Sauk County Scrapbook

02/19/2026

Eagles at the Prairie du Sac Dam
Wisconsin River

02/18/2026

Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center at Riverview Terrace
Spring Green

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed Riverview Terrace in 1953 as a "Gateway To Taliesin". Located adjacent to Wrights Home-Studio complex, it was advertised as a wayside for tourists with a balcony over-looking the Wisconsin River Valley. It would serve as a restaurant and meeting place for Taliesin Fellowship apprentices and clients.

Construction began in 1954 with Wright supervising the work, it featured a low horizontal profile blending into the landscape with a cantilevered terrace and a wide expanse of windows offering panoramic views of the river. It also incorporated an existing building into its design, a country café called the Bridge Lunch. Wright passed away in 1959 before completion and was purchased and finished by the Wisconsin River Development Corporation in 1967. It opened as The Spring Green Restaurant with the added prestige of First Lady Lady Bird Johnson dining at the establishment that same year.

The restaurant operated until 1993 when it was then acquired by the Taliesin Preservation and was converted into a visitor center. Today it houses the Riverview Terrace Café which offers locally sourced food and beverage options and is the only remaining Wright-designed restaurant in the world. It is also a gift shop and starting point for group tours of the Taliesin Estate. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2024

02/18/2026

A buried, patriotic themed box was discovered by accident in the summer of 2021 when a new trellis was being installed at Vodak Park in the Village of North Freedom, leading to questions of its orgins.

Turns out, it was a Time Capsule that had been buried on May 30th, 1993 next to the Village Municipal Building to celebrate North Freedoms 100th year of incorporation. It is to be unearthed in another 100 years.

The box was reburied without being opened.

Photo of time capsule by one of the Village Gardeners, Mary Luckhardt-Klemm, when it was found in the Summer of 2021.

The pictures of the trellis are from the Vodak Park Re-dedication ceremony in November of 2025.

Be sure to Like and follow:

Friends of the Village of North Freedom

Village of North Freedom

North Freedom WI., Then and Now

02/17/2026

Town of Woodland
Near Wonewoc

02/17/2026

Seeley Lake Dam
Town of Freedom

02/16/2026

Seeley Lake is a 52-acre reservoir located by North Freedom that was formed by damming Seeley Creek, a tributary of the Baraboo River.

A popular area for fishing and kayaking, plans are currently underway to remove the Dam and convert the area back to a free flowing stream.

02/15/2026

St. Aloysius Cemetery Chapel
Lueders Rd
Sauk City

Built in 1889

02/14/2026

02/13/2026

Badger’s Land History: How did the land get this way?

Mike Mossman, a founding member and President of the Badger History Group, gave a talk Wednesday night as part of their 2025-26 BHG Lecture Series. Mossman's discussion focused on the land once occupied by the Badger Army Ammunition Plant; its geologic origins, it's various phases of human occupation and its plans for the future.

The 14,000 acre Sauk Prairie once stretched from Prairie du Sac to the Baraboo Hills and was covered in high grasses and countless flowers of every color. Oak Savannas doted the landscape and was home to a variety of wildlife including elk and bison, along with a large diversity of birds.

When the last ice sheet advanced from the east 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, it stopped in this area where it stood for thousands of years. As its front edge melted, it continued to advance depositing rock and soil it scraped up from eastern Wisconsin. These accumulated materials left a terminal moraine (low ridge) that wound its way southwest across what would become the Badger Ammunition Plant towards the future Prairie du Sac dam and continued across southern Wisconsin. Sand and gravel washed out beyond the moraine, forming a flat outwash plain that eventually became the Sauk Prairie. As the climate dried and warmed, the area was covered with windblown silt where meadows formed with 8-foot high grasses surrounded by groves of oak trees.

These lands relied on periodic fires to control vegetation growth, first by lightning and then by the Woodland people and eventually the Ho-Chunk people that occupied the area before their forced removal.

With the arrival of pioneer settlers starting in the 1830's, the area was converted to farmland and most of the original landscape was plowed under.

After another forced removal, this time over 80 farm families, the land was significantly altered once again with the construction of the 7,354-acre Badger Ordnance Works in 1942. When the powder plant was decommissioned in 1997, conservation efforts were underway to transform the space once again.

Now known as the Sauk Prairie State Recreation Area, it is jointly managed by the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Ho-Chunk Nation, Bluffview Sanitary District with the Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance and the Badger History Group (along with countless other volunteers) heavily involved with conservation efforts. Approximately 3,400 acres of the DNR controlled portion are open to the public for exploration, biking, hiking, bird watching, nature studies, picking mushrooms and berries, hunting, trapping, exploring historical points of interest and other activities. The Great Sauk State Trail also passes thru the area.

Mike Mossman is an ecologist and historian who has been studying the Sauk County area for decades. The Badger History Museum is located just inside the Sauk Prairie State Recreation Area, south of Devil's Lake State Park with the entrance directly off of US Highway 12 about 8 miles south of Baraboo and 9 miles north of Sauk City. The Museum is the white building on the right just after entering. Be sure to visit the museum and follow their page for more presentations and events.

Learn More:

https://badgerhistorygroup.org

https://www.youtube.com/-BHG

02/12/2026

Hwy 33
Town Of Lavalle

02/11/2026

Ableman's Gorge

Ableman's Gorge is a 127 acre Wisconsin State Natural Area located near Rock Springs. Cut out of the west end of the North Range of the Baraboo Hills by the Baraboo River, the cliffs and rocky slopes consisting of quartzite, Cambrian sandstone and conglomerate rise nearly 200 feet above the river. Known as the Upper Narrows, the river and eventually the railroad and Highway 136 makes its way thru this natural cut in the Baraboo Range.

The area was formed when layers of sediment sank to the bottom of an ancient sea 1.7 billion years ago. When that sea dried up, the layers hardened into sandstone before metamorphing into harder quartzite rock that then lifted into a vertical layer. These outcroppings may have been islands when the region was covered by another shallow sea in the Cambrian period 500 million years ago. This led to another sandstone layer capping the quartzite. A combination of erosion and early 20th century quarrying have re-exposed these long-buried layers. You can still find a couple of blast shelters from the abandoned quarry that operated here in the southern part of the natural area.

Ableman's Gorge was designated a State Natural Area in 1969 and is owned by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the University of Wisconsin. It is named after Stephen Van Rensselaer Ableman, who settled Rock Springs in 1851.

02/10/2026

Reedsburg Municipal Hospital
547 N. Park St.

Built in 1933, it was designed by Frank Moulton of Flad & Moulton (who also designed South School in Reedsburg) in the Georgian Revival style. It operated as the city's hospital from 1933 until 1976 when it was replaced by the Reedsburg Area Medical Center.

The building was then used as a facility for drug and alcohol abuse victims as well as people with developmental disabilities until 1996. It was scheduled for demolition but strong local support saved it and it was remodeled into 24 senior living apartments.

It is now part of Reedsburg's Park Street Historic District.