Looking for information about a Wisconsin Ghost Town!
November 3, 2014 4:36 AM Subscribe
I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year, and I discovered that my setting of Portage County, WI happens to have a ghost town! Unfortunately, the only thing I can find about it is a stub of a
Wiki page.
At first I thought "jackpot!" since the story is intended to be horror/surrealism. Imagine my disappointment when my best web search efforts turn up nothing but tourism ads and a tiny bit about the lake itself.
I wish there were some fabulous creepy folklore around it, but in a way, its almost total nonexistence on the web makes it even more compelling. I don't suppose any Mefites happen to be scholars of Wisconsin history? Or perhaps just know someone who lives in the area? I do have family in central Wisconsin, but nobody seems to know anything about the eerily named Lake Emily.
At first I thought "jackpot!" since the story is intended to be horror/surrealism. Imagine my disappointment when my best web search efforts turn up nothing but tourism ads and a tiny bit about the lake itself.
I wish there were some fabulous creepy folklore around it, but in a way, its almost total nonexistence on the web makes it even more compelling. I don't suppose any Mefites happen to be scholars of Wisconsin history? Or perhaps just know someone who lives in the area? I do have family in central Wisconsin, but nobody seems to know anything about the eerily named Lake Emily.
In doing similar research for Ohio ghost towns, I found that my local library actually had more information on this sort of thing than the internet -- somehow, this state history stuff rarely makes its way online unless it has some sensationalism attached (ghosts! murders!!), or a very dedicated historian (a painstaking survey of historical forges, surely everyone can find a use for that).
But you may be able to find things like old census records, small press local history, stuff published for or by the Wisconsin Historical Society, maybe even some self-published materials. I think some libraries will (or at least mine does) semi-indulgently collect and hang onto things like that even when they're like, spiral-bound, yellow papered scrapbooks from the 70s. Legit that is something I found in my nationally award winning library, which is running out of space for books but has not got rid of this shelf, even though half the materials on it made me sneeze.
posted by automatic cabinet at 5:52 AM on November 3, 2014
But you may be able to find things like old census records, small press local history, stuff published for or by the Wisconsin Historical Society, maybe even some self-published materials. I think some libraries will (or at least mine does) semi-indulgently collect and hang onto things like that even when they're like, spiral-bound, yellow papered scrapbooks from the 70s. Legit that is something I found in my nationally award winning library, which is running out of space for books but has not got rid of this shelf, even though half the materials on it made me sneeze.
posted by automatic cabinet at 5:52 AM on November 3, 2014
Wisconsin was also the site of 38 WWII POW camps; the combination of a need for agricultural labor and lots of German-speakers made it a natural. Stalag Wisconsin, discussed in this overview article, Includes many interesting stories about the interactions between the POWs and the local folks, including lifelong friendships and romances, etc. Recently a former POW threw out the first ball at a Brewers game.
Near my town, the remnants of one of the POW camps feels very much like a ghost town; a friend lives in one of the former barracks. Given Lake Emily's location on a rail line, by a lake, in an ag area, it seems plausible that unused buildings might have been pressed into service as a POW camp. Just sayin'...
If you want to borrow my copy of Stalag Wisconsin, MeMail me and I'll send it to you.
posted by carmicha at 6:13 AM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]
Near my town, the remnants of one of the POW camps feels very much like a ghost town; a friend lives in one of the former barracks. Given Lake Emily's location on a rail line, by a lake, in an ag area, it seems plausible that unused buildings might have been pressed into service as a POW camp. Just sayin'...
If you want to borrow my copy of Stalag Wisconsin, MeMail me and I'll send it to you.
posted by carmicha at 6:13 AM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]
We have good friends that live in Amherst Junction who are quite involved in the community and have a lot of family history in the area. I have never heard of this ghost story so there is some potential there just isn't that much info.
posted by sulaine at 6:55 AM on November 3, 2014
posted by sulaine at 6:55 AM on November 3, 2014
To pick up on the railway theory, with a bit of googling I found this 1971 article from the Post-Crescent, a Wisconsin newspaper. Relevant extract:
The area is rich in railroad history. Local communities sprung up along the routes. Nearly 100 years ago, the Green Bay and Lake Pepin Railway passed a mile north of here and Amherst Junction developed after a junction was formed by that line and the Wisconsin Central. The community originally was named Groversburg but when the post office was established ther in 1875, the name was changed to Amherst Junction. Six passenger trains made daily stops then and the Green Bay route ran four daily trains. The station at Lake Emily developed around the gravel pit there. Years later, when the quarry was depleted, the station was abandoned.
There's also a reference to it on the Portage County Historical Society's site.
posted by greycap at 8:26 AM on November 3, 2014
The area is rich in railroad history. Local communities sprung up along the routes. Nearly 100 years ago, the Green Bay and Lake Pepin Railway passed a mile north of here and Amherst Junction developed after a junction was formed by that line and the Wisconsin Central. The community originally was named Groversburg but when the post office was established ther in 1875, the name was changed to Amherst Junction. Six passenger trains made daily stops then and the Green Bay route ran four daily trains. The station at Lake Emily developed around the gravel pit there. Years later, when the quarry was depleted, the station was abandoned.
