EDITORIAL: A river park meanders through Native American history

A mistake made decades ago is coming back, not to haunt Ozaukee County, but to give it a new park with a fascinating connection to the Native American society that thrived here as recently as the 18th century and as long ago as the first century.

The mistake was to remove a Milwaukee River oxbow, one of the exaggerated curves rivers make over time. It was a consequential blunder.

The curve was bulldozed away to allow for improvement of Highway W in Saukville. It turned out the improved road was frequently under water. The straightening of the river made it prone to flooding at that location, and extended closings of the submerged road were almost an annual spring event.

The loss of the oxbow was a setback for the river itself, depriving it of the healthy wetlands that surround these natural turns of the river banks and the habitat they create for fish, birds and plants.

The county has been making plans to fix the oxbow mistake for several years. It has taken a while because it’s a complex job involving raising and moving the highway and installing culverts under it to mitigate flooding, in addition to recreating the oxbow.

There is another reason for the delay, and it’s a good one. Artifacts from the times when Native Americans of several tribes were Saukville’s first residents were discovered under the soil of the land in the oxbow project that was earmarked for a new park.

Archaeology experts from the Wisconsin Historical Society say the finds of stone tools, arrowheads and pottery are significant evidence of millennia-old encampments of indigenous peoples. To avoid disturbing these remnants of ancient societies on the banks of the river, the two acres where they were discovered will be added to the county park that will result from the highway reconstruction project.

The 67-acre park will be named the Milwaukee River Oxbow Nature Preserve.

The artifact discoveries are notable but not surprising. Saukville is known to have been a hub of activity for generations of Native Americans, owing to its place beside a navigable river that served as an aquatic highway.

The Village of Saukville’s Peninsula Park, a short distance downstream from the oxbow site, was a crossroads for indigenous communities, including Saukville’s namesake, the Sauk People.

In fields near the park, farmers of yore frequently found artifacts of those Native American cultures unearthed by their plowing. Some of them had collections of artfully wrought arrowheads, sharp, symmetrical hunting tools chiseled out of flint found in the area’s abundant limestone deposits.

The oxbow preserve will be a significant addition to the county’s excellent system of nature parks, not just for its Native American provenance, but also because it will give the public more access to the county’s most valuable inland environmental feature, the Milwaukee River.

The river, which runs through almost the entire length of Ozaukee County, enters with two branches, one directly west of Waubeka and another near Newburg. It offers many miles of water ideal for canoeing, kayaking and fishing. The river has robust, naturally sustainable populations of native fish, including smallmouth bass and northern pike, that are fun to catch and good to eat.

This is not your grandfather’s river, which through most of the 20th century was a polluted waterway, contaminated by inadequately treated effluent from municipal sewage plants and industrial pollution sources, starting at its headwaters in Fond du Lac County.

Today’s river is cleaner and healthier, a result of the federal Clean Water Act passed in 1972 and the decades-long efforts it empowered by state and local governments and nonprofit conservation organizations to improve its water quality.

The Oxbow Nature Preserve will be one of five Ozaukee County parks on the banks of the river, along with Waubedonia, Hawthorne Hills, Ehlers and River Oaks Parks.

Just as the size and complexity of the new park have grown, so too has its cost, now pegged at something over $4 million. The county has that pretty much covered, thanks to $2.1 million in federal and state grants and a quite amazing $1.5 million grant from the private National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

County Planning and Parks Director Andrew Struck, who was the subject of an Ozaukee Press feature story highlighting his remarkable success at securing grants for county park projects, should keep at it.

There ought to be a grant available from some source for a display, perhaps a series of plaques with text and images, to be added to the Milwaukee River Oxbow Nature Preserve informing park visitors that people from the Sauk, Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk and Meskwaki tribes preceded them as visitors to this place on the bank of a river flowing through the ages.