Passenger pigeons

We needed to cover 220 miles today so we got a good early start, just after 9 am. The remainder of Illinois, about 30 miles, was mostly corn fields that still needed to be harvested.  Time to get that crop in!

This field belongs to an industrious farmer, near Dekorra, who has already gotten his crop in.

We crossed into Wisconsin and the landscape turned more hilly and there were trees that still had plenty of color.

Frederick took some nice foliage pictures through the window of the car. This is the Pine Island Wildlife Area.

Nice stand of golden trees near Baraboo.

This is the Kildare Rest Area where we ate our lunch. The sky was just beginning to clear.

Along the side of the road near Camp Douglas we saw these weird rock formations. They could almost be a geo-site.

About 30 miles from Black River Falls, our destination, we began to see some interesting land formations. This is Mill Bluff State Park.

Green, gold and orange, in layers.

This pointy hill is in Black River Falls.

Six miles from Black River Falls there was a Rest Stop that advertised a scenic overlook.

There was a plaque at the Rest Area that provided information on the Passenger Pigeon. Huge flocks of passenger pigeons once roamed North America. Larger than the mourning dove, which it resembled, the passenger pigeon derived its name from an Indian word meaning "wanderer" or one who moves from place to place. Flying at a normal speed of sixty miles per hour, the pigeon moved hundreds of miles in migration and 50 - 100 miles a day during the nesting season, searching for food.

The largest nesting on record anywhere occurred in the area of the Rest Stop in 1871. The nesting ground covered 850 square miles with an estimated 136,000,000 pigeons. John Muir described the passenger pigeons in flight. "I have seen flocks streaming south in the fall so large that they were flowing from horizon to horizon in an almost continuous stream all day long."

Many reasons have been given for the extinction of the passenger pigeon. Each year millions were trapped, clubbed, or shot for food and pleasure. The last know passenger pigeon died in a Cincinnati zoo in 1914.

There was a 1 mile trail up to the top of the scenic overlook. This is a viewpoint about 1/2 way up the hill. There were lots of red and golden ladybugs at the overlook.

Part of the trail was this bridge to the 1/2 way overlook.

From the bridge to the top of the hill.

From the top of Bell Mound there was a 360 degree view of the Black River Falls valley.

White pine trees were growing here when Columbus made his voyage to America. In 1819 the first attempts to saw lumber were unsuccessful, but in 1839 Jacob Spaulding founded Black River Falls by erecting the first permanent sawmill and settlement on the Black River.

This valley contained the largest pine trees, some of them up to six feet across at ground level, and the most pine trees per township in the state.

Before logging ended in 1905, more than fifty sawmills had been in operation in Jackson County. Accurate records kept over a period of forty years reveal that enough lumber was sawed to have built a plank road nine feet wide and four inches thick around the world. 

View to the west, I think.

The Rest Area also had this monument honoring the public safety members of various Wisconsin agencies. Local Police Departments serving their communities; County Sherif Departments; Wisconsin State Patrol; Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources; Wisconsin Department of Justice; and, the United States Department of Justice.