WPT Archives: 1990s

horn music

Kent Goeckermann

Enough people had an established interest

in coming to Copper Falls

Sunday afternoon picnic, horse and wagon, walking around on rough trails, and that basically is what saved the park. Otherwise, most of that trail that people hike today would've been under about 12 or 15 feet of water. It would've been a small lake down there. The canyon and the waterfalls would've been lost, because when the power company in the 1920s proposed building a big dam and generating power for all of Ashland County, there was enough established use here that there was a big environmental fight. They lobbied and discussed, and they wrote letters to the editor and in 1928, most of a trainload of people from Ashland County went down to Madison, lobbied the state legislature, and convinced the state legislature to buy this central 500 acres from the power company to preserve it for future generations as a state park.

horn music