– This program is brought to you by the combined resources of the Wisconsin Historical Society and PBS Wisconsin.

[jaunty piano music, waterfall]

[unwinds fishing line, reel drags and clicks]

– Female Narrator: On Wisconsin Hometown Stories, a community started by a university, built up by harnessing the power of the Fox River, a city lit up by innovation…

[gears clicking]

and industry, and transformed by education, music,

[crowd cheering]

and activism on Wisconsin Hometown Stories: Appleton.

– Announcer: Funding for Wisconsin Hometown Stories: Appleton is provided by the Doug & Carla Salmon Foundation, Chuck and Barb Merry, the David L. and Rita E. Nelson Family Fund within the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region, Mary and Lowell Peterson, Community First Credit Union, Roger and Lynn Van Vreede, Dr. Henry Anderson, The Mielke Family Foundation, Oscar C. and Patricia H. Boldt, the Boldt Company, Robert C. Buchanan and Bonnie G. Buchanan, Peter and Connie Roop, the Timothy William Trout Education Fund, a gift of Monroe and Sandra Trout, donors to the Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programs, and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

– Appleton’s river landscape formed at the end of the last ice age when melting snows poured water into glacial Lake Oshkosh. Draining from the lake, which would eventually become Lake Winnebago, the water moved north toward Green Bay, hemmed in by the high ground of the Niagara escarpment, creating a river with some unusual features.

– Antoinette Powell: The Fox River runs from southwest to northeast. So, if you look at it on a map, it’s going what you think would be the wrong direction, but water runs from a high point to a low point. So, Lake Winnebago is the high point.

[energetic piano]

– Leaving Lake Winnebago, the Fox River eroded away softer rock layers, which created a series of falls and rapids that together equal the drop of Niagara Falls.

[waterfall cascades]

Portaging around the falls made travel on the Fox slow and difficult, but with a portage of less than a mile to the Wisconsin River, the Fox served as a major trade route for Native Americans and for the Europeans that would arrive in the 1600s.

– Dustin Mack: The Menominee predominated in the area. The Fox River was an important aspect of their life and culture here, as well, and so they traveled the river by canoe. It became kind of an outlet into Green Bay, but also into the interior of the continent. And so,

[paddling water]

by placing themselves along the river, they gained into a huge trade network that served them for hundreds and thousands of years.

– When French explorers arrived, they also relied on the river for traveling. Appleton would grow

[rushing water]

alongside one of the largest falls on the Fox, at a place the French called “the Grand Chute.” Here, travelers would naturally stop to decide how to navigate over or around the dangerous waters.

– Antoinette Powell: There were French fur traders, French explorers, French missionaries. The fur trade was extremely important during this era, especially beaver fur. It was because of fashion. In Europe, wealthy gentlemen wore hats made from felted beaver fur. The European beavers had pretty much been decimated by this time, and they needed a new source.

[traditional Meskwaki song “He Lives”]

– As French traders moved into the area, so did a Native American nation from the east. A tribe that would give the river its name.

– Johnathan Buffalo: We’re created out of red earth. Thus, we were named Meskwaki Red Earth people. By 1650, we moved to Wisconsin. That’s where we get our Chippewa name of Outagamie, until the French renamed us to “Renard.” Fox. We moved down to the Fox River, the Butte des Morts area, Lake Winnebago area to be closer to the trade that would be coming through. And we controlled that trade.

– Like other First Nation people, the Meskwaki made a living from the trade on the river. For around 50 years, they collected tolls on the boats of travelers passing by. Their presence gave the Fox River its name. But their control of the waterway grew costly for the French, who decided to end the domination of the Meskwaki.

[traditional Meskwaki song “I Don’t Know Where She Is”]

– Johnathan Buffalo: In 1712, that started the Fox Wars, which was fought until 1735.

[traditional Meskwaki song “I Don’t Know Where She Is”]

It’s been roughly estimated we were about 40,000 people. By the time we left Wisconsin to go to Iowa, what would become Iowa, we were about a thousand people.

[traditional Meskwaki song “I Don’t Know Where She Is”]

– After the Meskwaki left and the French and Indian Wars ended, control of what would become Wisconsin passed from the French to the British, and, finally, to the United States. When Wisconsin became a new territory, the government began treaty negotiations with the Menominee Nation, forcing them to give up most of their lands.

– Dustin Mack: The Treaty of Cedars was signed in 1836 between the Menominee and the United States government. The Menominee ceded four million acres, part of which was Appleton proper and the land around it.

– The Treaty of the Cedars opened the land for settlement by Yankee Americans from the east and European immigrants. The Fox River would continue to provide a valuable transportation and trade route for the Americans. And the Grand Chute, the future site of the city of Appleton, drew the attention of investors from the east who saw the falls not as an obstacle to navigation but as a powerful source of water power for industry.

[classic orchestra music]

[solemn violin]

In 1844, a wealthy Boston merchant named Amos A. Lawrence acquired nearly 5,000 acres of land in northeast Wisconsin. As a long-time philanthropist, Lawrence decided to encourage development in the area in an unusual way: by establishing a university in the wilderness.

– Antoinette Powell: Amos A. Lawrence decided to establish university with the donation of $10,000 and land, and the provision that the Methodist Church come up with another $10,000 to establish the university. Amos A. Lawrence wanted his new university to be tied to a religious organization because he felt that they had the discipline and the morality to improve not only the students who went to this place, but also the community.

[rushing water]

– Land agents recommended a site south of Lawrence’s land by the Grand Chute, with its many water power sites and no settlers.

– Antoinette Powell: So it was kind of a clean slate, and it could draw the New Englanders. It could draw the people from New York. Could draw the Protestants. And it would be a perfect place, a beautiful place to establish this university. The river was a draw. The beauty of the area was a draw. The city, the river, and the university inextricably linked.

– Wisconsin’s territorial legislature approved the charter for the university in 1847– one year before Wisconsin became a state.

– Antoinette Powell: Once it was established that Lawrence University was going to be here, the growth was exponential. Within four or five years, people were moving in. Buildings were going up. It was becoming a city.

– Harlan Kiesow: As the area became settled, Morgan Martin, who was a Wisconsin territorial delegate and businessman, had the idea of constructing a transportation system along the Fox River.

– Dustin Mack: So, the improvements included straightening and taming the river. By taking out the rapids using the series of locks and dams, the hope was that they could replicate the success of the Erie Canal, that they would be able to create the same sort of river traffic that would connect the Great Lakes through the Fox River, and eventually, over to the Mississippi, and out to New Orleans.

[hammering stone]

– Harlan Kiesow: After Wisconsin became a state, the Fox River Project became the first internal improvement project for the state. Work started in about 1852, and by 1856, it was completed enough that the Aquila steamship could make a round trip between the Mississippi River and Green Bay.

[rushing river]

– The massive project included the construction of 17 hand-operated locks, four of them in Appleton. Bigger boats could now travel the Fox River, and the dams could also capture the power of the river for industry. Words spread of the promise of both the river project and the university.

– Antoinette Powell: In 1853, the village of Appleton was created, combining the three villages of Lawsburg, Appleton, and Grand Chute. Lawsburg was on the east. Established by George Lawe. In the center was Appleton, established by John Mead. And then, on the west, was Grand Chute, around the Grand Chute, the waterfall. And then, in 1857, it was incorporated as a city.

– Dustin Mack: To make it more inviting for the railroads to come through here, Appleton was incorporated as a city. And it worked because the railroad did come through, and Appleton became a hub.

– Antoinette Powell: Water travel was superseded

[train whistle]

by the railroads pretty quickly after this happened. And so, water travel wasn’t exactly the way to get around as people thought it was going to be.

– The coming of the railroads meant that the Fox would be used mostly for shipping bulk freight, but the power captured by the dams would fuel the city’s industries.

– Dustin Mack: Some of the early industries along the river were sawmills, grist mills, and woolen mills.

[horse-drawn wagon]

Wheat farming was also a very important aspect of Appleton’s early economy. The Fox River provided power for grist mills so the wheat could be ground up. And then, the Fox River was a transportation system. And so, the wheat could be grown here, it could be ground, and then shipped out.

– In 1853, the Richmond Paper Mill, the Fox Valley’s first, began grinding up cotton rags and straw to make wrapping paper for local markets. And away from the river, College Avenue developed as the major road in Appleton.

– Dustin Mack: College Avenue leads people to the college. It leads people to downtown. And so, it was the first place that people came to where businesses set up. It’s essentially Main Street for Appleton. And then, the community expanded beyond that as it grew, including into the Third Ward and beyond.