There's also a reference to it on the Portage County Historical Society's site.
posted by greycap at 8:26 AM on November 3, 2014
I support the more prosaic interpretation of Eyebrows McGee here. Locally, for example, we have the supposed community of Anderson which has an official existence in gazetteers and even its own weather report, but as far as I've been able to determine was never anything but a flag stop or something similar where two railway lines crossed (and in the midst of a gravel pit which eventually eliminated one of the rail lines). If one looks on older plat maps and such there were many small clusters of farmhouses, often at intersections of through routes, that were given a name for the map but never incorporated, and with rural depopulation essentially ceased to exist in all but memory -- and again similarly, exurban/rural sprawl development has overtaken the former agricultural economy and perhaps even turned the area into a seasonal vacation destination.
Since many of these former points on a map failed to be defined by much more than possibly a school or a general store, they tended not to have institutions that would survive and tell their story. (Example, again, near the place Anderson I mentioned, is an autobiography by someone who grew up in one of these unofficial clusters.) We're rapidly approaching the point where even an oral history would be impossible, as well.
I just don't want you to get your hopes up that there's anything to find, or that there was even that much to tell. In the spirit of helping, though, I was able to look up a 1947 plat map of Portage Co. and this is the relevant bit. A genealogy group has some other maps here. From 1895 you get the best help, showing a school and some other buildings clustered around "Emily Lake Sta.", so it's pretty much this little area here (thanks to being cut off by the construction of the Interstate, it's the sort of place that the Google Street View van stops and turns around at.) Portage County's GIS shows that it's right on the boundaries of the village (and on the other side is the county park). Good luck!
posted by dhartung at 12:34 PM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]
Since many of these former points on a map failed to be defined by much more than possibly a school or a general store, they tended not to have institutions that would survive and tell their story. (Example, again, near the place Anderson I mentioned, is an autobiography by someone who grew up in one of these unofficial clusters.) We're rapidly approaching the point where even an oral history would be impossible, as well.
I just don't want you to get your hopes up that there's anything to find, or that there was even that much to tell. In the spirit of helping, though, I was able to look up a 1947 plat map of Portage Co. and this is the relevant bit. A genealogy group has some other maps here. From 1895 you get the best help, showing a school and some other buildings clustered around "Emily Lake Sta.", so it's pretty much this little area here (thanks to being cut off by the construction of the Interstate, it's the sort of place that the Google Street View van stops and turns around at.) Portage County's GIS shows that it's right on the boundaries of the village (and on the other side is the county park). Good luck!
posted by dhartung at 12:34 PM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Oh, wow, thanks so much everyone. Here you've given me a bevy of links I can't believe I missed. Seriously, I'm feeling pretty lazy for not having gone in many of these directions myself before posting.
The conclusion that I'm coming to is that it's terrific that there is a location with such a terrific name, but I can't rely on any existing folklore to take my story anywhere spooky. I'll thoroughly investigate the leads you guys have given me, but I will probably do what Eyebrows McGee suggests, and just make some things up. That's what fiction's about, after all.
...and just as a side note, I thought I had seen you around quite a bit over the years, dhartung. Three-digit user numbers represent!
posted by Fenriss at 6:03 PM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]
The conclusion that I'm coming to is that it's terrific that there is a location with such a terrific name, but I can't rely on any existing folklore to take my story anywhere spooky. I'll thoroughly investigate the leads you guys have given me, but I will probably do what Eyebrows McGee suggests, and just make some things up. That's what fiction's about, after all.
...and just as a side note, I thought I had seen you around quite a bit over the years, dhartung. Three-digit user numbers represent!
posted by Fenriss at 6:03 PM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]
I grew up in the area and my parents still live there. I don't recall any talk of a lost town near Lake Emily, but I will put the word out.
posted by dacbeerpig at 10:26 AM on November 5, 2014
posted by dacbeerpig at 10:26 AM on November 5, 2014
The consensus is that it was just a labeled train stop primarily used by the gravel pit, not a real town.
posted by dacbeerpig at 9:15 AM on November 10, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by dacbeerpig at 9:15 AM on November 10, 2014 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
I suspect it's not an ABANDONED ghost town, per se, but was a railway stop for the gravel pits and perhaps included a few associated (farm?) houses clustered together taking advantage of the convenient transit into the larger town, Amherst Junction, and with the fall of small family farms and the development of cars, they moved into larger, more consolidated towns; then when the gravel pits were worked out or unprofitable, those were probably subdivided and sold for suburban/vacation homes. If you look on google maps you can see that the gravel pit roads are now serving what appear to be vacation/lake houses (nice large lots, if you look at the county plat), which are thickly wooded and have names like "Hideaway Lane." Those houses (if you look on Zillow) now have Amherst mailing addresses, which apparently refers to Amherst Junction, a town of 377 where the railroad meets another railroad and some county roads come together.
You could e-mail the Portage County Historical Society about it, but it'd totally be worth making something up about this tiny near-town farm village where someone committed tragic suicide when her family farm was sold off for gravel pits or something. Or a boy who fell in love with a train engineer, who was married to a woman and spurned him and he flung himself in front of the train. Upon their haunting of the town everyone sold off to the gravel pits. WHATEVS.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:50 AM on November 3, 2014 [4 favorites]