A "Welcome to Menomonie" mural update from Menomonie native and artist Dale Manor:
Due to several different factors, I think we may have to push the "Welcome to Menomonie" mural out a bit from the 3rd week in July. As I write this, there is some tuck pointing being done on the wall and we have to allow the proper amount of cure time before we can prime over it. More to come on the schedule.
For now, I will post a couple more of the vintage images that we will be painting on the wall. Thanks again to the Rassbach Museum for doing the research for us.
The letters for today are the E and N...
E --- DUNN COUNTY'S FIRST PEOPLE
When Europeans arrived on the scene in the late 1780s they found the area inhabited by Santee Dakota and Ojibwe people. But these were not the region's first inhabitants. The area has been occupied on and off for the past 10,000 to 11,000 years --- since the Early Paleo-Indian Period.
The earliest archeological evidence of early inhabitation in the Red Cedar Valley dates to Paleo Indians (9500 to 6500 BC) and the Archaic Tradition (6500 to 550 BC).
Woodland Tradition (550 BC to 1000/1600 AD) evidence in the area include burial mound groups in Wakanda Park and the Dunnville area. No documented sites from the Mississippian Tradition era (900 to 1600 AD) have been found, though a pot inserted into the Wakanda Mounds long after they were originally constructed shows influences from this period.
Most archeologists agree that Mississippian or Late Woodland peoples were the ancestors or even the same people as those tribes that were present in the 17th century when Europeans first traveled here in the early Historic Period (1600 to 1825). The Santee Dakota dominated this area in the 1600s and early 1700s and became involved in many conflicts with refugee tribes moving west into Wisconsin. The Santee Dakota dominated this area in the 1600s and early 1700s and became involved in many conflicts with refugee tribes moving west into Wisconsin. For more than a century, the Ojibwe and Dakota competed for control of what we now call the Chippewa Valley.
In the late Historic Period (1825-1960), white settlement here brought the lumber and brick-making industries, employing many new settlers and immigrants, and also employed indigenous people of the area.
N --- DUNN COUNTY COURT HOUSE
Dunn County was established in 1854. Carved out of Chippewa County, it extended south to the Mississippi River, including the area now known as Pepin County. Dunnville, at the geographic center of the new county was designated as the county seat (as it had been for Chippewa County). In October 1858, the building and most of the county records were destroyed by fire. Shortly after, the lower portion of the county was set off as Pepin County and the importance of Dunnville as a center of government diminished.
Since the majority of the population in the remaining county was now in the Menomonie area, citizens voted to move the county seat there. In January 1860, county offices were established in the home of G.M. Fowler on the site of the present post office building. Court was held at the Menomonie House, a large hotel that stood to the rear of the Mabel Tainter Memorial, and at Grob’s Hall, in the 500 block of Broadway St. Offices would move again in 1867 and 1870. Plans were then made for a ‘real’ courthouse.
In 1871-72, this beautiful Italianate courthouse was built on the block now occupied by Wilson Park, donated by Captain William Wilson. It would serve the county until the early 1960s it was replaced by a larger modern facility next door to the east (Wilson Park’s original location), which now serves as the City of Menomonie’s offices. Our current courthouse, located off of Highway 12 east of town was opened in 1998.
Dale Manor owns Studio in the Sky in Minneapolis. Check out his artwork on the Studio in the Sky website and on Dale's Facebook page.
