The village of Coon Valley, Wisconsin, barely tips the scale with its population of less than 800 people. From an outsider’s perspective, it is like countless other rural towns that hardly warrant a speck on the map; you’ll miss it if you blink while driving through. But as someone from her own speck on the map, I know the story of Coon Valley runs much deeper than meets the eye.
Coon Valley is nestled near the center of what is known as the Driftless Area. About 20,000 years ago glacial ice advanced downward from the North and blanketed the upper Midwest, except for a 24,000 square mile pocket of land in southwestern Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota and Iowa. When the Earth began to warm again, the glacier retreated, depositing a collection of geological bits and pieces of sediment, boulders, silt, sand, and gravel called glacial drift along the way. While this land was ironed down flat, the sculpted landscape of the Driftless Area remained intact. The region is distinguishable by its rugged hills ridged with trees and steep valleys carved by rivers, along which small towns and farming communities have emerged.
Near Coon Valley, the veins of Coon Creek and Timber Coulee Creek course through the rural farmlands and bring the promise of life to the fertile valley, but recently they have also been a source of destruction. A night of heavy rain can set many residents on edge, especially after the historic flooding in the summer of 2018. In the low-lying valley, flooded basements and submerged roads are not uncommon, but torrential rain in August 2018 allowed the water to rise higher than anyone had ever seen before. As flood water rushed in, firefighters, emergency rescue teams, and volunteers all braved the conditions to help residents evacuate, some via a ride in the bucket of the county’s front end loader. Miraculously, everyone survived the disaster, but their houses and belongings were hit in full force. With collapsed house foundations and ruined family photographs, the roots that they had carefully established in their community were under threat.
Today, this region is layered with the legacies of those who came before and kindled a deep dependence with the land. Long before any European settlers or explorers arrived, Indigenous people inhabited southwestern Wisconsin. Although many have been destroyed with post-settlement development, the remaining mounds that these communities built continue to texture today’s landscape. Ancestors of those who now make up the Ho-Chunk Nation lived throughout the area and practiced hunting, gathering, and farming. European lead miners and settlers began to arrive, and by the 1830s, the Ho-Chunk were being forcibly removed from their home. Their ties to this region, however, proved resilient, and despite several removal attempts, many Ho-Chunk people ultimately returned to the area.
There is something about the Coulee Region that seems to leave an imprint on those who live there. It is hard to know what it is exactly, but I imagine it may be similar to the force that ties me to my own home and the land I live upon. If you take Highway 14 and drive southeast out of Coon Valley, you can wind through small towns and over rivers to eventually reach my home in just under 2 hours. I was raised on a patch of wooded land and pasture tucked away between the two modest towns of Hollandale and Barneveld. One town is the name on my address and the other is the name of where I attended school, but neither quite captures the familiar sense of belonging that I feel when returning home to the half-mile-long gravel driveway and rolling ridges of black oak (Quercus velutina) and walnut (Juglans nigra) trees. My sense of place is affirmed in the little things, like when I’m digging my hands deep in the garden plot and the pressure of the Earth’s soil embraces my skin. I feel it when I spot jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) during summer walks in the woods or when I gravitate toward the cast iron stove that heats my home in the winter and is fueled by wood from the land. It is beyond just a love for a place but rather a mutual understanding that links my body – my nourishment, my joy, and my comfort – to the land beneath me.
While I am home this connection comforts me, like a tether keeping me from floating out into space, but when I try to leave, the ties tighten into chains tugging me back. I have always found it jarring to move between my family home in rural Wisconsin and my apartment in Madison where I attend college. Madison is crowded and loud, active and social. Home is quiet and reflective, grounded and calm. I love both places for their respective reasons, but the transition from one to the other always feels like a shock to the system, with my body too slow to adjust. Traveling from one to the other barely takes an hour, but at times the difference between the two feels as if I have crossed an ocean.
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In the mid-nineteenth century, immigrants from Norway flocked to the Driftless Area’s sloped valleys, which were similar to those they left behind in Europe. Most Norwegians immigrating to the United States at that time were rural families, so the Midwest’s abundant and arable land was a natural destination. By 1850, two thirds of the Norwegian population living in the United States was settled in Wisconsin. Those who settled in present-day Coon Valley were nourished by trout from the streams and wild game from the forests as they began felling trees and raising their new town with a store, church, school, and blacksmith shop. They tended to sheep for wool and oxen to help work the farm. By 1860 the residents had harnessed the power of Coon Creek and built a mill that was used for lumber sawing, flour and feed grinding, pearling barley, and carding wool.
The land was fertile and the resolve was strong, but uprooting their lives, settling in a new country, and working the land to bring food to the table was a tremendous task for these settlers. It required a perseverance and resilience that seems to have been passed down through the generations to those descendants who continue to live in the area today.
