Grandfather Falls is the highest waterfall on the
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, first recorded in 1673 by Jacques Marquette as "Meskousi ...
. The total drop is 89 feet, spread out in a series of cascades over about one mile. The upper third of the falls and most of the flow, except in the spring, is diverted through a canal and a series of
penstocks
A penstock is a sluice or gate or intake structure that controls water flow, or an enclosed pipe that delivers water to hydro turbines and sewerage systems. The term is inherited from the earlier technology of mill ponds and watermills.
Hyd ...
to feed hydroelectric generators. Grandfather Falls dam and power generating facility is owned and operated by
Wisconsin Public Service Corporation
Wisconsin Public Service Corporation (WPS) is a utility company headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The company serves more than 450,000 electric customers and more than 333,000 natural gas customers in 27 counties in eastern, northeastern no ...
.
The cascade has been known historically as Grandfather Bull Falls and as Boileaux Rapids. Other phonetic variations on Boileaux such as Beauleaux and Brearbeaux are also sometimes seen in older accounts and maps. The
Ojibwe
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
name for the cascade was "Konajewun" which means "long falls".
Many of the falls and rapids on the Wisconsin River had the word "Bull" inserted in the name, such as Big Bull Falls at what is now
Wausau and Jenny Bull Falls at what is now
Merrill Merrill may refer to:
Places in the United States
* Merrill Field, Anchorage, Alaska
* Merrill, Iowa
*Merrill, Maine
* Merrill, Michigan
*Merrill, Mississippi, an unincorporated community near Lucedale in George County
*Merrill, Oregon
*Merrill, W ...
. These derive from ''
voyageurs
The voyageurs (; ) were 18th and 19th century French Canadians who engaged in the transporting of furs via canoe during the peak of the North American fur trade. The emblematic meaning of the term applies to places (New France, including the ' ...
'' working for
John Baptiste DuBay, who ran a trading post for
John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company
The American Fur Company (AFC) was founded in 1808, by John Jacob Astor, a German immigrant to the United States. During the 18th century, furs had become a major commodity in Europe, and North America became a major supplier. Several British co ...
near
Fort Winnebago
Fort Winnebago was a 19th-century fortification of the United States Army located on a hill overlooking the eastern end of the portage between the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers east of present-day Portage, Wisconsin. It was the middle one of three fo ...
, and built a pioneering trading post and homestead near
Knowlton. While traveling up stream, a party of these ''voyageurs'' encountered the rapids at Mosinee and named it ''Taureau'', French for "bull." When they encountered the rapids at Wausau, which were bigger, they named them ''Gros Taureau'' — "Big Bull." When they encountered the much larger rapids 40 miles further up stream, they named them ''Taureau Grand-père.'' This began a tradition for naming all the falls on the upper Wisconsin.
Geologic history
Several hundred million years ago, the northern highlands of Wisconsin were an alpine mountain range. Beneath this range, igneous rock formed which now is called pre-Cambrian bedrock, the top layers of the mountains having been worn down by erosion. In more recent geologic time, glaciers scoured the surface exposing this pre-Cambrian rock in many areas, leaving irregular drainage throughout the north woods with many rapids and falls as features of the streams. Grandfather Falls lies in this pre-Cambrian rock bed, and is thus a remnant of the physical geography of this ancient mountain range.
Early river navigation
Trade route and portage
Although there are no precise records of when and to what degree trade started on the upper Wisconsin, it was known to be a significant route by around the turn of the nineteenth century.
Lac du Flambeau was a large
Ojibwe
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
town within which Montreal fur traders built semi-permanent trading posts, including by more than one company simultaneously. These traders sent employees on excursions down river to trade with Ojibwe towns and camps which existed as far south as the
Yellow River
The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Standard Beijing Mandarin, Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system in the world at th ...
. When traveling to the satellite Ojibwe villages downstream, it was necessary to portage the Falls. By the time US federal surveyors arrived to take their data in 1851, the portage road was well-established.
A story extant from the period describes what was probably the first and only canoe trip down the falls:
In 1849, these falls were navigated, in a bark canoe, for the first and last time by two Indians — the Black Nail and the Crow. At the head of the falls before starting, Crow held the canoe by a rock projecting from the shore, while Black Nail made a prayer and an offering to the spirit of the falls. The offering consisted of two yards of scarlet broad cloth, and a brass kettle ... fter saying theprayer, he threw the offering overboard, and grappled his paddle, and the canoe went bounding over the billows, and ran the falls in safety.
As Jenny (Merrill) developed in the 1870s, it became a point of departure for suppliers to the logging camps:
the summer months canoes were the common means of conveyance. From 1,000 to 1,200 pounds could be loaded on a canoe and the trip from Jenny to Grandfather made in a day, and as many as 25 or 30 canoes were often seen on the water, each with three men bound for Grandfather. It required four days to make the trip to Eagle River by this means and two to return downstream.
Barrier to lumber rafts, problem for log drives
The principal means by which the lumber mills along the Wisconsin River sent their product to market was lumber rafts. Lumber rafts were used before railroads were built in the region, but to some extent even afterwards. The product was the raft itself, constructed of the boards which were to be sold at Saint Louis and other cities along the Mississippi. Special techniques and training were developed in order to optimize the amount of product that successfully made it, although due to accidents on several dangerous stretches of the river some times these lumber rafts were smashed into splinters — and many times the workers running the rafts were killed.
