The faculty of the UW Fond du Lac and the Gottfried Arboretum encourage the public to visit and use the grounds of the Campus. They have expressed that they wish more people would enjoy this area that they so carefully tend and maintain. Please be respectful of property and landscaping so this beautiful playground remains a public treasure.
The cache is located on the 155 acre (roughly) UW Fond du Lac Campus, one of my favorite in-town playgrounds. It borders Taycheedah Creek, houses the Gottfried Arboretum, boasts views of the Ledge, and has three wildlife ponds. Some of the many uses for this area are the soccer fields, walking/ biking paths with interpretive signs, old running track, kite and remote control airplane flying area, sledding, wildlife and wildflower viewing, and Prairie Fest.
History of UW Fond du Lac:
The beginnings of the campus are rooted in the 1950’s when the University of Wisconsin-Madison operated an extension campus in Fond du Lac. By the beginning of the 1960s however, that venture had ended, and local community organizers were hoping to bring a fully operating campus to the community. The Citizen's Committee of Fond du Lac County residents began conducting exploratory studies. Then in 1963 the Wisconsin coordinating Council for Higher Education designated Fond du Lac as a potential site for a two-year branch campus as part of its "outreach" plan designed to bring quality higher education within easy reach of students. This led to a formal resolution of support in 1966 by the Fond du Lac County Board of Supervisors. Land was dedicated for the campus in October, 1967, the previous home of the county airport on the city of Fond du Lac's east side.
Original construction, land and equipment costs totaled just over $5 million. The campus opened on Sept. 9, 1968 as a satellite campus of UW–Oshkosh, and became an independent two-year campus in 1972.
The original plans called for construction of a theater and an additional science and classroom building but those never materialized. Also in the early plans was to later add on to the library and student center. Yet for 35 years, no new buildings or additions were added since the original construction. In 1999 the UW system and Fond du Lac County invested $13 million on an addition and renovations to the aging campus. The 64,000 square foot University Center would contained a new library, 300 seat theater, music department, large group instruction room, campus store, student commons area, food service, and game room. In the fall of 2000, the renovations were complete and the addition opened for the first school year of the new millennium. The University Center now linked together two of the original buildings and joined together all student activities except physical education.
Permission to place this cache was given by Bethany Rusch, assistant dean of administrative services of UW FdL.