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at ground zero the combiation for the lock is 00-30-16 thanks to the onalsaka tourism center for permission to plant this cache
Onalaska is founded
A tall, sandy-haired, blue-eyed man, named
Thomas G. Rowe, from New York, travelled west
and arrived in La Crosse in 1851. He stayed in a
hotel while he searched the surrounding country-
side for a suitable place to settle and to establish a
home and a future. A friend whom he met and
with whom he shared his room, was Mr. Harvey
Hubbard. Mr. Hubbard described Mr. Rowe as be-
ing a "well educated, intellectual and genial gentle-
man."
Mr. Rowe soon became attracted to a high, heavi-
ly timbered area on the bank of the Black River
about five miles north of the city of La Crosse. To
the west was a wide valley with a large island ly-
ing between the Black River and the mighty Mis-
sissippi which flowed at the foot of the beautiful
bluffs of Minnesota. From this Black River bank,
these bluffs are often veiled in a misty blue haze,
giving a very lovely effect. To the east of the Black
River banks and the timbered hillside were sand
foothills that stretched about a mile before reaching
more beautiful rocky topped bluffs with fertile cou-
lees and level land, watered by clear spring water
that bubbled out of the ground in many shady,
green glens.
Mr. Rowe found this beauty so much more ap-
pealing than the sand prairie on which La Crosse
was being built, that he decided to establish his
own city here. He entered the site at the land of-
fice in Mineral Point that same summer. In the fall
he hired a surveyor to plot out the town. He felt
the beauty of the area, and also the Black River's
importance to the beginning lumbering operations,
would bring men and business to his city.
His first business operation was to have a wood-
en frame building moved from La Crosse's water
front up to Onalaska and to have it remodeled into
a tavern-hotel for the lumbermen.
OUR TOWN IS NAMED
A town of such beauty and promise for a success-
ful future must have a special name. While most
towns and hamlets were named after an early
settler, like Galesville or Brownsville; or after a Eu-
ropean city from where the settlers came, like West
Salem; or given an Indian name, like La Crosse;
Mr. Rowe chose ONALASKA from a poem written
by Thomas Campbell and published in 1799. Thom-
as Campbell's works were favored by Mr. Rowe
and he was known to recite frequently the poem
entitled, "The Pleasures of Hope." One verse fol-
lows:
"Now fore he sweeps, where scarce a summer smiles,
On Behring's rocks, or Greenland's naked isles,
Cold on his midnight watch the breezes blow;
From wastes that slumber in eternal snow,
And waft, across the waves' tumultuous roar,
The wolfs' long howl from Oonalaska's shore."
While Mr. Rowe was planning his city, he often
told his roommate, Mr. Hubbard, that he would
name it Oonalaska but drop the one "O". The word
is believed to be Aleutian or Russian in origin. Un-
til the early 1900's, a small seal fishing village in
the Aleution Islands, spelled Unalaska, was the
only other place to bear the name. This same area
became an airbase during World War II and servi-
cemen who were stationed there say that Onalaska,
Wisconsin, does resemble that Alaskan village in
many ways. As recently as the late 1950's when Dr.
and Mrs. Lyle Radcliffe moved here from Nebraska,
they recall that the man who drove the moving
van became lost while trying to find their new
home. He drove through much of the city and sur-
rounding area to find the address. This man had
been stationed in Alaska during World War II and
was surprised to find a similar landscape and beau-
ty. He said our city is well named because the
landscape of this area is very much like what he
saw in Alaska.
The unusual name, despite its cold, lonesome
sounding origin was to go to other towns in the
United States. A lumberman, Mr. William A. Car-
lisle, lived in Onalaska, Wisconsin, and loved the
area very much. When the pine forests were de-
pleted here in Wisconsin, in the late 1890's, he left
Onalaska with his crew of lumbermen and went
south, setting up a camp in Arkansas. The camp
needed an address to receive mail so he named it
Onalaska.
In 1904 he moved the camp to Texas and built a
sawmill there. He named the new town that
formed around his mill Onalaska,again, in honor of
his favorite Wisconsin home. Then, in 1914, Mr.
Carlisle moved, most likely following the lumber
industry, to the state of Washington. Here, once
more, he founded a town and named it Onalaska.
The camp in Arkansas did not develop after the
lumbermen left but the other two, in Texas and
Washington, did grow and prosper.
Mr. Dave Huebsch researched the three cities
with the same name in 1975 and found this infor-
mation. He calls it "Unprecedented Triplicity" not-
ing the similarity in the three cities. Today each is
a fast-growing recreational area that offers a good
place to live. Perhaps Mr. Rowe was correct in his
conclusion that people would like to live in an area
of natural beauty, and that Onalaska is a good
name for a town.
What these men did perhaps proves the saying,
"Ideas and visions can be seen more clearly in
what a man does-than in a man's words."
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
ebpxva ebovaf fnlf gjrrg,gjrrg