[gentle guitar]

– Antoinette Powell: The area of Appleton that’s now known as the Old Third Ward is around the Grand Chute. And this was the area where industry was building up. It became industrialized pretty quickly, so the people who moved there weren’t necessarily drawn by the beauty of the river, but by the opportunity of the river.

[rushing river]

Industrialists built their homes on the bluffs overlooking the river. So, they were overlooking their businesses. So, you had the working class, you had the mill workers, and then, you had the industrialists living in the Old Third Ward.

– The city of Appleton continued to expand around the river, and the growing Lawrence campus, whose own growth would continue to help shape the future and character of the city.

[upbeat instrumental]

[rushing river]

The decision by Boston merchant Amos A. Lawrence to develop a city by first building a university paid off just as he predicted. Lawrence University attracted both settlers and students, who first studied a preparatory curriculum.

– Jerald Podair: It’s like a prep school. These schools exist today where sometimes, after high school, a student will go to a prep school for a year to get them ready for the rigors of college, and that’s what Lawrence featured at the very beginning.

[bright orchestra music]

– By 1857, the school grew to become a conventional college, graduating its first class of four men and three women.

– Jerald Podair: It’s a co-educational institution, which is pretty unique at the time. Only really the second in the United States.

– As the city grew around it, Lawrence brought famous speakers and politicians to Appleton, like the abolitionist Frederick Douglas and U.S. President William Howard Taft. During downturns in the economy, the young college often struggled to recruit students and pay its debts. But in 1894, Samuel Plantz, a graduate of Lawrence, returned to usher in a new era of growth.

– Jerald Podair: When Samuel Plantz becomes president of Lawrence, he does a lot of things for the university. He certainly straightens out its finances. He increases the enrollment. He increases the endowment.

– Many campus buildings rose up during the President Plantz building boom, but the new president also changed the focus of the college.

– Jerald Podair: He says, “We are not going to do what the larger universities do. The core of Lawrence’s mission is a liberal arts mission.”

– With its new mission as a liberal arts college, the number of students would soon quadruple, and under the leadership of President Plantz came a new emphasis on music that would also grow to be a core of the school’s– and the city’s– identity.

– Brian Pertl: Samuel Plantz created the Conservatory of Music that has lasted ever since. And it was at the same time that they created the first official music degree.

[arpeggios on piano]

Some of our earliest professors in the conservatory were prominent women musicians on piano and on voice. For us, women have been a huge part of our conservatory, both as in the professorate and the student body. The other aspect of that early conservatory that I think is important is it wasn’t just people attending the college courses, but from the very beginning, there was a community music aspect to the Conservatory of Music.

[cacophony of instruments]

– In Main Hall, the growth of the program created a musical disturbance in neighboring classrooms. To solve the issue, President Plantz began the building of Peabody Hall.

– Brian Pertl: And it was a big deal because it was a building dedicated to music. It had a fairly large hall that could seat almost 400 people in it.

– During the Plantz building boom, a lack of funding caused the construction of one last building to be delayed.

– Brian Pertl: This was a Methodist institution. They needed a chapel. But they had grander ideas because it was never supposed to be just a religious space. It was supposed to be a gathering space for the campus but also for the Appleton community. And the idea for the chapel came about in 1908.

– Fundraising for the chapel dragged on for a decade until an anonymous donor pledged over $60,000… if the Appleton community would match it.

– Jerald Podair: Lawrence actually went on its probably most successful fundraising campaign, described as a whirlwind campaign at the time. It took about a week or so. They were able to raise the $60,000, and they even got an extra $10,000 for an organ.

– Brian Pertl: And I love that because it’s kind of this nexus point between the university and Appleton. And so, this has been this gathering place since it was built in 1918. By the ’20s, that had pretty much shifted to a more secular use.

[Sista Strings, Nickel & Rose play strings music]

It is used for performance of all kinds, for speakers, for music, for orchestras, for choirs, bands. You name it, and it goes on here. So, one of the wonderful things about Lawrence, and then the chapel, is that it’s the home to the Artist Series, which has existed at Lawrence for over a hundred years. A hundred years of bringing in renowned artists from around the globe. It’s mind-boggling how many people have been here speaking or performing.

[Lawrence College Concert Choir sings traditional song]

– Announcer: We bring you now a special 15-minute program of choral music from Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin.

– Through its artist series, rigorous musical instruction, and performing ensembles, the Lawrence Conservatory built a nationally recognized program.

– Brian Pertl: In the ’40s and ’50s, the voice was our primary focus. We had orchestra. We had band. But I think it was really the choirs. People started to notice this music school in Wisconsin and realize how fine the education was. It just started to build from there. We’ve developed into a school that doesn’t have “the one thing we’re good at.” The one thing Lawrence is good at… is everything, and that’s really something that sets us apart. People who visit say, “You’ve got something special here, “and you should be really proud of what’s going on because it’s amazing.” That, to me, is the magic of this place.

[Lawrence University Choir sings in blended voice]

[flag rustling, river rushing]

– The power of falling water fueled the growth of Appleton’s pioneer industries. Flour mills, woolen mills, and rag paper.

[urgent instrumental, military marching]

As local militias headed to Camp Randall in Madison for training, the Civil War would transform Appleton’s paper industry, bringing about huge changes to the city and the region.

– Carol Couillard: The Civil War marked a change in the way that the whole country communicated. So people became used to getting the news during the Civil War because we had the telegraph. People were used to that, and they demanded it, and so newspapers really had to scramble to keep up, and the thing that held them back really was having enough newsprint.

[birds chirping]

– At the time, a change in Appleton’s wheat industry would help the city answer the nationwide call for more paper.

[horse neighing, reins clicking]

Wheat farming had moved to more western states, and Appleton’s small flour mills couldn’t compete with the giant modern mills running in Minneapolis. Appleton’s papermakers bought up closing wheat mills and began installing new machines that could grind up wood for pulp instead of cotton rags, allowing Appleton to help meet the demand for more newsprint.

– Carol Couillard: Appleton’s a really desirable place for papermaking because it has everything you need to make paper. You need some sort of fiber, you need water, and you need a power source, and Appleton had all three of those in abundance. A lot of the infrastructure was already here. The flour mills all had water wheels already. They knew how to get the goods to the different markets. And so, it was just kind of perfect that they found something that they could manufacture and really take the lead on.

[steam engine chugs, blows whistle]

– A chance meeting on a train would further jump-start Appleton’s papermaking expansion.

[train chugs, rings signal bell]

Henry Rogers, who made a fortune in western land speculation and silver mining, used that fortune to open banks in Colorado and Wyoming.

– George Schroeder: He starts the first bank in the state of Wyoming in Cheyenne. Why does he pick Cheyenne, Wyoming? A little thing called the Transcontinental Railroad is coming through. And when opportunity knocks, Henry wants to be there to answer.

When the railroad arrives in 1867, he now makes another fortune financing the economic explosion that follows the railroad.

The railroad is also another part of the story here because on the railroad between Cheyenne to Chicago, he’s going back and forth, he meets two gentlemen, William and John Van Nortwick. Their dad owns the biggest paper mill west of Ohio. It’s right outside of Chicago, and its biggest customer is the Chicago Tribune, the newspaper, but it can’t keep up with demand.

So, Henry’s got another great idea. He’s got the fortune. They’ve got the technical expertise. Let’s get into the paper business, and they’ve gotta pick a spot. Where do they pick? Appleton, Wisconsin because it’s perfect for the paper industry.

– Rogers and the Van Nortwicks formed the Appleton Paper and Pulp Company in 1876. Soon the mill was grinding out pulp for Chicago and making six-and-a-half tons of newsprint a day.

– George Schroeder: The Rogers and Van Nortwicks aren’t alone when it comes to paper mills in Appleton. There are others who will recognize the benefits of Appleton for the paper industry.

– Kimberly-Clark & Company expanded from nearby Neenah. Opening a series of mills in Appleton, including the Atlas Mill, one of the largest in the country.

– Carol Couillard: Kimberly-Clark & Company, when they built the Atlas, they were in what we would think of as mainstream paper. So, writing paper, Manila paper, all those different things. The Atlas Mill kind of set itself apart because Kimberly-Clark then ventured into wallpaper, which was a huge moneymaker for them, and it was huge for the Atlas.

– George Schroeder: Appleton ends up with the highest concentration of paper mills in the world. By 1890, there are 22 mills just between Appleton and Kaukauna. And so, they’re cranking out pulp and paper for a national market. I mean, it’s why we still call the valley “the paper valley.” One of the essential parts of the story are the workers in the mill.

– Carol Couillard: The Appleton Crescent was running headlines of bring more people here, bring more industry here. There’s room on the river for everyone.

