

STUDENTS OF MAYVILLE MIDDLE SCHOOL

CARISSA: Did you live in this area for a long time?

MRS. CARTER: A long time. I moved to this area in 1936 from Chicago. That sounds like a

long time ago. I attended the public schools. We didn’t have a middle school. I went to high

school here and then went down to Madison for college. I graduated from high school in 1950.

We always said that “ ’50 was nifty”! After college we did move away. We lived down in

Washington, D.C., and in the Princeton, NJ area until we came back here in 1965. So down I’ve

been back here for another 38 years. So this is home! Mayville is home.

ASHLEY: What activities did you do when you were little? Did you ice skate or fish?

MRS. CARTER: Sure, we used the areas a lot. We want to talk about the river don’t we? I just

brought some of these books that we have. Understand that Olga Herberg has shared this one

with you which we did in 1995. This is a book that is one hundred years old from 1903 when the

Redabush Building downtown was dedicated. It’s in German and in English. This was what we

called our [unintelligible] which was in 1922. And, Iron is King maybe some of you know that

book. But I guess what I wanted to point out is that when they pick a picture for the front; it’s

always with the river. Because we have a river flowing through Mayville. When people first

located here, they came because of the river and the power they could get from it. I guess you all

know that. My earliest memories of the river are when we had our swimming lessons. We

didn’t have a pool. And we didn’t have the Hank Center for sure. But we swam down near the

foot bridge on Main Street were you cross over at the Pavilion. We were on the Main Street side

and it was a very sudden pier at the coast level. We had a Mrs. Horn who taught us swimming

lessons. People who were waiting for their lesson would get up on that foot bridge that goes

across still. They’d be watching and waiting for our class to finish. We changed our clothes in

our dressing room that was in what had been the old ice house on the river. Have you talked

about the ice house on the river? That’s gone now too, it was a big structure. It was just next to

the footbridge and the pavilion. Every winter they would cut and gather ice from the river. This

was on the Main Street side just south of where the bridge is. Because the ice would start to

melt, all of the floor of the structure was slanted so that when the ice would melt the water would

drip down onto the ground and back out to the river. It was very open feeling about the building.

We would change in there and get back into our warm clothes. Pretty soon, they said that they

were going to take the brickyard pond, which is the one that is the outdoor pool now, near the

school. They had been getting clay from that area for bricks. It was all spring fed. That pool is

still partially spring fed now. There is also municipal water that they bring in. They just kind of

dredged that out. They dug out more of that clay for the pool. But as a child I remember that as

just the brickyard pond. Because they made bricks there and pulled clay out of the ground.

Whenever you dig down, you get water. The city in it’s wisdom; the city fathers decided that

they could have a swimming pool there. I don’t know what year the pool opened. I know I was

a lifeguard there in my freshman year in high school. That was 1946-47. So it must have been

about that time when the pool opened. I taught swimming and was a lifeguard there. So then we

didn’t swim in the river any more.

The marsh always has been and still is a very favorite place of mine. Its 32,000 acres of

wetland. The northern two thirds is federally owned. The southern third is state owned and

operated. We would go out on old roads that aren’t even open now; it was the old Rt. 49. We’d

go out and watch the birds land. It was mostly egrets and blue heron. I don’t think we had as

many Canadian geese as we do now. The Canada goose migrations have really stepped up in

power and potency. At that point you could still go out and enjoy it. We have a son who is a

hunter. We would take him out to hunt on the marsh. When he was in high school, and couldn’t

drive yet, I’d drive him out. I guess you can hunt before you can drive, I don’t know. He’d talk

me into it. I’d drop him off at about 4:30 and then I’d come back and pick him up so he could

get to school. He told me that when I got there to pick him up I should never honk my horn or

anything because that would spook the deer that he was sighting. I should just kind of flick my

lights on and off. I told him, “My goodness, won’t you get lost down here?” And I remember

him saying, “No mother, I know that marsh just like the back of my hand!” He didn’t have

anything to guide him. At night when it’s dark you don’t have a lot of focus like the sun to tell

you where you are. It’s pretty flat. There aren’t too many landmarks. There might be more now

with the grain elevators and some of the things that are being introduced to the area. But at that

point there weren’t very many landmarks. We learned to love that marsh. We would take

picnics down to the Greenhead area. That is one of the original river bends that fed into the east

branch of the Rock River here. So that was a pretty spot. Now, I do act as the Volunteer

