From Badger Ordinance to Badger Lands

A t-shirt at the Badger Army
Munitions Plant Museum noting
the largest such factory in the world.
5/9/2019 dwm photo

The United States wasn't a player in World War II when a Wisconsin Congressman announced that a factory to produce powder and acid for weapons would be built near Baraboo.

That was in October 1941 (two months before the attack of Pearl Harbor).  In November, President Franklin Roosevelt authorized plant construction.  By March, farmers and other landowners were off their land.

Construction began right away and the first load of smokeless powder left the Badger Ordinance Works to be used in cartridges for Army M-1 rifles.

It was a remarkable transformation.  All these years later, I'd imagine most would agree the sacrifice at home and abroad was worth it to prevail in the Second World War.

Picture of an "Angel Buggy" - used
to transport nitro-glycerin around the
plant.  It is unstable and explosive.
The name for the cart was gallows
humor - if the n-g was upset somehow
the driver became an angel.
5/9/2019 dwm photo

The factory produced propellant and smokeless powder.  It was used in hand grenades, tear gas canisters, and other military applications.  There were 1,400 buildings and 120 miles of road and rail covering almost 10,000 acres.

12,000 people worked there during WWII.

After the war, the plant was shut down in 1948.  It was taken out of mothballs in 1951 for the Korean conflict, then closed again in 1958.

The museum curator told our visiting group that the archives included a letter from 1957 mentioning an early group of advisers being sent to Vietnam.  The plant supplied ball powder and other elements needed to carry on that war until operations stopped in 1977.  In 1997, it was deemed excess property.

Over the past 22 years, the plant was dismantled, ground cleaned, and land awarded.  1,550 acres belong to the Ho-Chunk Nation.  The Department of Agriculture owns 2,200 acres for crop research.  The state of Wisconsin received 3,385 acres - which is slowly transitioning into the Sauk Prairie Recreation Area.

Our bus stops near a remaining stand
of Oak Savanna that was native to the
area before the plant. 5/9/19 (dwm)

Our small group learned the history of the plant during the first part of our visit.  The second half was about the efforts to restore the prairie.

Before European settlers arrived - the area was a massive prairie below the large Baraboo Bluffs which marks the terminal moraine of the glacier and the outwash plain created by the melting.

The prairie offers a unique vantage point - it is at the stopping point of a glacier; exhibits evidence of glacial melting; and land that was never covered by glacier.  It offers unique qualities for geologists to study.

It was home to people long before the Mayflower showed up on the east coast.

An abandoned street for the Munition plant getting reclaimed
by the earth.  The Baraboo Bluffs are in the distance.
5/19/2019 dwm photo

After the factory was torn down and land divided - efforts to remake the prairie began.

There are small fragments left from the original prairie.

The Hillside Prairie (below) is the only section not plowed by the farmers who preceded the factory.

Volunteers with the Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance are using prescribed burns and manual labor to reduce the invasive shrubs and small trees which crowded out nature plant life and the animals it supported.

The Ho-Chunk portion of the former grounds is also being carefully restored.  A bike trail was finished last fall that crosses the entire grounds from its origin in Sauk City. It will eventually reach Baraboo.

The Hillside Prairie. 5/9/19 (dwm)

The vision for the State Recreation Area is incomplete - there are ideas of including an all terrain vehicle or off-road motorcycle trail.  Others, like the Conservation Alliance want to restore and preserve the land.

I asked our guide what the best-case scenario was on completing the restoration - the executive director of the alliance, Charlie Luthin, said 50 years.

That number is beyond my lifetime - but it is worth the effort.