– George Schroeder: They’re attracting people from all over the country and all over the world, and those are the people who are really driving the explosion of growth in Appleton. Appleton grows 400% in the 20 years from 1860 to 1880.

[people chatting, trolley ringing]

– Carol Couillard: One of the interesting things about the paper industry in Appleton is that it didn’t just have a lot of mills, which it did. There was a lot of supporting industry that was really important in helping the industry flourish. One thing that was really important is just the construction companies. A lot of them built their business around constructing these huge mills. Not only did they construct the mills. They would go in and do machine repair. It was a very specialized industry. A lot of the companies began here, and they work worldwide. It was something else that really set Appleton apart.

– The paper industry also attracted paper-related companies like the Appleton Wire Works, creating a highly specialized product for the industry.

– Dustin Mack: And they saw that there were no wire factories in the Western United States. So they moved out into this area and began making wire mesh, and eventually became the largest producer in the world.

[factory sounds]

– Wire mesh is critical to the papermaking process, straining out the water from the pulp slurry. And at the same time, creating a bed to make a continuous sheet of paper.

– Carol Couillard: They couldn’t have one wire out of place, or it would obviously mark all the paper that they made, and it had to be woven in one continual looping screen. They called it “the clothing for the paper machines.”

– Dustin Mack: So, wire weavers were often the most skilled workers within the wire industry. They had to go through an apprenticeship over a number of years to learn exactly how to weave wire without any imperfection. They would often work in teams of two or three, pushing a shuttle back and forth on a large loom in order to make the weave perfect, but also to keep an eye on the process. So, any little imperfections earlier on in the weave would screw up the rest of the sheet.

– To meet the demand for new kinds of paper, the Wisconsin Paper Industry partnered with Lawrence College to create the Institute of Paper Chemistry in 1929. Lawrence constructed a building and began a program of researching and teaching paper science. This research resulted in innovations that helped paper manufacturers improve paper quality and production. With plentiful natural resources and a highly skilled workforce, Appleton’s paper industry led the way in answering the national call for more paper and creating new kinds of paper products.

– Dustin Mack: Appleton was at the right place at the right time to serve that need.

[industrial machines running]

– In the late 1800s, powerful new technologies transformed American life, launching a period of growth and change called the Gilded Age. In New York, inventor Thomas Edison vowed to light up the city with his new light bulb using coal-powered steam electrical generators. As the project began, word of the effort reached the Appleton paper baron Henry Rogers. In the spring of 1882,

[fish pulling on line]

Rogers went on a fishing trip with his friend H.E. Jacobs, who had just begun working for the Western Edison Light Company.

– Robin Rolfs: Well, as they’re sitting in the boat, the fish really aren’t biting all that much, but Jacob seems pretty excited about his new job, and he starts telling his story of how Mr. Edison, the inventor, was producing a giant lighting plant in Lower New York in a Financial District. He’s going to light up a whole square mile using his brand-new incandescent lamps. Rogers is just fascinated with the story.

– Although president of the Appleton Gas Company, Rogers saw the huge potential of switching gas-lit homes and factories to electricity. And as he thought about it, Rogers had a lightbulb moment of his own. He wondered, “Could the water power of the Fox River be converted into electricity?”

– Robin Rolfs: He said, “When I got home that night, I couldn’t think of anything else.” He says, “This idea of electricity kept going through my mind.” Roger convinces three Appleton investors that this is the opportunity of a lifetime. If we can produce a working dynamo and generate electricity for electric lamps, we can sell this electricity to other businesses and residences. Now, a dynamo is nothing more than a machine that can produce direct current electricity.

[coils rotating]

The dynamo works on the principle of magnetism and passing coils of wire through a magnetic field. And as long as there is motion between the wires or coils and the magnetic field, this machine will keep producing electricity.

[electricity sizzles]

– Edison ran his dynamos off steam created by burning coal. To test his water-powered idea, Rogers connected a dynamo to a water-powered pulp grinder at the Appleton Pulp and Paper Mill. He wired the mill and the Kimberly-Clark Mill next door for electric lights. Rogers also ran a line to his new home, still under construction.

– George Schroeder: He’s building this beautiful big mansion that overlooks the river. The house is almost done by the time he decides he’s going to electrify it, and so they’ve gotta run wiring in places they’ve already installed illuminating gas, but he never turns the gas on.

– In the fall of 1882, the Dynamo was connected to the lights for a very public test.

– Joan Rolfs: The word spread around town, and a crowd came, and they were a little leery about this new-fangled electricity, but he stood out there and flicked the switch.

[lights click on]

[crowd gasps]

The lights went on! Everybody said, “It’s as bright as day!” It was a miracle. The investors were thrilled, and they really felt that the lightbulb was a means of lighting our homes and industry.

– While thrilling, the new technology had its share of problems due to fluctuating levels of power from the pulp machine.

– George Schroeder: And so, you had to constantly monitor this thing to make it work. Henry decides he’s got to put it on its own dedicated water wheel. And so, what they do is they build a small building. It’s a little power plant just outside the paper mill, on a dedicated wheel, and that’s where he’s going to put his Model K dynamo and that works so much better. You can regulate it much more closely. It is really the first purpose-built hydroelectric plant in the world.

– With the new technology came new jobs, including one called “the governor.”

– George Schroeder: He had to sit in a chair and stare at a lightbulb. The lightbulb hung over the dynamo, and when the lightbulb got too bright, he had to close the sluice a little bit to slow down the water, and when it didn’t get bright enough, he had to reverse the process to try to keep everything working properly. There were no voltmeters. The governor literally had to sit there all night staring at a lightbulb to make the system work.

– Electricity use spread across Appleton as new power stations were added. The Waverly Hotel and Ormsby Hall on the Lawrence Campus were lit up by the power of the Fox River.

[trolley bell chimes]

And in 1886, Appleton built a new hydroelectric railroad trolley, one of the first in the country, which further fulfilled Roger’s vision of using hydropower in new ways. The success of hydroelectric power in Appleton led the way for many communities in Wisconsin to also electrify, revolutionizing industry and ushering in a new way of life.

– George Schroeder: It’s amazing! The idea that you can take this new technology and transform the city you live in and all the surrounding countryside. I mean, that’s it. Wow! That’s a guy who sees things that other people don’t see.

– A traveling exhibit created in 2014 by Appleton’s History Museum at the Castle revealed some of the hidden and often forgotten Black History of Appleton and other Fox Cities.

– Sabrina Robins: As we just find out what life looked like, we feel that the Black contributions deserves to be part of the regional history and the local histories.

– Nick Hoffman: The idea for this project first started when I started to learn a little bit more about some of the early Black community members that lived in Appleton and so.

– Historian Nick Hoffman’s desire to learn more about Appleton’s Black history led him to team up with Dr. Sabrina Robbins of Appleton’s African Heritage, Incorporated.

– Sabrina Robins: We really felt compelled to contribute and help with this project to be able to participate in chronicling the experience of Blacks and African Americans in the region.

The project uncovered important records of Black settlement of the area from its earliest days. It’s not just Europeans alone who are settling in this region. Since that immediate time, Black men, women, and children have lived along the Fox River. People have hopes that this could be their long-standing home.

[cannon fire]

– The Civil War became a turning point for Appleton’s Black History. In 1863, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that Black people held as slaves in the Confederate states were freed. The document also declared the acceptance of Black soldiers in the Union Army, whose numbers would grow to almost 200,000.

Horace Artis served in the 31st United States Colored Troops Regiment during the Civil War and fought in several battles. He also witnessed the surrender of General Robert E. Lee. After the war, Horace and his wife Bercina moved to Appleton, joining a growing Black population moving North.

– Sabrina Robins: North, within the African American tradition, represents Canaan: freedom and a paradise. Canaan represents the promised land, and so naturally, Wisconsin would represent almost the apex of what Canaan means.

[military drumroll]

– As thousands of Wisconsin Civil War volunteers returned to the state, they were joined by a growing number of Black residents.

– Nick Hoffman: For northern states that supported the Union effort during the Civil War, people really had a wide variety of beliefs about what equality could look like after the war. And so, that really sets up a really big conversation in Appleton and Wisconsin when there’s larger numbers of African Americans moving and settling in the region.

– As more Black people settled in Appleton, they were often met with hostility. Despite his status as a veteran and owning land in the city, Horace Artis was once arrested for vagrancy and spent a night in jail. To keep Black people out of the city, real estate contracts began including racial covenants, which blocked Black buyers from becoming property owners.

– Nick Hoffman: Appleton, very quickly from 1910 to 1920, is going to go from having a growing Black population to zero.

[people shouting]

– After World War I, a growing Ku Klux Klan movement further intimidated Black people in Wisconsin and kept communities like Appleton all white. Appleton became known as a “sundown town,” one of many in the area with unwritten rules requiring Black people and other minorities to leave town before sunset.