Coordinator for the State Naturalists programs every spring and fall. We have maybe 150 people

who come out and tell people about our marsh. They give out maps and show them how they

can drive the 32 miles around or go over go to Greenstown, and get to the litch park or how to

come into Mayville and get something to eat, or stay overnight. The marsh has become a great

tourism destination. We call it “soft tourism”. It’s not like Baraboo when you go up to

Wisconsin dells and you have the wild waters and all of the big hotels and things like that. This

is all natural. This is a growing thing. There is more and more interest in it. And it’s what we

see on the river. Did any of you go down to the canoe regatta on the 4th of July? It was featured

in the Journal-Sentinel yesterday. Did you see the pictures? It was called “Canoeing the Rock”

or something like that. There were three great pictures. One had the pavilion and the whole

river. One had the river and fabulous little barn with the canoe contestants. They compete to go

the fastest down the thirteen mile course. It was Brad Tagga, a gentleman here in town, a young

person who hasn’t lived here that long who realized that our Rock River was so scenic, and had

all of these loops. It loops around the golf course. That’s not really the Rock River, it the east

branch. It’s flowing north here. When it gets up to Kecosky and the east and west branch comes

in from Well Pond. Then the waters diverge upon the Horicon Marsh. When they converge,

down in Horicon, people say that that’s that Rock River. But I’ve had other people tell me that

this is still a branch. There are other branches that join it before it joins the Mississippi, which

goes all the way down to the Gulf. So we are, these are the headwaters of a very important river.

But mostly it gives us this great scenic beauty to enjoy. And, it brings the birds and wildlife out.

MR. FULLER: I know that the marsh it pretty accessible by roads and things now. But when

you were in high school did people go out there just for adventure and to explore?

MRS. CARTER: Yeah. We went out of the dike road a lot. There’s there dike road, it goes

straight in and then it turns south. People fish along there because it’s deep. Oh yeah. The

marsh had been dredged at the turn of the century. You talked about that. They tried to cultivate

potatoes or carrots or something, and it didn’t work. I think maybe the dirt was too heavy.

It did give us a navigable pattern in the southern portion of the marsh. We can go in there. We

know that you can operate if you go in over at the Blue Heron Landing. If you can go in the

evening or early morning you’ll probably see more wildlife. Of course you don’t want to go to

school late in the evening or very early in the morning. But if your family ever goes be sure you

latch on to an early morning or late afternoon. That Blue Heron Landing was not here of course,

but we could all go over to the Greenhead which was the public launch. It was then and is now.

In the old 49, we’d go across to Well Pond. We didn’t have the federal or state. I guess we had

the field office up in Palmatar. I know we had that, because that’s where you had to line up to

get a hunting license and things like that. Do you know where that is? You go into Horicon and

it overlooks the entire southern portion. You can see the white pelicans. They are here again

this year, which is good. One whooping crane had been sighted. When they had a bird festivals

there…have you heard about that? They identified over 250 species of birds in three days. They

have to see them during the organized activities. If you were staying in Beaver Dam or

something and were driving over to the bird festival and you saw a bird that would not count.

You had to be right there during the activities of the bird festival. When people hear that there

are that many, they are just blown away. They come from a long way around to add to their lists

of the birds they’ve seen. And Nikon, that’s a kind of camera. They make big telescopes. They

have every year an outdoor photo op program. They used to move it around from place to place.

Then they came to the Horicon Marsh and people saw so many birds and it was such a successful

outing they returned four years in a row instead of moving it to different places. That’s a tribute

to this area, which we have right here! People come up from Chicago. I know that we also get

an awful lot of visitors from Milwaukee. A lot of people will drive up on a Sunday or Saturday

just to be, where we live all of the time! It really is a privilege to be here.

People ask where we live. Sometimes we’ll say that we’re just north of Brown’s Corners

which doesn’t help much because you know Brown’s Corners isn’t very much either. We’ll say

that we’re on the Horicon Marsh. And they’ll say, ‘oh, yeah, we’ve been to Horicon Marsh, we

know where that is’. They may not have heard of Mayville at that point, but they know where

the Horicon Marsh is.

