Wisconsin River

The Wisconsin River is a tributary of the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. At approximately 430 miles (692 km) long, it is the state's longest river. The river's name was first recorded in 1673 by Jacques Marquette as "Meskousing" from his Indian guides - most likely Miami for "river running through a red place."

Before roads into Wisconsin, the river was canoed, hunted and fished by Indians. Loggers used the upper reaches of the river and its tributaries to drive logs to their sawmills and the lower reaches to float rafts of sawn boards to markets as near as Portage and as far as St. Louis. Today dams along the river generate hydroelectric power and people fish, boat, water-ski and sight-see on the river.

Geography
The Wisconsin is the longest river in the state, arising at the Michigan border in the northeast and emptying into the Mississippi River far to the southwest near Prairie du Chien. It originates in the forests of the North Woods Lake District in Lac Vieux Desert on the border with the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It flows south across the glacial plain of central Wisconsin, passing through Wausau, Stevens Point, and Wisconsin Rapids. In southern Wisconsin, it encounters the terminal moraine formed during the last ice age, where it flows through the Dells of the Wisconsin River. North of Madison at Portage the river turns to the west, flowing through Wisconsin's hilly Western Upland and joining the Mississippi approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Prairie du Chien.

Grandfather Falls in Lincoln County was a series of rapids which constituted the largest drop in a short distance on the river. Over the course of a mile and a half, the river drops 89.5 feet. The river borders Adams, Juneau, Columbia, Sauk, Dane, Iowa, Richland, Grant, and Crawford Counties.



Formation
The modern Wisconsin River was formed in several stages. Most recent was the northernmost segment of the river, from the source to around modern Merrill. During the last ice age an ice sheet crept down from Canada, and a section called the Wisconsin Valley Lobe bulged down the valley that would become the Wisconsin River to near Merrill. As the climate warmed and that ice sheet receded about 14,000 years ago, meltwater drained down the valley, eventually cutting a course similar to the modern river.

The next segment, from Merrill to around Wisconsin Rapids, was probably formed as earlier glaciers retreated, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Like the northern segment, the bedrock beneath is pre-Cambrian igneous and metamorphic rock - hard-to-erode stuff that produces frequent rapids.

The next segment, from Wisconsin Rapids to the Baraboo Hills, flows through a sand plain. Though the last ice sheet stopped around Merrill, another lobe of the ice sheet to the east reached far to the south, butting up against the east end of the Baraboo Hills. With drainage blocked, water backed up north of the hills, forming Glacial Lake Wisconsin, which reached from modern Baraboo north to Wisconsin Rapids. As the ice sheet receded, meltwater carried sand and silt ground by the glacier into the lake, where the water slowed and its sediment settled to form a fairly flat lake bed. When warming began to melt back the ice against the Baraboo Hills, about 18,000 years ago, the flowing water quickly opened the gap and poured through, carving the Wisconsin Dells and cutting the start of the river's channel through the sand plain. Subsequent erosion has further cut that channel through the flat plain.

The lower, westward-flowing portion of the river, between the Baraboo Hills and the Mississippi, is probably the oldest section. Passing through the Driftless Area, it was never covered by a glacier. The western, lower end of the river is narrower than its upstream valley, leading to the suggestion that an ancestor river once flowed east through this segment.

History
Native Americans had long used the Wisconsin as a highway through the forests, canoeing and fishing it, living along its banks and burying their dead there.

In 1673, French missionary Jacques Marquette, French-Canadian explorer Louis Joliet, five voyageurs, and two Miami guides arrived near the headwaters of Fox River - modern-day Portage. From there, they portaged their two canoes slightly less than two miles through marsh and oak plains to the Wisconsin River. They then continued downstream 200 miles (320 km) to the Wisconsin's mouth, entering the Mississippi on June 17. Other explorers and traders would follow the same route, and for the next 150 years the Wisconsin and Fox rivers, collectively known as the Fox-Wisconsin Waterway, formed a major transportation route between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River.

Naming the river
When Marquette's company entered the Wisconsin River in their two canoes, he wrote: "The river on which we embarked is called Meskousing. It is very wide; it has a sandy bottom, which forms various shoals that rend its navigation very difficult." This is the first mention of the name that evolved into "Wisconsin," which the state ended up taking. Sieur de La Salle misread Marquette's 'M' as "Ou" and wrote the name as "Ouisconsin." In the 1800s, Americans anglicized the spelling to "Wisconsin."