– Sabrina Robins: That sundown town mentality and mindset is really about controlling Black bodies. If a majority of the Black population has been pretty much targeted to Milwaukee and a little bit of Madison. And as you move north, the population numbers significantly stop. That is not by accident or happenstance. It is by design.

[gospel music]

– In the 1950s, a growing civil rights movement began demanding equal rights and freedom under the law. By 1961, Appleton native Jim Zwerg joined a growing civil rights movement traveling the south with the Freedom Riders in an attempt to desegregate bus station terminals. The severe beating of Zwerg and several others by a violent mob made national news and brought the civil rights debate home to Appleton. The debate continued when a famous segregationist came to town.

– Nick Hoffman: In March 1964, George Wallace was governor of Alabama, and one of the major national leaders in favor of segregation, was invited to speak in Appleton, Wisconsin. In response to Wallace’s invitation to come to Appleton, students at Lawrence University started to organize. Students led a civil rights week. They started to bring in major national civil rights leaders to help them organize and also to help challenge the city.

[blues music]

– At the same time, Lawrence began recruiting Black students who would face widespread discrimination both on and off the campus.

– Joe Patterson: I matriculated to Lawrence’s campus in the fall of 1965. I’d heard about Lawrence as the Harvard of the Midwest, and that phrase stuck with me. I was very attracted to that. Well, it was a shock to me, first of all, to be in a region where the closest African-American community was 120 miles away. The first day of class, the biochemistry professor told me straight up, I didn’t belong there, and in fact, if you stay in my class, your A, your A equivalent, is a C minus. and if you don’t like it, yeah, then, you know, leave.

– To create community and support and push for needed changes, Black students came together to form the African American Association on campus, known as AAA.

– Joe Patterson: I became its first– its inaugural president. And the idea there was to, again, make the campus more viable for the, in effect, life and times of African American students. Not a separatist movement, and we were talking about inclusion. I tried to create an environment that basically would not allow other African American students to face, basically, the same plight that I did.

– The Students of the AAA presented a list of demands to Lawrence President Curtis Tarr that would create a more welcoming culture of fairness and inclusion. Most importantly, they demanded the school increase the number of Black students.

– Joe Patterson: Through the Association of African Americans, we were able to get some clarity and get some of these things remedied, but nothing’s perfect, and it’s always a work in progress. But I think while I was there, I think I made a difference.

– Robert Currie: The kind of exploration that a Liberal Arts College allows you to do. I first arrived in Appleton in 1970. It wasn’t long after being here when we had all been subjected to some of the racism, in town mainly, of folks calling out to us when we walked downtown.

That bonded us in a way that we, very early in our tenure here, said we’re going to work to change some things here. By my sophomore year, I assume the presidency of AAA. And I said we need to do something that will catch the attention of the entire campus by shutting down the business operation. And so, in the dead of night on that particular day in March 1972, we occupied the administration building. People just started showing up with the signs and the placards and the yelling and marching in front of the building and everything.

– The next day, President Smith met with members of the AAA. He agreed to bring 35 new Black students to campus, hire more Black faculty, offer more diverse academic subjects and better academic support. Black students at Lawrence challenged the local community’s mindset and beliefs around race. And in the 1970s, Appleton’s sundown practice came to an end.

– Robert Currie: We had to focus on the similarities and not the differences that we may have. That there are ways to bridge those differences. I left here with that as one of the things on my personal mission and journey that I wanted to be able to practice, espouse, and articulate for the rest of my life. And Lawrence forced me to do that.

– Joe Patterson: The word diversity really applies to Lawrence now.

– I present to you Lori A. Carter, our 17th president.

[cheers and applause]

– Joe Patterson: I think, with President Carter, this is something that’s unprecedented; to have an African American, who happens to be female, to be president. So, it’s a different place, as Appleton is a different place. John Kennedy, he says, “We all live on this small planet called Earth. “We all breathe the same air. “We all wish the best for our progeny, “our children, and our grandchildren, “and we’re all mortal. We gotta find a way to get along, period.”

[gentle acoustic guitar]

– The Stone of Hope exhibit shed light on the forgotten history of the early Black residents of Appleton.

– Keith L. Brown (Mr. I’M Possible): This is why we’re here. This is why we thrive. Juneteenth 1865.

– And now, each year during the Juneteenth holiday, the city remembers and celebrates the end of slavery in the United States.

– Sabrina Robins: Juneteenth is about freedom, unity, and community. There’s still a lot of work to do. People are paying attention to how Wisconsin is studying and communicating its history, and Appleton is one of the leading cities, and it’s just absolutely outstanding that our hometown can be a beacon for others, as we continue to know more about our history.

[The Talbott Brothers play folk rock blues]

– Another Appleton Festival celebrates the city’s long-standing tradition as a center of music.

[Them Coulee Boys play banjo stomp]

– My love, say it’s okay

– It’s okay It’s okay

– Brian Perth: So, the Mile of Music Festival started in 2013, and the idea was is it would be a festival that celebrated handmade, handcrafted music.

[Birds of Chicago play world roots music]

The Mile of Music brings in 90,000 to 100,000 people over 4 days.

[Kyle Megna & the Monsoons play blues folk rock]

The Appleton community is flooded by music, and it’s distributed all over town.

[Fort and the Pianissimos play ukulele]

– Most of the Mile of Music runs along historic College Avenue, still the heart of the city and center for entertainment.

[marching band performs]

And the community events… …like the city’s popular Christmas parade.

[“Santa Clause Is Coming to Town”]

Along the waterfront, a new restoration of the Fox River Locks now brings boaters back to a river that suffered from decades of pollution.

– Film Narrator: The river is the life’s blood of the region’s economy. On no other river in America are the paper mills so densely concentrated. And the Lower Fox is still one of the dirtiest rivers in North America.

– Jordan Salley: When the paper companies came, they did bring a big economic boom for this area, but they also released a lot of toxic chemicals in the water. One of those is PCBs or polychloride biphenyls. They don’t break down in the environment, so they persist over time, and they also bioaccumulate up the food chain.

– A massive cleanup of the Fox began in 2004 to remove the PCBs from the bottom of the river.

– Jordan Salley: Had we not done this cleanup, the PCBs would still be persisting in the river and contaminating the fish, the birds, eventually us.

– In the 2000s, Wisconsin’s paper industry faced a crisis. Stiff competition from foreign mills and the growing use of computers reduced the demand for Wisconsin paper. And so, over the years, many Wisconsin mills began to shut down, and so did the mills in Appleton.

– George Schroeder: While the industry is no longer making an impact, it has made an imprint here, and that’s important.

[acoustic guitar]

– The history of other industries that left an imprint lives on along the Fox River. Visitors can explore the Hearthstone Historic House Museum, where hydroelectricity began. Or at a reproduction of one of the city’s early hydroelectric power stations.

[motor running]

Another pioneer industry continues to operate on Appleton’s Shore at the Courtney Woolen Mill, where raw wool is still spun on traditional machinery.

– Tom Courtney: Nothing much was changed inside of the mill itself. The machines, they still work fine yet, so I’d like to keep them running just as grandfather, great- grandfather, dad, and myself.

– The decline of the paper mills and the cleanup of the river is now leading to a transformation of the riverside.

– George Schroeder: Most of the buildings still stand. They’re being used in new ways. They’re being restored and renovated, and they’re now filled with lovely apartments and condos.

– Kelly Reyer: The City of Appleton has been one of our founding supporters of the annual Fox-Wolf Watershed cleanup event. Today, we have over 1,600 volunteers throughout the basin, cleaning up garbage from the lakes and the rivers they cherish. We are blessed with an abundance of water in our area. So, it’s up to us to help keep it clean.

– George Schroeder: There’s been this metamorphosis and how we sort of view the river and how we can now reuse it and restore it and make it a part of our lives. Now, we’ve got wildlife returning. Before, the river was, well, embattled. Now the river is embraced.

– Dustin Mack: That river is the reason why Appleton is where it is today. It had a huge impact on its history, on its culture, on the people that came and settled here. It’s really the Fox River that gives shape to the community and to everything that surrounds it.

– Announcer: PBS Wisconsin gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the History Museum at the Castle and the following organizations:

– This program is brought to you by the combined resources of the Wisconsin Historical Society and PBS Wisconsin.

[jaunty piano music, waterfall]

[unwinds fishing line, reel drags and clicks]

– Female Narrator: On Wisconsin Hometown Stories, a community started by a university, built up by harnessing the power of the Fox River, a city lit up by innovation…

[gears clicking]

and industry, and transformed by education, music,

[crowd cheering]

and activism on Wisconsin Hometown Stories: Appleton.

