Oconto

On the west shore of Green Bay, numerous rivers and small streams empty into the bay, and at or near the mouth of each are large sawmills and other manufacturing establishments.

These rivers are the Big Suamico, Little Suamico, Oconto, Pensaki, Peshtigo, and Menominee, and in Michigan the Little Cedar, Bark River, Birch Creek, Ford River, and Escanaba River.

the timber cut on the upper waters of these streams is floated down to the mills and there manufactured for shipment some of these mills are immense institutions and give employment to large numbers of men the general character of the soil along the west shore of the bay is sandy and sterile from one to four miles back from the bay and is thickly timbered with evergreens but there are now and then considerable tracts of good sandy loam upon which are heavy growths of beech maple oak and other timber and the land is excellent for agricultural purposes there are also numerous tracts of marsh some of them timbered with cedar and tamarack and some bare and yielding large quantities of native cranberries back from the bay shore however the character of the soil is better and there is a fine agricultural country which is becoming rapidly settled up with a thriving and industrious population among the most thrifty of these fanning settlements were those in the vicinity of pestigo village and known as the sugar bushes the lower sugar-bush comprises the settlements extending westwardly from pestigo village for about seven miles on the road running southeastwardly to oconto and a branch striking westwardly from that near the village the upper sugar-bush settlement lay along the road running southwesterly from pestigo and known as the lake naquavay road between these two settlements was a road running southwesterly and the settlements upon it were called the middle sugar-bush these settlements consisted of about three hundred families we have been thus particular in describing the country that the scene of the fires may be better appreciated the eastern shore of the bay differed from the western more in the fact that it contained fewer villages the population being scattered upon farms the land is generally good and the timber being heavy the clearings have been accomplished at great expense of muscle and time by the hardy settlers most of them are of foreign birth belgians french danes bohemians etc who were beginning after years of patient hard toil to gather together some of the comforts of life in addition to the bare necessities which in their poverty they had been content with as pioneers their lives had indeed been lives of patient toil the first of these belgian colonists arrived here in eighteen fifty five fifty six and fifty seven and were absorbed into the almost unbroken woods and for a time lost sight of by the dwellers in the cities and villages but after they had erected their rude cabins they were soon heard from their daughters applied for and received employment as servants earning their own support in learning our language while fathers brothers and mothers were at work with a will taming the forests they cut down the timber cut it into bolts split out and shaved shingles by hand and brought them into the streets of green bay on rude carts by ox-teams and even with cows in some instances employing two or three days with one trip and living on the milk of the cows on the way such industry in patient endurance always meets with reward and their case was not an exception their ox-teams were superseded by horses they are now supplied with good houses and with agricultural implements and the products of their farms is an important item in the general product of this region chapter two the summer of eighteen seventy one will ever be a memorable one in northern wisconsin as indeed in many other localities it will be memorable throughout the united states for its shipwrecks for the losses by fire in every quarter for the crimes and the accidents that have cast shadows over nearly every day but especially have northern wisconsin and michigan to remember it for the unparalleled drought throughout those states and the consequent devastating fires that have left black unsightly scars upon their fair domain northern wisconsin as a rule is not subject to drought while in former years the earth in the central and southern portions of the state has been parched and vegetation blighted and withered the gentle showers of heaven have not failed to descend here and the harvest time has witnessed the gathering in of abundant crops of grain hay and all the products of the soil we had come to consider droughts very much in the light of penalties imposed by nature for the cutting down of the forests and considered ourselves with our vast extent of timber land comparatively secure we had needed no prophet to pray for rain for when the farmer began to look at his wilting crops and to think the rain was needed it usually came but the season of eighteen seventy one was an exception the winter preceding was comparatively without snow and this was the first calamity to the northern lumbermen as they were unable to secure their usual stock of logs an extremely wet spring was prophesied but the prophecy was not fulfilled there was no unusual amount of rain the months of april and may passed with their usual smiles and tears and june and july failed to bring a compensating amount of rain on the night of the eighth of july there was quite a smart shower but the thirsty land drank up the moisture and it left little trace the swamps which as we have before remarked are frequent in this portion of the state are usually covered with from one to two feet of water but so dry had they become that no water was visible and one could readily walk over the surface the want of water began to be keenly felt the northern extension of the c and n w railroad from fort howard to menominee was being built and in the location of railroad camps the most difficult thing was to find a site where water was plenty deep wells were unsuccessfully dug and in some cases wells were sunk to the depth of ten feet in the midst of the usually impassable swamps before water was found and then the supply was meagre and unsatisfactory many of the railroad hands laid down their implements and refused to work owing to the insufficiency and poor quality of the water and we saw water carried several miles out on the line of the road from pestigo to supply the hands The railroad embankments in the sand were like hot ash heaps, into which the feet would sink at every step, and the swamps that had been considered the greatest obstacle to the cheap construction of the road proved the best working ground.

Again, on the night of the 5th of September, another grateful shower fell, which, had it not been for the parched condition of the ground, would have been considered quite a heavy rain.

We hear no particulars.

The report that Kahn's mill has been burned is not confirmed.

At Oconto, at last accounts, the whole available population are out, resisting the inroads of the fire.

Brunquist's barn, with a quantity of hay, was burned.

Yeah, partner event, yeah.

So my dad was actually supposed to fish this one with me, but he fished the NWT out of Oconto as a co-angler, and he actually broke his back on day two with a different pro.

So he didn't make the trip, and I actually, a buddy of mine from up here and I are fishing together, so.

Wait, what happened? How did that happen? Yeah, what happened to

Obviously you're, you're sitting like you're, you're at the top of the top of the wall.

I world right now coming off the championship.

Um, and I'm curious kind of just to hear your, your insight on this because between the, the championship and what, uh, the, where was the event, the one before that? Oconto.

Okay.

But it was just I tell you, you get pumped for the season when you see matches like that and just hearing the marathon crowd behind whoever was filming was just kind of gets the old goosebumps cranking.

We have Oconto up next.

Hold on, Teague.

I got a little PSA here.

Because it's patchwork, right? Probably 90% of it's white, but then I got a couple patches of black in there, which makes it look weird.

We'll be talking about Peshtigo.

Wait, no, Oconto.

It's 14th in the Peshtigo section with 36 points.

It definitely has cost me.

I mean, Green Bay a couple weeks ago when we were at Oconto, if I would have kept... certain fish through the day on both days at Green Bay, I would have taken second place at Green Bay instead of fifth.

But again, I was swinging for a win, so I was throwing certain fish back because I wanted to win it.

And that's just the mentality I take.

When I get a grinder of an event, the old adage, you don't leave fish to find fish.

You just sit in on those fish, And you force feed them basically like not quite, but like you just you sit where the right fish are and you just can't leave them because we do it on Green Bay all the time.

I mean, this last Oconto event for NWT was anomaly with how good of a bite it was usually on Green Bay.

Like, it's not like that.

oh that is so funny Someday on this radio station, I'm going to tell you the story of Mike Jakubowski's brother, Tony, and his dad.

They grew up in northern Wisconsin, like Oconto, Lena, that whole area.

And his late father, Tom, who was a...

A very important part of my life, he and his wife, Sue.

He'd be like, oh, yeah, that guy, he must have gone to Pensacola State.

And now Pensacola is a small town.

It's like a suburb of Oconto.

Not even a small town.