Ice Age Trail representatives Tom Gilbert of the National Park Service (wearing hat) and Nancy Frank of the Ice Age Park & Trail Foundation (next to Gilbert) stood at the side of Gov. Jim Doyle as he cut the ribbon for the new Straight Lake State Park. Photos by Buz Swerkstrom
Wild at Heart
New state park in west central Wisconsin will offer low-impact recreation; include Ice Age Trail
by Buz Swerkstrom Three days before Earth Day in the home county of Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, Wisconsin celebrated the purchase of a large block of land for its newest state park, Straight Lake State Park.
"You can feel spring is here. The buds are on the trees and the swans are in the air. Life doesn't get any better than this in the state of Wisconsin," Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle said, speaking to a crowd of more than 100 people gathered for the April 19 dedication on a hill overlooking Straight Lake. A marshy area off the northwest corner of Straight Lake, the centerpiece of a new Wisconsin state park near the community of Luck. Straight Lake lies roughly three miles northeast of Luck, Wisconsin, 75 miles northeast of St. Paul/Minneapolis, and a half-mile from the nearest road. Silent sports enthusiasts who crave quiet and solitude certainly will find life great in the 1,500-acre Straight
Lake State Park, particularly those who love hiking, backpacking, primitive camping, snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. While the details will be worked out in the master yet to be completed, a feasibility study done by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources three years ago recommended limited vehicle access, low
impact uses and no recreational motor vehicles. DNR area lands manager Paul Kooiker said the master plan must be consistent with parameters described in the feasibility study.
One certainty is that a three-mile stretch of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail will cross the property.
"There's a pretty nice network of trails in here already," Kooiker said at the dedication, indicating that old logging roads will be expanded as well.
The master planning process, which will take at least a year, will start sometime this fall or early next year, according to Jeff Krueger, superintendent of Wisconsin Interstate State Park at St. Croix Falls, 20 miles from Straight Lake. Krueger and his staff will oversee the Straight Lake park property at least until a master plan is in place and perhaps even after that.
"People can hike on it" now, Krueger said. No motorized vehicles are allowed on the property at this time, though, he stressed.
DNR staff will explain where things stand, including current public use rules, at an informational open house on June 7 from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Luck Village Hall.
The Straight Lake Wilderness State Park is only one component of a 2,780-acre property the Wisconsin
DNR is buying from the Brunkow Hardwoods Corporation. The remainder mostly a wetland and farmland complex will become a state wildlife area.
The DNR purchased the state park property on April 28 and will acquire the wildlife area portion sometime between August and October.
That split sale, allowing for partial purchase in two fiscal years, "accommodates the state in terms of having enough money," DNR land acquisition specialist Dick Steffes explained at the dedication.
Wisconsin is contributing $8.8 million of Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund money to the $10.6 purchase, with the rest coming from the Federal Land & Water Conservation Fund through the efforts of U.S. Rep. David Obey.
Obey legislative aide Jeff Buhrandt said Obey, who serves on the state House Appropriations Committee, will continue to make the purchase of Ice Age Trail property "a large priority, as much as he can, over the next couple of years."
Stewardship funds
Doyle devoted a large portion of his April 19 speech to a strong defense of the Stewardship Fund, which the Republican legislature attempted to slash two years ago.
"Since I became governor," he said, "we have used almost $67 million in Stewardship funds to purchase land for 155 projects in 66 counties ... forever protecting more than 42,000 acres of land for our forests, parks, wildlife and natural areas."
He assured those on hand he would veto "any attempt to again restrict the Stewardship Fund, or to limit its use in any way" in the current budget process.
While the state wanted to buy the Straight Lake property and the Brunkow family wanted the property preserved, it took a third party to bring buyer and seller to an agreement. The West Wisconsin Land Trust brokered the deal over a two-year period.
"Our executive director, Rick Gauger, has a great relationship with the Brunkow family," the land trust's director of development and communications, Michelle Dingwall, said at the dedication. "He never accepted no as an answer. He was always looking for different ways to make this happen."
The DNR nearly purchased the property 16 years ago. Then state representative Harvey Stower, now the
mayor of Amery, pushed for the purchase and creation of a state park there. Gov. Tommy Thompson vetoed a funding measure approved by the state legislature, however. Shortly after that, Brunkow Hardwoods bought the property.
"We always wanted the property to be conserved as a park, and as a segment of the Ice Age Trail," Brunkow Hardwoods president Bob Brunkow said in a press release from the West Wisconsin Land Trust.
The company sold the land for $2 million less than its market value in order to make that happen.
The property contains over 800 acres of old growth oak trees, some of which are more than 250 years old. It has the largest population of cerolian warblers in Wisconsin and a number of uncommon bird species. Loons, bald eagles and trumpeter swans all nest on 107-acre Straight Lake.
In addition to Straight Lake, there is a much smaller lake, three water impoundments in the northern portion and ponds and wetlands splashed all over the property. The narrow Straight River slices through from northwest to southeast.