– Announcer: Funding for Wisconsin Hometown Stories: Appleton is provided by the Doug & Carla Salmon Foundation, Chuck and Barb Merry, the David L. and Rita E. Nelson Family Fund within the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region, Mary and Lowell Peterson, Community First Credit Union, Roger and Lynn Van Vreede, Dr. Henry Anderson, The Mielke Family Foundation, Oscar C. and Patricia H. Boldt, the Boldt Company, Robert C. Buchanan and Bonnie G. Buchanan, Peter and Connie Roop, the Timothy William Trout Education Fund, a gift of Monroe and Sandra Trout, donors to the Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programs, and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

– Appleton’s river landscape formed at the end of the last ice age when melting snows poured water into glacial Lake Oshkosh. Draining from the lake, which would eventually become Lake Winnebago, the water moved north toward Green Bay, hemmed in by the high ground of the Niagara escarpment, creating a river with some unusual features.

– Antoinette Powell: The Fox River runs from southwest to northeast. So, if you look at it on a map, it’s going what you think would be the wrong direction, but water runs from a high point to a low point. So, Lake Winnebago is the high point.

[energetic piano]

– Leaving Lake Winnebago, the Fox River eroded away softer rock layers, which created a series of falls and rapids that together equal the drop of Niagara Falls.

[waterfall cascades]

Portaging around the falls made travel on the Fox slow and difficult, but with a portage of less than a mile to the Wisconsin River, the Fox served as a major trade route for Native Americans and for the Europeans that would arrive in the 1600s.

– Dustin Mack: The Menominee predominated in the area. The Fox River was an important aspect of their life and culture here, as well, and so they traveled the river by canoe. It became kind of an outlet into Green Bay, but also into the interior of the continent. And so,

[paddling water]

by placing themselves along the river, they gained into a huge trade network that served them for hundreds and thousands of years.

– When French explorers arrived, they also relied on the river for traveling. Appleton would grow

[rushing water]

alongside one of the largest falls on the Fox, at a place the French called “the Grand Chute.” Here, travelers would naturally stop to decide how to navigate over or around the dangerous waters.

– Antoinette Powell: There were French fur traders, French explorers, French missionaries. The fur trade was extremely important during this era, especially beaver fur. It was because of fashion. In Europe, wealthy gentlemen wore hats made from felted beaver fur. The European beavers had pretty much been decimated by this time, and they needed a new source.

[traditional Meskwaki song “He Lives”]

– As French traders moved into the area, so did a Native American nation from the east. A tribe that would give the river its name.

– Johnathan Buffalo: We’re created out of red earth. Thus, we were named Meskwaki Red Earth people. By 1650, we moved to Wisconsin. That’s where we get our Chippewa name of Outagamie, until the French renamed us to “Renard.” Fox. We moved down to the Fox River, the Butte des Morts area, Lake Winnebago area to be closer to the trade that would be coming through. And we controlled that trade.

– Like other First Nation people, the Meskwaki made a living from the trade on the river. For around 50 years, they collected tolls on the boats of travelers passing by. Their presence gave the Fox River its name. But their control of the waterway grew costly for the French, who decided to end the domination of the Meskwaki.

[traditional Meskwaki song “I Don’t Know Where She Is”]

– Johnathan Buffalo: In 1712, that started the Fox Wars, which was fought until 1735.

[traditional Meskwaki song “I Don’t Know Where She Is”]

It’s been roughly estimated we were about 40,000 people. By the time we left Wisconsin to go to Iowa, what would become Iowa, we were about a thousand people.

[traditional Meskwaki song “I Don’t Know Where She Is”]

– After the Meskwaki left and the French and Indian Wars ended, control of what would become Wisconsin passed from the French to the British, and, finally, to the United States. When Wisconsin became a new territory, the government began treaty negotiations with the Menominee Nation, forcing them to give up most of their lands.

– Dustin Mack: The Treaty of Cedars was signed in 1836 between the Menominee and the United States government. The Menominee ceded four million acres, part of which was Appleton proper and the land around it.

– The Treaty of the Cedars opened the land for settlement by Yankee Americans from the east and European immigrants. The Fox River would continue to provide a valuable transportation and trade route for the Americans. And the Grand Chute, the future site of the city of Appleton, drew the attention of investors from the east who saw the falls not as an obstacle to navigation but as a powerful source of water power for industry.

[classic orchestra music]

[solemn violin]

In 1844, a wealthy Boston merchant named Amos A. Lawrence acquired nearly 5,000 acres of land in northeast Wisconsin. As a long-time philanthropist, Lawrence decided to encourage development in the area in an unusual way: by establishing a university in the wilderness.

– Antoinette Powell: Amos A. Lawrence decided to establish university with the donation of $10,000 and land, and the provision that the Methodist Church come up with another $10,000 to establish the university. Amos A. Lawrence wanted his new university to be tied to a religious organization because he felt that they had the discipline and the morality to improve not only the students who went to this place, but also the community.

[rushing water]

– Land agents recommended a site south of Lawrence’s land by the Grand Chute, with its many water power sites and no settlers.

– Antoinette Powell: So it was kind of a clean slate, and it could draw the New Englanders. It could draw the people from New York. Could draw the Protestants. And it would be a perfect place, a beautiful place to establish this university. The river was a draw. The beauty of the area was a draw. The city, the river, and the university inextricably linked.

– Wisconsin’s territorial legislature approved the charter for the university in 1847– one year before Wisconsin became a state.

– Antoinette Powell: Once it was established that Lawrence University was going to be here, the growth was exponential. Within four or five years, people were moving in. Buildings were going up. It was becoming a city.

– Harlan Kiesow: As the area became settled, Morgan Martin, who was a Wisconsin territorial delegate and businessman, had the idea of constructing a transportation system along the Fox River.

– Dustin Mack: So, the improvements included straightening and taming the river. By taking out the rapids using the series of locks and dams, the hope was that they could replicate the success of the Erie Canal, that they would be able to create the same sort of river traffic that would connect the Great Lakes through the Fox River, and eventually, over to the Mississippi, and out to New Orleans.

[hammering stone]

– Harlan Kiesow: After Wisconsin became a state, the Fox River Project became the first internal improvement project for the state. Work started in about 1852, and by 1856, it was completed enough that the Aquila steamship could make a round trip between the Mississippi River and Green Bay.

[rushing river]

– The massive project included the construction of 17 hand-operated locks, four of them in Appleton. Bigger boats could now travel the Fox River, and the dams could also capture the power of the river for industry. Words spread of the promise of both the river project and the university.

– Antoinette Powell: In 1853, the village of Appleton was created, combining the three villages of Lawsburg, Appleton, and Grand Chute. Lawsburg was on the east. Established by George Lawe. In the center was Appleton, established by John Mead. And then, on the west, was Grand Chute, around the Grand Chute, the waterfall. And then, in 1857, it was incorporated as a city.

– Dustin Mack: To make it more inviting for the railroads to come through here, Appleton was incorporated as a city. And it worked because the railroad did come through, and Appleton became a hub.

– Antoinette Powell: Water travel was superseded

[train whistle]

by the railroads pretty quickly after this happened. And so, water travel wasn’t exactly the way to get around as people thought it was going to be.

– The coming of the railroads meant that the Fox would be used mostly for shipping bulk freight, but the power captured by the dams would fuel the city’s industries.

– Dustin Mack: Some of the early industries along the river were sawmills, grist mills, and woolen mills.

[horse-drawn wagon]

Wheat farming was also a very important aspect of Appleton’s early economy. The Fox River provided power for grist mills so the wheat could be ground up. And then, the Fox River was a transportation system. And so, the wheat could be grown here, it could be ground, and then shipped out.

– In 1853, the Richmond Paper Mill, the Fox Valley’s first, began grinding up cotton rags and straw to make wrapping paper for local markets. And away from the river, College Avenue developed as the major road in Appleton.

– Dustin Mack: College Avenue leads people to the college. It leads people to downtown. And so, it was the first place that people came to where businesses set up. It’s essentially Main Street for Appleton. And then, the community expanded beyond that as it grew, including into the Third Ward and beyond.

[gentle guitar]

– Antoinette Powell: The area of Appleton that’s now known as the Old Third Ward is around the Grand Chute. And this was the area where industry was building up. It became industrialized pretty quickly, so the people who moved there weren’t necessarily drawn by the beauty of the river, but by the opportunity of the river.

[rushing river]

Industrialists built their homes on the bluffs overlooking the river. So, they were overlooking their businesses. So, you had the working class, you had the mill workers, and then, you had the industrialists living in the Old Third Ward.

