The history of the early vegetation in Waupaca County, land use and a tale of current land management by Keva Schulz.
I grew up in Shawano, WI, a small town established in the mid-19th century that owed its early existence to the lumber industry.
The Anglocentric local history which I was taught ignored the centuries of indigenous history and their impact of the landscape.
Though I grew up only 8 miles from the reservation, I was taught nothing of Menominee culture or their participation in the French and Indian War (allied with the French) and the War of 1812 (allied with the British). History started with the early Jesuit explorers/missionaries followed by the lumbermen who first came in the 1830s, built sawmills on the rivers, and devastated the majestic stands of centuries-old white pine.
White pine logs were valued because they cut like butter and could be floated downriver to the mills. As a consequence, I envisioned a Wisconsin before white settlement as “The Great Pinery,” a landscape covered in mature white pine.
However, the map above (before white settlement) shows a very different reality: most of the land was dominated by hardwood forest and oak savannah (prairie). The pineries along the edge of the prairie in Waupaca County owed their existence to burning by the Ho-Chunk people which kept the hardwoods at bay.
Why does this matter?
I need to make decisions on how to manage my woodland – whether to favor pine or hardwood. The 150-year-old black oak stand which the Wisconsin DNR makes me harvest next fall will regenerate only if fenced to keep deer out; oak being preferred deer browse.
Unless I intervene with more fence ($$$$) and much sweat, the remainder will likely grow up in white pine. Being in the Tension Zone, this land likely changed character regularly through the centuries, but based on this map, it likely was dominated by white pine when the lumbermen came.
The remnants of very old, large pine stumps were present back in the early ‘70s (these often contained a bottle of Snowshoe Grog left behind the previous owner). So, it seems deer will achieve what burning did centuries ago: reestablish “The Pinery.”
Thanks to Keva for sharing this story.