By the 1930s, three generations had worked the land since the swell of Norwegian immigrant families arrived to Coon Valley the century before, but the practices of intensive farming and overgrazing that had provided for the first arrivals were proving too much for the land to handle. The layer of sod and leaf litter was torn away and the topsoil was left exposed. Rain ravaged the bare ground into trenches and swept soil into streams. The steep river banks of the Coon Creek watershed were consumed by erosion and trout were disappearing. Seeing an opportunity to test new conservation practices, the federal Soil Conservation Service (SCS) arrived in Coon Valley 1933 to implement the nation’s first soil conservation project. Protecting the collection of streams interwoven throughout the landscape required a holistic approach, and the SCS needed everyone on board. In the end more than 400 farmers across the watershed united with scientists and crew members to adopt new practices of flood control and watershed conservation to reduce erosion. They began using contour strips to farm with rather than against the natural topography. They added barriers to keep cattle from roaming the steep hillsides, planted trees and vegetation to protect streams, and rotated their crops to foster healthy soil. These practices successfully improved land and water quality. Since then, they have been implemented across the country and continue to be used today.
“Revolutionary” may not be a common word used to describe a small, rural town in Wisconsin, but the farmers’ resolve to make a change makes this story a compelling case. These farmers were previously applying practices that had been passed down from generations of relatives before them, and it could not have been easy to accept that alternatives proposed by outsiders would be more effective. Most of us seem to have an aversion to change. There is a fear of uncertainty and an acceptance of the expected. It is why we spend years at a job that makes an enemy out of Monday mornings and why we continue to wear a pair of socks until there is more hole than cotton covering the sole. It is why, even when the world around us is changing, we refuse to change with it.
Flooding has always been an accepted risk for those who live along the creek and flood plains of Coon Valley, but recent years have brought increased severity and frequency of the rising waters. The flood of 2018 was an extreme event – warranting declaration of a state emergency and reaching levels that had never been seen before in the village’s living history.
Long-time-resident Peggy Way lives near the Timber Coulee Creek, and her home was hit full force by flood waters when the nearby dams failed. She was evacuated amidst the rising water and described the shock of returning to her house the next day. After the several feet of water were finally pumped from her home, she stood before the mud-strewn materials and mangled debris, overwhelmed and unsure of how to even begin. Luckily, there was no shortage of help in the coming days. From family members and coworkers to complete strangers, many people stopped by her house to help clean up. A nearly identical story was told by countless others across the village. The night of the August flooding will continue to haunt the memories of many who lived through it, but it is the stories of a community coming together to rebuild that truly captures the heart of Coon Valley.
Many residents will do as they have always done: rebuild and endure, but for others, the 2018 flood will have more lasting consequences. Peggy’s home of the past 35 years was redesignated as a “breech house,” which means it would require additional restrictions if it were to be sold in the future. Instead, Peggy filed the paperwork for a buyout program and is waiting to hear back on the details. Her house will likely be demolished, with her land becoming an access point for Timber Coulee Creek. Peggy did not know of any others in her area that were participating in the buyout program; some simply chose not to, but others were not eligible because they were not technically in the original floodplain. Peggy is sad to be leaving her little plot of land, especially her flowers and the songbirds that they attract, but she is trying to look on the bright side of things. She is thankful for her community, and even though she won’t be in the same location, she will still be thinking about and praying for her neighbors who farm nearby.
Similar to those who faced the erosion problems of the 1930s, farmers today are also facing an uphill battle when it comes to nurturing a reciprocal relationship with the land. Many crops were ruined in the torrential rain, and Peggy talks about her neighbors having trouble pasturing their calves in the aftermath of the 2018 flood. The mud and topsoil coated the grass, and the calves developed poor growth and nutrition problems. There are solutions that can help relieve some of the impacts. In fact, many of the current land practices originally developed in the 1930s protected the Coon Valley area from what could have been even more catastrophic damage. Researchers continue to seek out more advanced adaptive strategies, but agreeing to keep fighting this same battle is one that individuals have to make.
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Soon after the historic 2018 flood, Peggy was finally beginning to see things settle back into normal order; a neighbor installed her new sump pump, the electricity was turned back on, and a crew of Amish volunteers cleaned her basement from top to bottom.
Then, a week later, it flooded again.
With another four inches of mud and three feet of water in the basement, the clean-up process began again. Peggy stoically described the first flood as just a disaster that needed to be dealt with, but she felt the sadness and disbelief after the second one. It was like hitting a person who was already down. This is the real concern: as long as people live in these flood-risk locations, there will be an endless cycle of disaster followed by recovery, with the time in between filled with anxiety about when the next catastrophe will hit.
But perhaps change and resiliency do not have to be at odds with one another. Perhaps change is giving people a chance. In the 1930s, residents observed the land and adapted their practices to work with nature rather than in opposition to it. Today, residents have a similar decision to make as they consider buyout programs, adaptation strategies, and future prevention projects. They’ve built dams, raised their houses, and installed pumps, but at what point does the fight for resiliency become a fight against the forces of nature itself? The decision is a fine line to walk.
There is a prideful persistence in the locals of the Coon Valley region, and Peggy does not see the settlements that have been here for centuries packing up to leave any time soon. She describes this persistence when she says, “You rebuild. You move on. The farmers’ fields and the fertile valley floor is where for generations people have pastured their cows and taken off their crops, and they’ll do it again, and they’ll keep going and, you know, if something breaks we’ll fix it.”