– The city of Appleton continued to expand around the river, and the growing Lawrence campus, whose own growth would continue to help shape the future and character of the city.

[upbeat instrumental]

[rushing river]

The decision by Boston merchant Amos A. Lawrence to develop a city by first building a university paid off just as he predicted. Lawrence University attracted both settlers and students, who first studied a preparatory curriculum.

– Jerald Podair: It’s like a prep school. These schools exist today where sometimes, after high school, a student will go to a prep school for a year to get them ready for the rigors of college, and that’s what Lawrence featured at the very beginning.

[bright orchestra music]

– By 1857, the school grew to become a conventional college, graduating its first class of four men and three women.

– Jerald Podair: It’s a co-educational institution, which is pretty unique at the time. Only really the second in the United States.

– As the city grew around it, Lawrence brought famous speakers and politicians to Appleton, like the abolitionist Frederick Douglas and U.S. President William Howard Taft. During downturns in the economy, the young college often struggled to recruit students and pay its debts. But in 1894, Samuel Plantz, a graduate of Lawrence, returned to usher in a new era of growth.

– Jerald Podair: When Samuel Plantz becomes president of Lawrence, he does a lot of things for the university. He certainly straightens out its finances. He increases the enrollment. He increases the endowment.

– Many campus buildings rose up during the President Plantz building boom, but the new president also changed the focus of the college.

– Jerald Podair: He says, “We are not going to do what the larger universities do. The core of Lawrence’s mission is a liberal arts mission.”

– With its new mission as a liberal arts college, the number of students would soon quadruple, and under the leadership of President Plantz came a new emphasis on music that would also grow to be a core of the school’s– and the city’s– identity.

– Brian Pertl: Samuel Plantz created the Conservatory of Music that has lasted ever since. And it was at the same time that they created the first official music degree.

[arpeggios on piano]

Some of our earliest professors in the conservatory were prominent women musicians on piano and on voice. For us, women have been a huge part of our conservatory, both as in the professorate and the student body. The other aspect of that early conservatory that I think is important is it wasn’t just people attending the college courses, but from the very beginning, there was a community music aspect to the Conservatory of Music.

[cacophony of instruments]

– In Main Hall, the growth of the program created a musical disturbance in neighboring classrooms. To solve the issue, President Plantz began the building of Peabody Hall.

– Brian Pertl: And it was a big deal because it was a building dedicated to music. It had a fairly large hall that could seat almost 400 people in it.

– During the Plantz building boom, a lack of funding caused the construction of one last building to be delayed.

– Brian Pertl: This was a Methodist institution. They needed a chapel. But they had grander ideas because it was never supposed to be just a religious space. It was supposed to be a gathering space for the campus but also for the Appleton community. And the idea for the chapel came about in 1908.

– Fundraising for the chapel dragged on for a decade until an anonymous donor pledged over $60,000… if the Appleton community would match it.

– Jerald Podair: Lawrence actually went on its probably most successful fundraising campaign, described as a whirlwind campaign at the time. It took about a week or so. They were able to raise the $60,000, and they even got an extra $10,000 for an organ.

– Brian Pertl: And I love that because it’s kind of this nexus point between the university and Appleton. And so, this has been this gathering place since it was built in 1918. By the ’20s, that had pretty much shifted to a more secular use.

[Sista Strings, Nickel & Rose play strings music]

It is used for performance of all kinds, for speakers, for music, for orchestras, for choirs, bands. You name it, and it goes on here. So, one of the wonderful things about Lawrence, and then the chapel, is that it’s the home to the Artist Series, which has existed at Lawrence for over a hundred years. A hundred years of bringing in renowned artists from around the globe. It’s mind-boggling how many people have been here speaking or performing.

[Lawrence College Concert Choir sings traditional song]

– Announcer: We bring you now a special 15-minute program of choral music from Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin.

– Through its artist series, rigorous musical instruction, and performing ensembles, the Lawrence Conservatory built a nationally recognized program.

– Brian Pertl: In the ’40s and ’50s, the voice was our primary focus. We had orchestra. We had band. But I think it was really the choirs. People started to notice this music school in Wisconsin and realize how fine the education was. It just started to build from there. We’ve developed into a school that doesn’t have “the one thing we’re good at.” The one thing Lawrence is good at… is everything, and that’s really something that sets us apart. People who visit say, “You’ve got something special here, “and you should be really proud of what’s going on because it’s amazing.” That, to me, is the magic of this place.

[Lawrence University Choir sings in blended voice]

[flag rustling, river rushing]

– The power of falling water fueled the growth of Appleton’s pioneer industries. Flour mills, woolen mills, and rag paper.

[urgent instrumental, military marching]

As local militias headed to Camp Randall in Madison for training, the Civil War would transform Appleton’s paper industry, bringing about huge changes to the city and the region.

– Carol Couillard: The Civil War marked a change in the way that the whole country communicated. So people became used to getting the news during the Civil War because we had the telegraph. People were used to that, and they demanded it, and so newspapers really had to scramble to keep up, and the thing that held them back really was having enough newsprint.

[birds chirping]

– At the time, a change in Appleton’s wheat industry would help the city answer the nationwide call for more paper.

[horse neighing, reins clicking]

Wheat farming had moved to more western states, and Appleton’s small flour mills couldn’t compete with the giant modern mills running in Minneapolis. Appleton’s papermakers bought up closing wheat mills and began installing new machines that could grind up wood for pulp instead of cotton rags, allowing Appleton to help meet the demand for more newsprint.

– Carol Couillard: Appleton’s a really desirable place for papermaking because it has everything you need to make paper. You need some sort of fiber, you need water, and you need a power source, and Appleton had all three of those in abundance. A lot of the infrastructure was already here. The flour mills all had water wheels already. They knew how to get the goods to the different markets. And so, it was just kind of perfect that they found something that they could manufacture and really take the lead on.

[steam engine chugs, blows whistle]

– A chance meeting on a train would further jump-start Appleton’s papermaking expansion.

[train chugs, rings signal bell]

Henry Rogers, who made a fortune in western land speculation and silver mining, used that fortune to open banks in Colorado and Wyoming.

– George Schroeder: He starts the first bank in the state of Wyoming in Cheyenne. Why does he pick Cheyenne, Wyoming? A little thing called the Transcontinental Railroad is coming through. And when opportunity knocks, Henry wants to be there to answer.

When the railroad arrives in 1867, he now makes another fortune financing the economic explosion that follows the railroad.

The railroad is also another part of the story here because on the railroad between Cheyenne to Chicago, he’s going back and forth, he meets two gentlemen, William and John Van Nortwick. Their dad owns the biggest paper mill west of Ohio. It’s right outside of Chicago, and its biggest customer is the Chicago Tribune, the newspaper, but it can’t keep up with demand.

So, Henry’s got another great idea. He’s got the fortune. They’ve got the technical expertise. Let’s get into the paper business, and they’ve gotta pick a spot. Where do they pick? Appleton, Wisconsin because it’s perfect for the paper industry.

– Rogers and the Van Nortwicks formed the Appleton Paper and Pulp Company in 1876. Soon the mill was grinding out pulp for Chicago and making six-and-a-half tons of newsprint a day.

– George Schroeder: The Rogers and Van Nortwicks aren’t alone when it comes to paper mills in Appleton. There are others who will recognize the benefits of Appleton for the paper industry.

– Kimberly-Clark & Company expanded from nearby Neenah. Opening a series of mills in Appleton, including the Atlas Mill, one of the largest in the country.

– Carol Couillard: Kimberly-Clark & Company, when they built the Atlas, they were in what we would think of as mainstream paper. So, writing paper, Manila paper, all those different things. The Atlas Mill kind of set itself apart because Kimberly-Clark then ventured into wallpaper, which was a huge moneymaker for them, and it was huge for the Atlas.

– George Schroeder: Appleton ends up with the highest concentration of paper mills in the world. By 1890, there are 22 mills just between Appleton and Kaukauna. And so, they’re cranking out pulp and paper for a national market. I mean, it’s why we still call the valley “the paper valley.” One of the essential parts of the story are the workers in the mill.

– Carol Couillard: The Appleton Crescent was running headlines of bring more people here, bring more industry here. There’s room on the river for everyone.

– George Schroeder: They’re attracting people from all over the country and all over the world, and those are the people who are really driving the explosion of growth in Appleton. Appleton grows 400% in the 20 years from 1860 to 1880.

[people chatting, trolley ringing]

– Carol Couillard: One of the interesting things about the paper industry in Appleton is that it didn’t just have a lot of mills, which it did. There was a lot of supporting industry that was really important in helping the industry flourish. One thing that was really important is just the construction companies. A lot of them built their business around constructing these huge mills. Not only did they construct the mills. They would go in and do machine repair. It was a very specialized industry. A lot of the companies began here, and they work worldwide. It was something else that really set Appleton apart.