The other exciting thing about the marsh area, for sure, and the river is that the Native

Americans were so plentiful here. You’ve talked about all of that history and all of the effigy

mounds. Have you been up to see those? There were something like 260, and there still are over

one hundred of them that are visible and plot able now, in this area. When they put highway Z

through, it went directly through a very major effigy mound. It was a mirror reflection of the

constellation Scorpios. It was either Scorpios or Orion. It covered something like three football

fields. You can imagine how long that is. So it goes from east side of “Z” across and over onto

the other side. But they put a stone, where every star was in the sky. You can see it. And Mars

is a part of that. It looks red in the sky. So that stone is red. We’ve had people come to look at

those effigy mounds on Highway Z all the way from Texas. Some Native American tribal leader

came up. Our people, and the people out of Fon du Lacque and others who have researched it

and said that it is nice, but they think there is something missing. “Maybe this rock should be off

to the left a bit.” So the people from Texas came up and looked. Then, they went back and

emailed back. They said, “We think it is great, but we think that there is something missing here,

and this should be off to the left a little bit.” Well, people were just in awe that this is such a

standard, or remarkable or predictable effigy in their beliefs, that they charted it completely like

the people here had charted it. And they had never seen it before! This could be, for this area;

besides our river and besides our marsh, which of course drew the Native Americans here, I

think that history is just evolving more and more here right now. There have been a couple of

books written about it. As you young people grow up you’ll probably hear more about the effigy

mounds. There is a marvelous stone out there on Z. It’s like a buffalo. The rear of the buffalo is

just a straight cut, right down. In the body of the buffalo there is an arrow carved. They know

that know that no natural rolling or tumbling of a rock would ever cut it like that to make it look

like the back end of a buffalo. And of course, they know that no natural cause would ever have

chipped this ‘v’, which points directly to the solstice. Anyway, it’s very oriented to the sky. So

we know that those were made by Native Americans maybe two, or three or maybe four hundred

years ago, maybe even longer than that. All of Horicon was filled with effigy mounds. It

showed them how to hunt. There are birds. There was a bird effigy in the marsh. It showed

them where to go to hunt birds in the marsh. There’d be a bear, or in the shape of another animal

that you might want to hunt. There’s just an amazing wealth of information here.

Could you share with the children the history of your family business?

MRS. CARTER: That’s why we moved up from Chicago. My parents, my father was in the

dairy business; working for Pure Milk. He had saved some money. He had saved $5,000.00 and

in 1936 he knew that was enough to live on for three years. He could bring my Mom, us three

children and the dog and cat and moved to Mayville. We came up and there was some space in

what was called Bear Juice Dairy at that point. It’s on Bridge Street. It’s set back and in behind

the motor park. This man bottled milk. He also had extra room and he had advertised it. My

father looked at it and said, “Alright, I’ll make cheese there. This is where the good milk is.”

Dodge County has some of the richest, darkest most beautiful soil from the glacier that left it

here. So he came up and he had a recipe, or formula for making cheese. He started making

these little red Goudas. You’ve seen them at the store. They say ‘Maybud Gouda”. May is for

Mayville. They also started to make this consumer sized, seven ounce Gouda, and Edam. That’s

all they made. Eventually they started to make other things. He started to make it. He’d go get

the milk and dump it in and make the cheese and wrap it up. Then he’d put on his coat and go

sell it. People would look at it and say, “It looks like a tomato!” They didn’t think it looked like

a cheese. It was dipped in red wax. Pretty soon they started to buy it. He made a good friend

out in New York. His name was Benjamin Villa. He told my father that he would not long give

him some money, because he didn’t have any money at that point, but he would also buy all of

the cheese he could make. Then it was in 1939, before the Second World War, the city of

Mayville…..Dad needed more space. The Purity Cheese Company needed more space. They

went to the City of Mayville and for a transaction of one dollar, just to make it legal, the city

gave Purity Cheese the property that is down on Furnace Street. It used to be the old iron works

and its building. It’s now called Old Fashioned Cheese. They gave them that entire piece of

property for a dollar! That was just marvelous because the property had, going into the hill five

and six thick concrete, steel reinforced walls. These were perfect for aging cheese. Against the

hill it was cool. That would have been in about 1938 or 39. They still made cheese on Bridge

Street, but they eventually moved everything down there. They built then what is now called the

International Distribution Center. It’s now part of Beatrice Cheese Company. They bought it.

