Origins, Archaeology, the Horicon/Van Brunt Connection, and the “de-extinction’ Plan to Bring It Back Did you know Wisconsin once hosted billions of passenger pigeons? The story of the passenger pigeon’s rise and fall has long fascinated historians and naturalists. Science writer Charles C. Mann revisited this ecological mystery in his acclaimed book 1491: New Revelations …
The Marsh the Rich Guys Tried to Own Before it was a national wildlife refuge with a visitor center and a gift shop, Horicon Marsh was 32,000 acres of the best duck hunting in the Midwest — and for about forty years, a handful of very rich men did everything short of putting up a …
A Different Revolution: Horicon Marsh and the Native World of 1776 Long before the Van Brunt Factory, the dam that created Lake Horicon, the mills, the farms, rail lines, drainage ditches, and town plats fixed the Horicon area into the modern Wisconsin map, the great marsh at the headwaters of the Rock River belonged to …
A History of Tourism at Horicon and Horicon Marsh Long before Horicon was a city — before the dam, the ducks, the duck hunters, the drainage ditches, and the hard-won restoration — this corner of Dodge County was shaped by forces far older than any of us. What we now know as Horicon Marsh began …
Where Water Shapes Memory: Horicon’s Boathouses through Time. The history of boathouses in Horicon, Wisconsin, is deeply intertwined with the evolution of Horicon Marsh. When European settlers arrived in the vast wetland once known as the “Great Marsh of the Winnebago,” they built some of the earliest structures along the banks of the Rock River. …
