Kickapoo River

About

Kickapoo River, Wisconsin — 1969 Proposed Dam Defeated, 1970 Wild/Scenic, 8,589-ac Kickapoo Valley Reserve 65-mi. The land came first, and it is very old. Because the last glaciers bypassed southwestern Wisconsin, the Driftless Area preserves one of the oldest river systems in the world, its ridges and coulees unsmoothed by ice. That ancient ground held people for a very long time. Between 1959 and 1974, archaeologists from the Wisconsin Historical Society identified 132 sites in the land north of La Farge, with artifacts dating from 10,000 BCE to 1,150 CE. The unglaciated terrain offered shelter in sandstone rock overhangs used for thousands of years.

The valley was Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) territory for centuries. The river's name derives from the Kickapoo people, who briefly occupied the area, but the Ho-Chunk were its primary inhabitants. That distinction would matter again generations later, when the Ho-Chunk Nation returned as a formal partner in the river's future.

The timber era reshaped the watershed next. From the 1830s through the 1920s, the Kickapoo was logged to feed the regional timber industry and railroad expansion, worked by local sawmills, logging drives, and downstream lumber operations. The exhaustion of old-growth stands around 1910, the start of state forestry conservation in 1915, and the establishment of state forests in the 1930s ended large-scale logging. Its mark lingered in the river's water quality, a legacy later addressed by restoration and TMDL programs. The first comprehensive hydrological studies followed the timber years, beginning with USGS survey work in the 1870s.

The river's central drama was a dam. Authorized in 1962 to tame the Kickapoo's chronic flooding, the La Farge Lake and Dam project saw the Corps of Engineers break ground in 1969. It was partially constructed but never completed, defeated by environmental opposition. For decades the half-built site sat as a monument to a river preserved. In 1970, a Wild and Scenic River designation protected parts of the Kickapoo. Then, in 2000, the Corps transferred the La Farge Dam site to a joint state–Ho-Chunk partnership, creating the Kickapoo Valley Reserve — 8,589 acres in Vernon County, managed by a citizen Board and recognized today as a National Natural Landmark.

Today the Kickapoo is paddled in distinct stretches, all Class I. The 15 miles from Ontario to Rockton run beneath the best Driftless bluffs; the 12 miles from Rockton to La Farge pass through the Kickapoo Valley Reserve; and the 30 miles from La Farge to Wauzeka wander the lower valley's meanders. It is a popular trout-fishing destination and an economic anchor for Viroqua, Soldiers Grove, and Gays Mills. The 1990s brought the Kickapoo River Watershed Restoration Project, and the 2010s the Corridor Management Plan, the KVR Management Plan, and a Sediment Remediation Project. Outfitters including Drifty's Canoe Rental in Ontario and Mr. Duck's Canoe Rental in La Farge launch trips onto a river that, having outlasted both ice and engineering, still bends where it wants to.