But that was the Purity distribution center. They made Gouda and Edam in a loaf. They made

knuckalos, and culanos which were Scandinavian spice cheeses. They made a pineapple cheese

which was from England. That was in the shape of a pineapple which means hospitality. They

made quite a large variety of cheeses. In 1975 it was sold to Anderson-Clayton which was a

company from Texas. We decided that we didn’t want to move to Texas. We decided that we

wanted to stay in Mayville, my husband and I. The company was sold, and then sold again. It is

not part of Kraft General Foods, in their specialty foods division. They’ve kept making the

Mayville Bud Gouda. I am glad they kept that name. It is a part of the specialty foods division

and a part of Phillip Morris.

During that time I think there were about 200 employees at the factory. This was leading up to

1975. Then they had 200 patrons; the farmers who sold their milk to Purity. I don’t know if I

can come up with the tonnage of cheese that they made per year. But they had lots of vats. A lot

of people in Mayville would say that we’ve seen the May bud cheese from Mayville. They’ve

also seen the Mayville steel from our metal working industries. It was a very good run I guess.

The Purity Cheese Company actually existed as an entity for about 30 years.

MR. FULLER: Before he came to Mayville, he had never made cheese before? Your father?

MRS. CARTER: My father had not made cheese, but he had been working for what they called

Pure Milk Association in Chicago. He had graduated from the University of Wisconsin in

Madison. He put himself through school and went to Chicago and he was working with Pure

Milk to establish a safe milk supply. He knew that he wanted to work for himself. I don’t know

about you people, but you may want to work for yourselves at some time too. He had a man to

help him develop the culture for the cheese. You have a have a certain type of culture to make

all the different kinds of cheese. If you want to make swiss, or cheddar or Gouda or Edam. He

could do it and had little batches in the basement I guess, in a tub probably. You can make

cheese in anything you know. If you whip cream too long, or, if you make ice cream and whip it

too long you’ll get curds. If you press those curds together you’ve got cheese. So he thought he

wanted to try it, but he came to Mayville because of the very splendid milk you get from the

cows that are grazing on such green, fertile pastures. The milk only tastes like the properties it

has from the grass that the cows eat. We worked in an Amish community over in [unintelligible]

and Saylorville on distributing their cheeses. They are in what was called the ‘clover belt’.

There is lots of clover that grows wild over there. So when their cows grazed in the clover

fields, that milk has certain entities that are unique to that milk. And you can make a splendid

cheese from them because it’s all just the same flavor. So as far as cheese goes, that’s something

else that’s very exciting about this area. We have very good milk here. And that’s the reason

my family came up here.

MR. FULLER: What were the most common cheeses back then?

MRS. CARTER: Probably a cheddar cheese.

MR. FULLER: What made him make all of the other kinds?

MRS. CARTER: He knew he probably couldn’t compete with all of the other kinds of cheddar;

Vermont cheddar and Wisconsin cheddar and New York state cheddar. At that time one was

else was making Edam. The Edam ball is historically a five, eight or ten pound ball. But he

knew he wanted to make it smaller. He is credited with having made the first consumer sized

packaged, natural cheese. A natural cheese is one where you make the curd, and you age it and

never do anything with it. In processed cheese, you take that natural cheese and grind it up and

cook it or kill it, we always say. It’s dead then, because nothing is going to happen to

pasteurized cheese.

So you’ve got to have some ideas about what you want to do.

MALE STUDENT: Have you ever worked in an industry on the marsh?

MRS. CARTER: Yes. I’d say it’s one of our states biggest industries. It is tourism. We bring

more people into Wisconsin up Route 41 or 43. You can see all of the people driving up from

Chicago to go up to northern Wisconsin. But they also come here. Tourism is big, and it is an

industry. I think by mandate, we’re never doing to be able to have anyone who can establish a

factory on the marsh. It is zoned as natural habitat.

MR. FULLER: Speaking of that; when you were little, that would have been close to the time

when farming was ending and the marsh was being taken over by the federal lands.

MRS. CARTER: I think it already was. That farm, the experimental one, was early in the

1900’s.

MR. FULLER: I question was I guess; have you noticed many changes over the years in the life

on the marsh? Mr. Schinderle told us that went he was little, he never remembered seeing any

deer on the area. They had all come there since.