"This is just an extremely unique piece of property in that it's got a lot of water bodies on it that are totally undeveloped," said recently retired DNR regional land leader Bruce Moss at an open house public hearing
in Luck in 2002. "In Polk County, which is (practically) a suburb of the Twin Cities, to have that many wild bodies of water, some of which are nice fishing lakes, is just amazing."
While Gov. Doyle termed the Straight Lake property "a pristine, natural area," that is true only to a certain degree. A Boy Scout organization once owned and used part of the property and left several small
tumbledown structures scattered about. The three impoundments in what will be the wildlife area were created 30 years ago as water hazards for a golf course that was to be part of a grandiose residential development called Cragwood. The golf course fairways have either gone to wild grass or have been cropped or hayed over the years. The DNR will restore prairie grasses there.
Members of the Interstate Park staff will remove the Boy Scout camp structures this summer, as well as
post the Straight Lake State Park boundaries.
"Other than that," Krueger says, "we really won't be doing much of anything to the property until we get done with the master plan process."
Ice Age Trail expansion
The Straight Lake land purchase, Doyle said, "represents another great step" in meeting the goal he set in his State of the State address last year of permanently protecting the next 400 miles of Ice Age Trail within 10 years.
"The Brunkow property is one of two pieces of property that the Indianhead Chapter coveted," said Dean Dversdall, who replaced his wife, Cora, as president of the Indianhead Chapter of the Ice Age Park & Trail Foundation a few months ago. "Once the Straight Lake section is completed, we will only have short segments of road walking to hike the whole Ice Age Trail in Polk County."
Cora Dversdall expects the property to become "a real focal point for the Indianhead Chapter."
"The Straight Lake State Park," she said, "is important because it will preserve forever a huge portion of the Straight River tunnel channel that extends from Straight Lake to Round Lake. This tunnel channel was formed by a river under the glacier that existed ten to twelve thousand years ago. In this tunnel channel you
will find relatively undisturbed eskers along Long Lake and Dahl Lake. ... Many waterfowl use this area for a stopover on the way north or south. Parts of the woods are home to unusual wildflowers."
Indianhead Chapter members and others from the Ice Age Park & Trail Foundation are working with DNR officials to determine the route of the Ice Age Trail. The Indianhead Chapter wants the route to follow the tunnel channel.
"Being it is the Straight Lake property, we're hoping the trail would be somewhere along the lake," said Nancy Frank, northwest field coordinator for the Ice Age Park & Trail Foundation, which owns a 40-acre parcel adjacent to the southeast corner of the Straight Lake property.
"The Ice Age Park & Trail Foundation is probably one of the most enthusiastic participants for the acquisition of this property," Frank said.
Otherwise left wild
At the open house public hearing in Luck nearly three years ago, members of the public who attended expressed overwhelming support for a nontraditional wilderness-style park.
"Strongly support. Keep motorized vehicles out of the woods and lakes," one person wrote on a comment form.
"All for it. Would be a shame to see such a beautiful piece of land lost to development," another wrote.
"The development won't be there like a typical state park," Kooiker said. "It will emphasize more of the quiet sports. It won't have a swimming beach and that sort of thing."
The DNR is leaning toward dispersed camping rustic campsites and maybe pit toilets here and there.
Straight Lake would have walk-in-only access, with those who wanted to canoe or kayak on the lake
required to portage. Exactly how long the portage will be remains to be decided. At least one DNR employee involved in a preliminary planning discussion wanted parking areas next to a road, which would make for a half-mile portage. Others favor an unobtrusive parking area perhaps 300 yards from the lake.
"It's pretty much going to be a series of parking areas around the perimeter of the property to allow people
access from all directions, but nothing would really penetrate into the middle of the property," Kooiker said.
Canoeing the Straight River in this area is difficult because it is generally narrow, shallow and fretted with beaver dams. Dean Dversdall siad he and his sons had to portage around some 18 beaver dams and at least that many downed trees when they canoed a few miles of the river 20 years ago. A trip they calculated would take three hours took more than five hours.
Kooiker expects hunting to be permitted throughout the property, with hunting in the state park portion probably limited to such low-tech forms as muzzle loaders and bow, as is the case in many other state parks. With Wisconsin's deer population out of balance, Kooiker quivers at the thought of creating a 1,500-acre refuge for deer. He said most of the DNR's park people and natural areas people agree with the concept of limited hunting.
The Ice Age Park & Trail Foundation's Indianhead Chapter has not formed an official position regarding what should and should not be allowed in the new state park. Dean Dversdall said he believes "it should be left as pristine as possible."
St. Croix National Scenic Riverway Superintendent Tom Bradley, who attended the April 19 dedication, called the Straight Lake property purchase "a marvelous acquisition for this part of the state."
DNR Northern Region Director John Gozdzialski called it "one fabulous piece of property."
"It's priceless," he continued. "And it goes to show that many people care; care about the future, care about our children, and care about the legacy we leave on our natural resources."
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