– The paper industry also attracted paper-related companies like the Appleton Wire Works, creating a highly specialized product for the industry.

– Dustin Mack: And they saw that there were no wire factories in the Western United States. So they moved out into this area and began making wire mesh, and eventually became the largest producer in the world.

[factory sounds]

– Wire mesh is critical to the papermaking process, straining out the water from the pulp slurry. And at the same time, creating a bed to make a continuous sheet of paper.

– Carol Couillard: They couldn’t have one wire out of place, or it would obviously mark all the paper that they made, and it had to be woven in one continual looping screen. They called it “the clothing for the paper machines.”

– Dustin Mack: So, wire weavers were often the most skilled workers within the wire industry. They had to go through an apprenticeship over a number of years to learn exactly how to weave wire without any imperfection. They would often work in teams of two or three, pushing a shuttle back and forth on a large loom in order to make the weave perfect, but also to keep an eye on the process. So, any little imperfections earlier on in the weave would screw up the rest of the sheet.

– To meet the demand for new kinds of paper, the Wisconsin Paper Industry partnered with Lawrence College to create the Institute of Paper Chemistry in 1929. Lawrence constructed a building and began a program of researching and teaching paper science. This research resulted in innovations that helped paper manufacturers improve paper quality and production. With plentiful natural resources and a highly skilled workforce, Appleton’s paper industry led the way in answering the national call for more paper and creating new kinds of paper products.

– Dustin Mack: Appleton was at the right place at the right time to serve that need.

[industrial machines running]

– In the late 1800s, powerful new technologies transformed American life, launching a period of growth and change called the Gilded Age. In New York, inventor Thomas Edison vowed to light up the city with his new light bulb using coal-powered steam electrical generators. As the project began, word of the effort reached the Appleton paper baron Henry Rogers. In the spring of 1882,

[fish pulling on line]

Rogers went on a fishing trip with his friend H.E. Jacobs, who had just begun working for the Western Edison Light Company.

– Robin Rolfs: Well, as they’re sitting in the boat, the fish really aren’t biting all that much, but Jacob seems pretty excited about his new job, and he starts telling his story of how Mr. Edison, the inventor, was producing a giant lighting plant in Lower New York in a Financial District. He’s going to light up a whole square mile using his brand-new incandescent lamps. Rogers is just fascinated with the story.

– Although president of the Appleton Gas Company, Rogers saw the huge potential of switching gas-lit homes and factories to electricity. And as he thought about it, Rogers had a lightbulb moment of his own. He wondered, “Could the water power of the Fox River be converted into electricity?”

– Robin Rolfs: He said, “When I got home that night, I couldn’t think of anything else.” He says, “This idea of electricity kept going through my mind.” Roger convinces three Appleton investors that this is the opportunity of a lifetime. If we can produce a working dynamo and generate electricity for electric lamps, we can sell this electricity to other businesses and residences. Now, a dynamo is nothing more than a machine that can produce direct current electricity.

[coils rotating]

The dynamo works on the principle of magnetism and passing coils of wire through a magnetic field. And as long as there is motion between the wires or coils and the magnetic field, this machine will keep producing electricity.

[electricity sizzles]

– Edison ran his dynamos off steam created by burning coal. To test his water-powered idea, Rogers connected a dynamo to a water-powered pulp grinder at the Appleton Pulp and Paper Mill. He wired the mill and the Kimberly-Clark Mill next door for electric lights. Rogers also ran a line to his new home, still under construction.

– George Schroeder: He’s building this beautiful big mansion that overlooks the river. The house is almost done by the time he decides he’s going to electrify it, and so they’ve gotta run wiring in places they’ve already installed illuminating gas, but he never turns the gas on.

– In the fall of 1882, the Dynamo was connected to the lights for a very public test.

– Joan Rolfs: The word spread around town, and a crowd came, and they were a little leery about this new-fangled electricity, but he stood out there and flicked the switch.

[lights click on]

[crowd gasps]

The lights went on! Everybody said, “It’s as bright as day!” It was a miracle. The investors were thrilled, and they really felt that the lightbulb was a means of lighting our homes and industry.

– While thrilling, the new technology had its share of problems due to fluctuating levels of power from the pulp machine.

– George Schroeder: And so, you had to constantly monitor this thing to make it work. Henry decides he’s got to put it on its own dedicated water wheel. And so, what they do is they build a small building. It’s a little power plant just outside the paper mill, on a dedicated wheel, and that’s where he’s going to put his Model K dynamo and that works so much better. You can regulate it much more closely. It is really the first purpose-built hydroelectric plant in the world.

– With the new technology came new jobs, including one called “the governor.”

– George Schroeder: He had to sit in a chair and stare at a lightbulb. The lightbulb hung over the dynamo, and when the lightbulb got too bright, he had to close the sluice a little bit to slow down the water, and when it didn’t get bright enough, he had to reverse the process to try to keep everything working properly. There were no voltmeters. The governor literally had to sit there all night staring at a lightbulb to make the system work.

– Electricity use spread across Appleton as new power stations were added. The Waverly Hotel and Ormsby Hall on the Lawrence Campus were lit up by the power of the Fox River.

[trolley bell chimes]

And in 1886, Appleton built a new hydroelectric railroad trolley, one of the first in the country, which further fulfilled Roger’s vision of using hydropower in new ways. The success of hydroelectric power in Appleton led the way for many communities in Wisconsin to also electrify, revolutionizing industry and ushering in a new way of life.

– George Schroeder: It’s amazing! The idea that you can take this new technology and transform the city you live in and all the surrounding countryside. I mean, that’s it. Wow! That’s a guy who sees things that other people don’t see.

– A traveling exhibit created in 2014 by Appleton’s History Museum at the Castle revealed some of the hidden and often forgotten Black History of Appleton and other Fox Cities.

– Sabrina Robins: As we just find out what life looked like, we feel that the Black contributions deserves to be part of the regional history and the local histories.

– Nick Hoffman: The idea for this project first started when I started to learn a little bit more about some of the early Black community members that lived in Appleton and so.

– Historian Nick Hoffman’s desire to learn more about Appleton’s Black history led him to team up with Dr. Sabrina Robbins of Appleton’s African Heritage, Incorporated.

– Sabrina Robins: We really felt compelled to contribute and help with this project to be able to participate in chronicling the experience of Blacks and African Americans in the region.

The project uncovered important records of Black settlement of the area from its earliest days. It’s not just Europeans alone who are settling in this region. Since that immediate time, Black men, women, and children have lived along the Fox River. People have hopes that this could be their long-standing home.

[cannon fire]

– The Civil War became a turning point for Appleton’s Black History. In 1863, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that Black people held as slaves in the Confederate states were freed. The document also declared the acceptance of Black soldiers in the Union Army, whose numbers would grow to almost 200,000.

Horace Artis served in the 31st United States Colored Troops Regiment during the Civil War and fought in several battles. He also witnessed the surrender of General Robert E. Lee. After the war, Horace and his wife Bercina moved to Appleton, joining a growing Black population moving North.

– Sabrina Robins: North, within the African American tradition, represents Canaan: freedom and a paradise. Canaan represents the promised land, and so naturally, Wisconsin would represent almost the apex of what Canaan means.

[military drumroll]

– As thousands of Wisconsin Civil War volunteers returned to the state, they were joined by a growing number of Black residents.

– Nick Hoffman: For northern states that supported the Union effort during the Civil War, people really had a wide variety of beliefs about what equality could look like after the war. And so, that really sets up a really big conversation in Appleton and Wisconsin when there’s larger numbers of African Americans moving and settling in the region.

– As more Black people settled in Appleton, they were often met with hostility. Despite his status as a veteran and owning land in the city, Horace Artis was once arrested for vagrancy and spent a night in jail. To keep Black people out of the city, real estate contracts began including racial covenants, which blocked Black buyers from becoming property owners.

– Nick Hoffman: Appleton, very quickly from 1910 to 1920, is going to go from having a growing Black population to zero.

[people shouting]

– After World War I, a growing Ku Klux Klan movement further intimidated Black people in Wisconsin and kept communities like Appleton all white. Appleton became known as a “sundown town,” one of many in the area with unwritten rules requiring Black people and other minorities to leave town before sunset.

– Sabrina Robins: That sundown town mentality and mindset is really about controlling Black bodies. If a majority of the Black population has been pretty much targeted to Milwaukee and a little bit of Madison. And as you move north, the population numbers significantly stop. That is not by accident or happenstance. It is by design.