MRS. CARTER: They were there in the 1950’s for sure.

MR. FULLER: I would guess that when they were farming, there wasn’t much.

MRS. CARTER: That could be, but I don’t know for sure. I do know that we had to protect the

boarders around the marsh from becoming housing; gentrified, we call it. Because birds are not

going to come down and land just is that little area, if they have to land over a chimney. We

want to keep the surrounding areas very much available for the birds. On the west side there is a

lot more farmers’ crop land. If you drive around the marsh you’ll see it. We are starting to see

some…there are some towns like Sekoski and Leroy that are getting kind of close. There are

still farms. I don’t know, other than the geese. We could talk about plants, what we call exotic

or foreign [invasive] plants that have been introduced. Birds wouldn’t really want to land on the

marsh area. Our naturalist says that in the early spring when we get these great migrations of

birds that land; the birds are hungry. The birds, and geese too have gone off of the flyway and

turned directly west to come to the marsh. They sense it, they feel it and they’ve known it’s

there. They turn at a direct 90 degree angle to come over here. But as Bill Volker had said, and,

if you’ve ever gone out to the banding on the marsh where he catches the birds in a net and he

takes the birds and blow back the feathers. You can look at the tummy and there is just hardly

any fat left. You can’t see any. All you can see is dark meat, like a drumstick on a chicken

where there should be little strains of yellow fat. He’ll say that that bird was in jeopardy, it had

to come down. It had to land here to get sustenance. It may have flown four or five hundred

miles; these little birds. Some of them fly for thousands of miles from South America. So they

found this source and the come and land there to refurbish their energy. That’s why it’s so

important that we maintain that spot for them; for them to be able to eat, and get what they need

to continue their trip.

I think that’s an interesting question. I probably was not that involved with the animals.

I know now that we had the Bocubar flowage on the southern end in front of the DNR service

center. They have raised the level of the water and they are going to try and flood out the

cattails. Before they’re able to do that, the muskrat have come in and built numerous homes and

taken down the cattails to build their houses. You’ll see big empty, open water, which is what

we want. We want open water there because the geese, ducks or heron or whatever can’t land on

cattails. That’s what you see when you go up on Rt. 49, open water. But the other thing is that

the cattail revitalizes itself by getting last years cattail that looks brown and dead. But through

that stem, the air goes down underground and allows this years growth to come up again. So if

the cattail aren’t gone enough this year, next winter when the ice is there and the cattail are

sticking up they will go over on the ice and break off all of those cattails at the water level. So

that next spring, when the cattail is trying to get air, they won’t get any this time. So that’s all

management without using poisons or changing the topography of the land. It takes a lot of time

and patience to manage things like that. A couple of years to do it. They also have to manage

the marsh. If they don’t manage those waters.. by definition, a marsh is filling in. If they don’t

drain, or dredge or manage the flow of waters and open up the gates and let more water in, then

gradually dirt would come in. It’s just like if you manage a garden one year. Pretty soon it just

fills in with stuff.

Our river is changing. I know that because we lived on the edge of the Rock River for 38

years. When I first moved there we could mow a path along the river. I even planted some trees

down there; a willow and something else. By the time we moved out 38 years later the river,

which is flowing against that bank had moved in. All of that land was gone and the trees that I

had planted were gone. I planted them too close to the river’s edge. So the river is constantly

changing. Especially at that point; the back of the river is like this. It rushes again the land and

ate it away. I am sure that the other side hasn’t changed much. Our location changed a lot and

we lost a great tree that we used to fish from in the same little area. The waters came and

undermined the root system. The tree fell into the water over the 38 years that we were there.

This was the property on German Street.

STUDENT: What changes have been made on the Rock River?

