View From Inside The Warm House in the Frozen North-Stan Hitchcock-February 5, 2013

When the first explorers, Marquette and Joliet, came through the wilderness, paddling down what is now known as the Wisconsin River, and drifted out into the huge body of water, now known as the Upper Mississippi River, and turned to the right and made a landing on the shore of what is now Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, it was probably in the heat of Summer or at least late Spring...and they probably took some pictures of the beautiful bluffs and rich green valley on their early I-Phones, sent them back to the headquarters of the Prehistoric Real Estate Developers in Detroit or maybe Cleveland and then added a message, "Send Pioneer Settlers. Beautiful site for development. Climate is wonderful. Plenty Water. Much Fish. Deer abundant. love, Mark and Joly." Six Months later, around January or February, a party of Pioneer Settlers, in their early SUV's, were slogging thru the waist deep snow, topping the hill and looking down on the frozen valley of snow and ice. The leader of the group, Dan'l Boone Johansonheimer, turned to his wife and said, "Give me that dang Atlas woman, you done got us lost as an Easter Egg. We must have taken a wrong turn and are about six miles from the North Pole."


As they turned around and headed back to Chicago, it was a sad day for wilderness discovery, for it was several years, and in the Month of June, when the next Explorers came and discovered Utopia on the Mississippi, or as it was to be called, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. These Explorers, and now Settlers, had a plan....to live in this beautiful land of Utopian Wisconsin, all Spring, Summer and Fall, and then to get the heck out of Dodge and head for Nashville, Tennessee and points even further South, for the extreme Winter period, keeping all the Casino's along the River booming and the Bus Tours fat and happy and all the Southern Tourist Traps smiling in happiness and good will.
And the people of the North lived happily ever after, making cheese and curds, speaking in their strange Northern tongues and Scandinavian sounding names, to confound the Southerners that happen by, in search of the "Northern Pike Terrible".,

This is a little known History Lesson on the Discovery of the Frozen North Country of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, which I have now shared with you, my friends, after much research and wanderings along the back trails and wooded hills, of Wild Wisconsin.

There is no charge for this service, although donations are welcome. Stan