The light which local inquiry can shed upon general history is well
illustrated from a variety of viewpoints in the story of the Wisconsin
village which is the subject of this sketch.
Muscoda as a present-day railway station is inconspicuously located on
the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul line, Prairie du Chien division,
at the distance of fifty-six miles almost due west from Madison, one
hundred and fifty-two from Milwaukee; it is forty-two miles east from
Prairie du Chien. The village was begun at the river bank on the south
side of Wisconsin River, in section 1, township 8 north, range 1 west
of the fourth principal meridian. It stretches south from the river
toward the flanking hills about three-fourths of a mile, the main
portion now clustering about the depot, whereas the “Old Town” lay
farther north and hugged the river bank.
The ground on which Muscoda stands is a portion of the sandy plain,
the outwash of the erosion process by which the Wisconsin and its
larger tributaries worked their way through the sandstone stratum. The
upper courses of these tributaries and the smaller streams which feed
them have laid down flood bottoms of rich alluvium. Often, too, the
bench land of their valleys is a fertile limestone soil intermingled
with clayey patches and occasional streaks of sand. These are all
characteristics of the “Driftless Area,” as the geologists have named
this region, because the various primordial movements of glacial
ice, so influential in modifying the topography elsewhere, passed
around instead of over it, leaving no “drift” upon it. The terrain
is just what the eroding waters in the course of countless ages made
it--a system of regular valleys perfectly drained and bounded by
symmetrically sculptured hills or bluffs, which exhibit a level sky
line and decrease in altitude steadily till at the heads of the streams
they merge in the great plateau or “prairie” of southern Wisconsin. The
valleys make natural and not ill-graded highways from the prairie to
the Wisconsin River, while the ranges of bluffs separating them appear
like promontories running out fingerwise from the main plateau and
terminating either where two smaller streams converge or at the edge of
the lower plain laid down by the Wisconsin.
The principal stream entering the Wisconsin from the south, in the
neighborhood of Muscoda, is Blue River--the “Riviere Bleu” of the
French traders. It has several head streams rising in township 6-1 E,
and a large affluent named the Fennimore rising in 6-1 W, the Six Mile
Creek, rising in 7-1 E and Sandy Branch which heads in 8-1 E. There are
also several small branches entering the Fennimore from 7-2 W. In its
lower course the Blue River swerves to the west, entering the Wisconsin
near Blue River Station, in Township 8-2 W, but its rich upper valleys
and those of its tributaries have always been mainly within the trade
area of Muscoda. North of the Wisconsin the valleys most intimately
associated with Muscoda are Indian Creek, Eagle Creek, and Knapp’s
Creek in Richland County. The “Sand Prairie,” by which name the sandy
plain along the Wisconsin on the south side has long been known, and a
narrow tract of shelving land between the river and the hills on the
north are also within the Muscoda area.
Since the bluffs are mostly rough land, with only limited areas
on their summits where the soil is deep, free from stones, and
sufficiently even for cultivation, and the sand prairie comparatively
infertile, Muscoda as a trade center suffers from the low average
productivity of her territory. Still, from pioneer days the long
valleys beyond the sand prairie have yielded abundant harvests;
the roads through them from the high prairie to the south opened to
Muscoda’s merchants for some years a great trade in livestock and
grain beyond her legitimate boundaries; while the cross ranges which
run out from the high prairie northward approximately fifteen miles
forced the only rival railway,[75] when it came, back upon the great
ridge, leaving the north trending valleys still as a whole tributary to
Muscoda.