It was virtually impossible to run these lumber rafts down Grandfather Falls. As a consequence, Jenny (Merrill) became the northernmost sawmill town. The Falls acted as a hazard to log drives as well. Prior to railroads penetrating the pineries in the 1880s, logs for the mills were cut and "banked" along the river and its tributaries, and in the spring of the year the logs were "driven" downstream to the mills. This work was always dangerous and difficult, but nothing was more dangerous than a log jam. Once a set of logs started to clog up a river, the rest would back up behind. The largest log jam in Wisconsin history was at Grandfather Falls — 80,000,000 board feet backed up for miles.
A prime goal of river development up stream, either by the Wisconsin River Improvement Company or by any of the other dams such as the Tomahawk Dam (built in 1887), was to provide flushing water to float logs down the river in general, but specifically over the problematic Grandfather Falls. The Falls itself had three stone dams to aid in the flushing of logs as well. In the Wisconsin lumbering era, this issue was of such a concern that it made front-page news as a business-related item in newspapers around the state, in the same way that modern business pages report shipping traffic or the price of oil.
Development at the Falls
The upper flushing dam was eventually developed for sawing lumber by
Peter B. Champagne in 1880. He enhanced the dam, and on the east side constructed a
mill race
A mill race, millrace or millrun, mill lade (Scotland) or mill leat (Southwest England) is the current of water that turns a water wheel, or the channel ( sluice) conducting water to or from a water wheel. Compared with the broad waters of a mi ...
. With the sawmill came mill workers, and the need to house the workers, so eventually a modest sized town built up that included a livery stable, boarding house, store, saloon and post office. The post office acquired the official name of Champagne and the village, never incorporated, was known variously as Champagne or Grandfather Falls. With the boarding house and other facilities, as wagon traffic increased on the road north into the woods — traffic that included loggers and other workers like surveyors, as well as commercial traffic all the way to
Ontonagon — the village became a stopping point for travelers to refresh themselves and feed and water their horses.
Once the railroads penetrated the north woods — the
Milwaukee Road
The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (CMStP&P), often referred to as the "Milwaukee Road" , was a Class I railroad that operated in the Midwestern United States, Midwest and Pacific Northwest, Northwest of the United States fr ...
, a few miles east; the
Soo Line, going east–west a few miles north; and rival north–south railroads just 25 miles or so to the east and west — the general situation change drastically as the towns upstream could now ship finished lumber directly to market by rail. Thus Tomahawk and Rhinelander began to boom, and the sawmills from Merrill south began a steady decline. Even to the extent that the downstream mills stayed economically viable, log drives disappeared. Instead logs themselves could now be brought by rail to the mills. The decline in sawmills did not mean a decline in the forest products economy, as the paper industry steadily emerged as a major economic force in the north woods. However, as a barrier to commerce Grandfather Falls ceased to become an issue.
Modern hydroelectric development
![AnnotatedGrandfatherFalls-ver02](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/AnnotatedGrandfatherFalls-ver02.png)
In 1938 Wisconsin Public Service Corporation commenced a major project to exploit the entire 90 foot drop for power. On the east side of the river, construction crews built a canal which diverts the water to two intake ports feeding
penstocks
A penstock is a sluice or gate or intake structure that controls water flow, or an enclosed pipe that delivers water to hydro turbines and sewerage systems. The term is inherited from the earlier technology of mill ponds and watermills.
Hyd ...
. These penstocks carry the water about 1/3 mile horizontally and 92 feet vertically. At the bottom, a power plant converts the water into about 17 megawatts of electrical power using two generators. A key component of the system are two surge towers which rise above the plant. These dampen the flow and allow maximum energy from the gravitational force of the water to drive the generator wheels, thus optimizing overall efficiency. The Grandfather Falls system produces the highest energy of all the hydroelectric plants that WPSC wholly owns. (One plant that WPSC owns jointly produces 20 megawatts.)
Navigability of the Wisconsin River
The Wisconsin River is a "navigable river of the United States," an official designation that means Congress has authority to govern its use under the
commerce clause
The Commerce Clause describes an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution ( Article I, Section 8, Clause 3). The clause states that the United States Congress shall have power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and amon ...
of the
US Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the nation ...
. The fact that Grandfather Falls was a barrier to lumber rafts but not to logs was an essential fact in a key case which determined its navigability. The plaintiffs in the case argued that since logs were driven from above the Falls to mills between Wisconsin Rapids and Merrill, for that section of the river the commerce was intrastate only, and not interstate. The court considered this fact, but ruled against this argument. Citing precedent, the court said, "The sawing of the logs into lumber at the mills and the change in the mode of transportation did not divide the journey from 'the Pineries' to 'market' into two distinct, unrelated journeys, the first of which is purely intrastate and the other interstate ..." The practical aspect of this designation generally does not have bearing on recreational use of the river, but primarily means that dams — such as the hydroelectric project at Grandfather Falls — require licensing by the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is the United States federal agency that regulates the transmission and wholesale sale of electricity and natural gas in interstate commerce and regulates the transportation of oil by pipeline in ...
.
Recreational use
Access to fishing and other general use of the river and the shoreline is granted by the landowners. Warning signs and caution signs should be followed. A portion of the
Wisconsin Ice Age Trail runs nearby. Camp New Wood County,
Camp New Wood County Park
/ref> situated on the site of a historic Civilian Conservation Corps
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a major part of ...
camp, is located a few miles south and offers primitive camping and access to the river for fishing and other uses.
Notes
External links
Wisconsin Public Service Corporation web site
*{{gnis, 1565721
Landforms of Lincoln County, Wisconsin
Waterfalls of Wisconsin