The meaning of Meskousing/Wisconsin has long been sought. Indians and early French residents have offered meanings ranging from "stream of a thousand isles" to "gathering of waters" to "muskrat house." In 2003 Michael McCafferty, who specializes in the Miami language, argued that Meskousing is a rendering of "river running through a red place" in the language of Marquette and Joliet's two Miami guides. They were probably referring to the reddish sandstone along the river, like at the Dells.

Fur trade
The fur trade reached up the Wisconsin and its tributaries, with traders like John Baptiste Du Bay establishing posts along the river where they traded goods like knives and beads with Indians for furs. Indian territories shifted over time, but just prior to European settlement, the Ojibwe dominated the upper section above modern Wausau, the Menominee the middle section from Wausau to Portage, and the Ho-Chunk the lower section from Portage to Prairie du Chien.

Industrialization
In the 1830s and 1840s loggers started using the river to drive logs downstream from northern forests to sawmills in new cities like Wisconsin Rapids and Wausau. They built dams on the river to power their sawmills and to raise water levels to float logs downstream.

Later, in the first half of the 20th century, more dams were constructed to provide for flood control and hydroelectricity. The dams also spurred tourism, creating reservoirs such as Lake Wisconsin that are popular areas for recreational boating and fishing. Today, the Wisconsin River is the hardest working river in the nation. Twenty-five hydroelectric power plants operate on the upper part of the river, above Prairie du Sac. In total, these power plants use 645 feet of the river's drop to generate nearly one billion kilowatt-hours of renewable electricity a year — enough energy to power the homes of over 300,000 people - with minimal pollution.

Despite this, a 93-mile (150 km) stretch of the Wisconsin between its mouth and the Prairie du Sac Dam is free of any dams or barriers and is relatively free-flowing. In the late 1980s, this portion of the river was designated as a state riverway, and development alongside the river has been limited to preserve its scenic integrity.

Navigable river of the United States
The Wisconsin River is a "navigable river of the United States." This designation primarily means that the federal government has jurisdiction for dams on the river. Dams that include hydropower facilities are regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Courts have ruled that despite the fact that the river lies entirely in one state, it nevertheless historically carried goods to markets in other states and therefore is subject to the commerce clause of the United States Constitution. Courts have also ruled that raw logs, even if merely carried via log drives to mills within the state, constitute commerce. On the basis of these judgments, the Wisconsin River is considered a navigable waterway throughout its entire length. This designation does not generally have bearing on recreational use of the river. Boat registrations and fishing licenses are obtained through the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, for example.

Lower Wisconsin River State Riverway
The Lower Wisconsin River State Riverway is a state-funded project designed to protect the southern portion of the Wisconsin River. It extends 93 mi from Sauk City to the point where the Wisconsin River empties into the Mississippi, about 3 mi south of the city of Prairie du Chien. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources manages protected lands of over 75000 acre, including the river itself, islands, and some lands adjacent to the river. In 2020 the riverway was designated as a protected Ramsar site.

There are no dams or man-made obstructions to the natural flow of water between the hydroelectric dam just north of Sauk City and the confluence of the Wisconsin and the Mississippi. This long stretch of free-flowing river provides important natural habitats for a variety of wildlife, including white-tail deer, North American river otters, beavers, turtles, sandhill cranes, eagles, hawks, and a variety of fish species.

Recreational opportunities on the lower Wisconsin River range from fishing and canoeing to tubing and camping. Canoe camping is particularly popular because of the abundance of suitable sandbars along the riverway and because no permits are required. On summer weekends, naturists can be found on Mazo Beach which is north of the village of Mazomanie. According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, two thirds of river users can be found on the stretch between Prairie du Sac and Spring Green.

Cities and villages along the river

 * Biron
 * Boscobel
 * Brokaw
 * Eagle River
 * Kronenwetter
 * Merrill
 * Merrimac
 * Mosinee
 * Muscoda
 * Nekoosa
 * Okee
 * Plover
 * Port Edwards
 * Portage
 * Prairie du Sac
 * Rhinelander
 * Rothschild
 * Sauk City
 * Schofield
 * Spring Green
 * Stevens Point
 * Tomahawk
 * Wausau
 * Whiting
 * Wisconsin Dells
 * Wisconsin Rapids