Odd Wisconsin Archive
A Midwinter Survey Party
It was 22 below zero when officials arrived in Madison "to survey out some lots and blocks around the public square ... so that those persons who intended to build, could find their lots." When the territorial convention in Belmont ended, promoter James Doty hired Moses Strong to stake off the capitol square and downtown lots. Strong engaged John Catlin and an assistant, and Josiah Noonan, who owned the land that would become the UW campus, came along, too.
"I was on horseback," Noonan later wrote of their arrival on February 19th, "the rest of the party were in the sleigh. Before we had selected a camping spot, a severe snow storm came upon us and we put back to St. Cyr's [at Gov. Nelson State Park]... It was dark, the snow beating upon us fast, and but for Strong's experience as a frontiersman, I do not believe we could have crossed the lake."
The next morning they began running lines in the vicinity of Vilas Park Zoo near Lake Wingra, which "I learned from Joe Pelkie, the early French settler, was the Indian name for that body of water; and I had it so entered on the map in that month of February [1837]." Having finished with Noonan's lands, they moved their camp to the vicinity of Monona Terrace where "I undertook to cut through the ice for water, and we had to cut from six to twelve inches deeper than the dept of our axe handle. What we supposed would be the work of a few minutes, we found a wearisome job before we got through with it."
Catlin recalled that that night "We found the snow very deep, and after a hard day's work, wading in the snow, we camped at night between the Third Lake [Monona] and Dead Lake [Wingra], where we found some thick timber and a sheltered spot. With a good deal of difficulty we made a log heap fire and eat our snack, and after the fire had thawed the snow, and warmed the ground, we removed the fire to a little distance and made our bed on the ashes where the fire had warmed the ground."
With his land surveyed and provisions getting scarce, Noonan departed for Milwaukee while Strong, Catlin, and the assistant went to work making lots downtown. "We stuck the stakes in the snow, the ground being too deeply frozen in most places to receive the stakes," Catlin wrote. "We camped in the timber in the low grounds under the hill of the Fourth Lake [where james Madison Park is now located], and were compelled to abandon our work by a severe snow storm, that so blinded us, that it was with great difficulty we found our way across the Fourth Lake to the cabin of St. Cyr, where we stayed two days, until the storm was over."
On February 26th Strong and Catlin finished surveying all of Doty's land around the capitol square and went overland to the log cabin of Wallace Rowan at Poynette, the only habitation for miles in any direction besides St. Cyr's. They then sleighed down the frozen Wisconsin River to Helena, and cut overland back to Mineral Point.
For the next few weeks we'll feature episodes from early Madison history, not all of them odd, to help celebrate our state capital's 150th anniversary.
:: Posted in Madison on March 30, 2006
Did You Know?
The Wisconsin Historical Museum is currently featuring Odd Wisconsin objects in the latest exhibit: Odd Wisconsin. And don't miss the Odd Wisconsin book by author Erika Janik published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
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