[gospel music]

– In the 1950s, a growing civil rights movement began demanding equal rights and freedom under the law. By 1961, Appleton native Jim Zwerg joined a growing civil rights movement traveling the south with the Freedom Riders in an attempt to desegregate bus station terminals. The severe beating of Zwerg and several others by a violent mob made national news and brought the civil rights debate home to Appleton. The debate continued when a famous segregationist came to town.

– Nick Hoffman: In March 1964, George Wallace was governor of Alabama, and one of the major national leaders in favor of segregation, was invited to speak in Appleton, Wisconsin. In response to Wallace’s invitation to come to Appleton, students at Lawrence University started to organize. Students led a civil rights week. They started to bring in major national civil rights leaders to help them organize and also to help challenge the city.

[blues music]

– At the same time, Lawrence began recruiting Black students who would face widespread discrimination both on and off the campus.

– Joe Patterson: I matriculated to Lawrence’s campus in the fall of 1965. I’d heard about Lawrence as the Harvard of the Midwest, and that phrase stuck with me. I was very attracted to that. Well, it was a shock to me, first of all, to be in a region where the closest African-American community was 120 miles away. The first day of class, the biochemistry professor told me straight up, I didn’t belong there, and in fact, if you stay in my class, your A, your A equivalent, is a C minus. and if you don’t like it, yeah, then, you know, leave.

– To create community and support and push for needed changes, Black students came together to form the African American Association on campus, known as AAA.

– Joe Patterson: I became its first– its inaugural president. And the idea there was to, again, make the campus more viable for the, in effect, life and times of African American students. Not a separatist movement, and we were talking about inclusion. I tried to create an environment that basically would not allow other African American students to face, basically, the same plight that I did.

– The Students of the AAA presented a list of demands to Lawrence President Curtis Tarr that would create a more welcoming culture of fairness and inclusion. Most importantly, they demanded the school increase the number of Black students.

– Joe Patterson: Through the Association of African Americans, we were able to get some clarity and get some of these things remedied, but nothing’s perfect, and it’s always a work in progress. But I think while I was there, I think I made a difference.

– Robert Currie: The kind of exploration that a Liberal Arts College allows you to do. I first arrived in Appleton in 1970. It wasn’t long after being here when we had all been subjected to some of the racism, in town mainly, of folks calling out to us when we walked downtown.

That bonded us in a way that we, very early in our tenure here, said we’re going to work to change some things here. By my sophomore year, I assume the presidency of AAA. And I said we need to do something that will catch the attention of the entire campus by shutting down the business operation. And so, in the dead of night on that particular day in March 1972, we occupied the administration building. People just started showing up with the signs and the placards and the yelling and marching in front of the building and everything.

– The next day, President Smith met with members of the AAA. He agreed to bring 35 new Black students to campus, hire more Black faculty, offer more diverse academic subjects and better academic support. Black students at Lawrence challenged the local community’s mindset and beliefs around race. And in the 1970s, Appleton’s sundown practice came to an end.

– Robert Currie: We had to focus on the similarities and not the differences that we may have. That there are ways to bridge those differences. I left here with that as one of the things on my personal mission and journey that I wanted to be able to practice, espouse, and articulate for the rest of my life. And Lawrence forced me to do that.

– Joe Patterson: The word diversity really applies to Lawrence now.

– I present to you Lori A. Carter, our 17th president.

[cheers and applause]

– Joe Patterson: I think, with President Carter, this is something that’s unprecedented; to have an African American, who happens to be female, to be president. So, it’s a different place, as Appleton is a different place. John Kennedy, he says, “We all live on this small planet called Earth. “We all breathe the same air. “We all wish the best for our progeny, “our children, and our grandchildren, “and we’re all mortal. We gotta find a way to get along, period.”

[gentle acoustic guitar]

– The Stone of Hope exhibit shed light on the forgotten history of the early Black residents of Appleton.

– Keith L. Brown (Mr. I’M Possible): This is why we’re here. This is why we thrive. Juneteenth 1865.

– And now, each year during the Juneteenth holiday, the city remembers and celebrates the end of slavery in the United States.

– Sabrina Robins: Juneteenth is about freedom, unity, and community. There’s still a lot of work to do. People are paying attention to how Wisconsin is studying and communicating its history, and Appleton is one of the leading cities, and it’s just absolutely outstanding that our hometown can be a beacon for others, as we continue to know more about our history.

[The Talbott Brothers play folk rock blues]

– Another Appleton Festival celebrates the city’s long-standing tradition as a center of music.

[Them Coulee Boys play banjo stomp]

– My love, say it’s okay

– It’s okay

It’s okay

– Brian Perth: So, the Mile of Music Festival started in 2013, and the idea was is it would be a festival that celebrated handmade, handcrafted music.

[Birds of Chicago play world roots music]

The Mile of Music brings in 90,000 to 100,000 people over 4 days.

[Kyle Megna & the Monsoons play blues folk rock]

The Appleton community is flooded by music, and it’s distributed all over town.

[Fort and the Pianissimos play ukulele]

– Most of the Mile of Music runs along historic College Avenue, still the heart of the city and center for entertainment.

[marching band performs]

And the community events… …like the city’s popular Christmas parade.

[“Santa Clause Is Coming to Town”]

Along the waterfront, a new restoration of the Fox River Locks now brings boaters back to a river that suffered from decades of pollution.

– Film Narrator: The river is the life’s blood of the region’s economy. On no other river in America are the paper mills so densely concentrated. And the Lower Fox is still one of the dirtiest rivers in North America.

– Jordan Salley: When the paper companies came, they did bring a big economic boom for this area, but they also released a lot of toxic chemicals in the water. One of those is PCBs or polychloride biphenyls. They don’t break down in the environment, so they persist over time, and they also bioaccumulate up the food chain.

– A massive cleanup of the Fox began in 2004 to remove the PCBs from the bottom of the river.

– Jordan Salley: Had we not done this cleanup, the PCBs would still be persisting in the river and contaminating the fish, the birds, eventually us.

– In the 2000s, Wisconsin’s paper industry faced a crisis. Stiff competition from foreign mills and the growing use of computers reduced the demand for Wisconsin paper. And so, over the years, many Wisconsin mills began to shut down, and so did the mills in Appleton.

– George Schroeder: While the industry is no longer making an impact, it has made an imprint here, and that’s important.

[acoustic guitar]

– The history of other industries that left an imprint lives on along the Fox River. Visitors can explore the Hearthstone Historic House Museum, where hydroelectricity began. Or at a reproduction of one of the city’s early hydroelectric power stations.

[motor running]

Another pioneer industry continues to operate on Appleton’s Shore at the Courtney Woolen Mill, where raw wool is still spun on traditional machinery.

– Tom Courtney: Nothing much was changed inside of the mill itself. The machines, they still work fine yet, so I’d like to keep them running just as grandfather, great- grandfather, dad, and myself.

– The decline of the paper mills and the cleanup of the river is now leading to a transformation of the riverside.

– George Schroeder: Most of the buildings still stand. They’re being used in new ways. They’re being restored and renovated, and they’re now filled with lovely apartments and condos.

– Kelly Reyer: The City of Appleton has been one of our founding supporters of the annual Fox-Wolf Watershed cleanup event. Today, we have over 1,600 volunteers throughout the basin, cleaning up garbage from the lakes and the rivers they cherish. We are blessed with an abundance of water in our area. So, it’s up to us to help keep it clean.

– George Schroeder: There’s been this metamorphosis and how we sort of view the river and how we can now reuse it and restore it and make it a part of our lives. Now, we’ve got wildlife returning. Before, the river was, well, embattled. Now the river is embraced.

– Dustin Mack: That river is the reason why Appleton is where it is today. It had a huge impact on its history, on its culture, on the people that came and settled here. It’s really the Fox River that gives shape to the community and to everything that surrounds it.

– Announcer: PBS Wisconsin gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the History Museum at the Castle and the following organizations:

– To purchase a DVD of Wisconsin Hometown Stories: Appleton, call 1(800) 422-9707 or visit the PBS Wisconsin online store at the address on the screen.

– Announcer: Funding for Wisconsin Hometown Stories: Appleton is provided by the Doug & Carla Salmon Foundation, Chuck and Barb Merry, the David L. and Rita E. Nelson Family Fund within the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region, Mary and Lowell Peterson, Community First Credit Union, Roger and Lynn Van Vreede, Dr. Henry Anderson, The Mielke Family Foundation, Oscar C. and Patricia H. Boldt, the Boldt Company, Robert C. Buchanan and Bonnie G. Buchanan, Peter and Connie Roop, the Timothy William Trout Education Fund, a gift of Monroe and Sandra Trout, donors to the Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programs, and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.