MRS. CARTER: That’s a good question. I think that other than the two times when the two

dams were built here for power, I don’t think there have been too many changes; other than how

the flow of water has washed away. Maybe in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s they lowered the

water for a whole summer. They were trying to kill all of the carp, or what they call scavenger

fish. They go down and eat along the bottom and muddy up the water; then nothing can grow in

it. So they did a draw down on the river and all of us that owned property on the edge went in

and put rocks there so we could save some of the land. I wrecked a wheel barrow trying to move

one of those huge rocks. What you do when you want to move a big rock is that you dig a hole

next to it and move it into the hole. Without getting a front end loader or something like that

down there, you just can’t move them. So we’ve tried to maintain the edge of the river. I think

possibly one of the most negative things that I can think of is the run off of fertilizer from farms

which is introduced into the river. We have a lot of farm land and the farmers need to put some

fertilizers on their lands. And when the rains come it washes that fertilizer into the water. Then

we see all of this froth happening down below the dams. It’s less now that it was. They’ve put

some limitations on that. They saw that this was bad. Of course it’s not only bad for how the

water looks. It’s bad for how the water is for the fish too.

STUDENT: Do you know how the carp got here?

MRS. CARTER: Do you? No, tell me that story.

STUDENT: I think some German people brought them here for food. But then they….

MRS. CARTER: After they did that draw down on the marsh, maybe we got rid of the carp for

that one season. But one person who has some minnows and dumps them in, there are so many

ways that they can get started again. The conditions are so ideal; it’s warm, it’s shallow water,

there is enough to eat and these carp can just grow and grow so fast. They haven’t tried that

again. I didn’t know that they came from Germany, that it wasn’t a native fish. Thank you.

When our children were on the marsh in the 1960’s they would swim in the river a lot

there. They’d also fish in the river there. My son caught my daughter’s head one time with a

hook. There was a lady on German St. who would buy the fish in the spring when carp was in

fresh water and there was a lot of clear and fresh water there. She would buy their carp. I don’t

know how much she’d pay them, but they didn’t care. They were glad to fish and have

somebody use the carp. They’d also take the snapping turtles from the river and sell it to the

pubs. The restaurant would make snapping turtle soup. It was good soup! We used to raise

little painted turtles in the little pond that we had there. I got off of the subject. How did we get

on that?

STUDENT: It was the changes on the river.

MRS. CARTER: Those were all things that changed on the river. There were a lot of water

lilies on the river when we moved here in 1965. I don’t see too many in the river now. You

could not pick them. They were protected. I went to a place in Milwaukee and got some that

you could float up in our little pond. When you go north you seem them on Lake Buetamore.

You see lots of them there. But that was a natural beauty that possibly the fertilizer run off killed

them. I’m not sure, maybe not. But something happened in the change of the river water.

People saw what was happening. They could see the foam and stuff that was the cause. Then

they protected our river.

Have you ever been canoeing on the river? If you ever do, go under the Bridge Street

bridge. It is a home for swallows and other birds under there. It’s just like the movie “The

Birds” that Alfred Hitchcock made. You go under that bridge and you can hear the cars going

over you, but the birds living down there are just fabulous! And, as you go along, you have to

put your boat in maybe near the footbridge that’s across from the Whitestone School. There is a

landing there where you can put a boat in. You can only go between the two dams. But in that

stretch you’ll see lot of turtles sunning themselves on a sunny day. You’ll see the turtles and fish

jumping and lots of birds. That’s right in town!

MR. FULLER: Speaking of that, do you tend to think that people in Mayville who have a

resource like the Rock River tend to take it for granted?

MRS. CARTER: I grew up here. And I remember being in school one time and I talked about a

footbridge. I was raised here and I walked over the footbridge that’s in front of the limestone

school, we walked over the footbridge to school. People said, “What is a footbridge?” I said

that it’s a bridge that you can only go over on your feet! Our city father’s established those foot

bridges so we didn’t have to go all the way over to Bridge Street to cross. That was the only car

bridge. So yeah, I think they do. Originally, all of the industries backed up to the river. It was a

matter of navigation, a power source or whatever, so a lot of our stores downtown built facing

Main Street. What you got on the river was the back end of the store, nothing great. But little by

little, it’s opening up. Thank goodness it’s stayed open by the pavilion so you can right to the

river. And when the bank and the parking lot went in….

…. There is a boat ramp there that a lot of people use. Almost every weekend there are

several… there are more people who might want to use it. I know that the City of Mayville at

one point, when I was in the Chamber of Commerce was talking about purchasing some of the

stores that on Main Street and back up to the river, and opening up “pocket parks” so people

would see and go to the river and enjoy it a lot more. It’s one reason we were very pleased to see

that the city has decided to keep the steps that go up to the Catholic Church. Right now there

were some boards that were missing and they were just going to close them off. A lot of us use

those. I like to go over the river. It’s another footbridge. There are really three of them. One by

the pavilion, the one over the upper dam and the one that’s down by the limestone school.

