page_193 < previous page page_193 next page > Page 193 expanded its original proposal to include an 1,800-acre lake (Johnson 1991). Most valley residents wholeheartedly approved the Corps' plans. Up to this time, landownership patterns in Stark had remained stable. When the Corps began buying 8,600 acres of privately owned forest and farm land for the La Farge dam, 4,968 acres of it came from Stark (Vernon County Historical Society. 1994). Hence the federal government became the township's (and the valley's) largest landowner. In anticipation of the new recreational area, speculators began acquiring real estate in the area. Between 1965 and 1975, two-thirds of the land in Stark changed hands, excluding that already acquired by the federal government. On average, only 16 percent of the land in the township sections adjacent to the federal land remained with the same owners. Real estate prices doubled, and the nature of ownership also changed, with sales of forest land to absentee buyers accounting for the majority of transactions (Phillips 1977). Despite the confidence of valley communities in the project's success, completion of the La Farge dam was not assured even after workers began construction in 1971. The Corps confronted increasing opposition to the project from a coalition of environmental groups, academics, and canoeists determined to stop the project. A study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Institute for Environmental Studies demonstrated that sediment would fill the new lake in a short period of time, that water quality would be poor, and that the dam would destroy numerous endangered species and archaeological sites (Institute for Environmental Studies 1974). The project also flunked economic cost-benefit analyses, which considered the feasibility of alternatives to the dam (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 1977). In response, Wisconsin's governor and two U.S. senators withdrew their approval of the dam. Local residents did not acquiesce quietly; they demanded support from state politicians, wrote countless letters to state newspapers, and heavily attended meetings on the dam's status. The Corps concurred with them, but, in the end, environmental, political, and economic pressures forced it to halt work. The unfinished dam's concrete outlet structure still stands as a sentinel on the Kickapoo River, a monument to an environmental nightmare averted or a tomb marking the death of a community, depending on one's perspective. Land condemnation, followed by cancellation of the project, provoked a local fury that is still strong today in Stark. Locals aim their anger directly at "the State" and "the University." Since then, numerous academic studies focusing on economic development in the valley and around the federal land have not placated many local residents (for example, Lewis and Lamm 1981; Leatherman 1993; Sancar et al. 1992). Academics, they feel, have profited professionally from their plight, while failing to improve condi- Â < previous page page_193 next page >