MR. FULLER: There’s another one between the two dams, it’s kind of hidden isn’t it?

MRS. CARTER: It’s right down from the white lime school. It’s an active bridge. As a child I

lived on Washington Street. So a went to kindergarten walking down over that bridge. If it

hadn’t been there, I’d have to have gone two or three blocks down to Main Street with all of that

traffic.

MR. FULLER: Was that second dam always there?

MRS. CARTER: Yes, they had to do that to control the water. I don’t know what the date of the

second dam was. When we lived on the river, we had a boat but almost everyone that lives on

the river keeps a rowboat, a canoe or a kayak or something like that. I’ve seen some water

skiing. I’ve seen a power boat between the two dams and go fast enough. But it’s not really

leisurely enough. That’s usually up above the upper dam around the pavilion; they’ll put in for

doing water sports like that. You need a larger area for a longer time. I think that people

appreciate these little “vest pocket” parks and little gardens. Have you seen those? They are

right off of the Bridge Street where it goes over? Bill Schmidt is the owner of the corner

property and the Lovingwell’s the owners of the Carriage House have put in their own little

gardens. They can sit back there. The people who have property along the river have always

taken care of it. Mayville has a lot of flowers. People like their flowers and neat lawns.

MR. FULLER: If you were the voice of the river, what would you tell people?

MRS. CARTER: Enjoy me, but take care of me. Watch over me, so that other people in the

future can enjoy me too. When we think that it was a source, before they had refrigerators, for

their ice and keeping things cool here. It’s been a source for recreation and wildlife and power.

But mostly, it just a very pleasant topographical attribute that we have here in Mayville. Not

many towns have that that close to us.

MR. FULLER: Is there anything else that you’d like to tell us?

MRS. CARTER: No, but I’m glad that you are focused on the water.

STUDENT: Do you think we’ll make the same mistake with the marsh in the next millennium?

MRS. CARTER: You mean by trying to do cultivation there? No, I don’t think so, because

everything is so protected now as federal and state wildlife areas.

STUDENT: What information would you like to share it everyone?

MRS. CARTER: Well, I guess just the excitement of being able to be on these open waters here.

Encourage your families to take you out to just kind of meld into the environment. But you can;

all of you can walk down to the river. Bike or walk down. Take your fishing pole. There are

always people fishing at the dam. Down on the rocks, you have to be careful and get permission

from your parents to stand on the rocks; but often there are people just on the rocks catching fish.

The Naturalist who is at the state DNR Department is a consultant. He goes to Russia.

Because that is the largest source of fresh water in the world. It doesn’t have a very big footprint

on the earth but it’s very deep. The second biggest source are our Great Lakes. We’re so close

to those. We can enjoy Lake Michigan and Lake Ontario. He is working with a group from

around the world to chart what we call our Aquifers that have the fresh water. Because it’s going

to be one of the most precious resources in the world soon. We have pushed the limits of a lot of

our fresh water sources. Our branch of the Rock River is a natural water source that continues

down into the Mississippi, so it could be called a fresh water source too. It has a lot of industry

and a lot of potential for pollution, because it’s so large, and because it goes through so many

communities. We have to be watching all of these fresh waters as the years go on. Bottled water

had become a great privilege for a lot of people. So far in Mayville we have a clean water source

and we haven’t had to rely on that. But there are populations in this country and many in other

parts of the world that have to rely on water that is brought in to them. It’s a very precious thing.

I am glad that you are focused on water. I don’t know who decided that.

MR. FULLER: That’s part of what the Sense of Place program is I guess.

MRS. CARTER: We have a rich sense of place. We’ve been gifted by the glacier and by our

Creator.

MR. FULLER: I think part of it is to help everybody understand that it’s a gift that we have.

MRS. CARTER: Yes, and a very precious gift. To be that near to a natural wildlife habitat is

just incredible. People come! As I said, people drive 250 miles to be here for two or three hours

to see what we see every day! Let’s hope it stays that way. And I am glad that you are learning

about it this summer.

MR. FULLER: Thanks a lot for taking the time to come and talk to us. It was wonderful!

MRS. CARTER: It was a pleasure. You’re welcome.