Local Features

Last week, ground-penetrating radar sensors glided across the grass near Rhinelander wells 7 and 8, attached to a customized four-wheeled cart.

Edward Gropengeiser was born in Rhinelander in 1903. His parents, Fred and Emma Gropengeiser were German immigrants, and his father worked in the paper mill as a pattern maker. Eddie was born with a birth defect and was unable to walk or use his legs. The early twentieth century was not a particularly accommodating time for people with disabilities, so Gropengeiser never attended public school. Nevertheless, he was intellectually curious and was fortunate to have parents who recognized his abilities.

Inspired by a Curious North question, this week’s Wildlife Matters finds the Masked Biologist pondering what might be causing a snapping or popping sound in and around lily pads. The answer may surprise you.

Ryder Fox pushes a wheelbarrow full of gravel down a path through the Argonne Experimental Forest near Hiles. He dumps it into a frame where his fellow conservation crewmembers are waiting to pound it down, adding to the interpretive trail.

The town of Hazelhurst, like so many others in the Northwoods, got its start through the logging industry.

There seem to be more red foxes than usual this year across northern Wisconsin. In this week’s Wildlife Matters, the Masked Biologist takes an in-depth look at these fascinating canines.

To Ryan Hanson, the proposal for a new building just west of Rhinelander just isn’t that complicated.

Nicolet is a familiar name in the Northwoods. There are many small businesses that carry the name, a college, and perhaps most important, a National Forest. Most Northwoods residents have heard of Jean Nicolet, but how many know who he really was? Jean Nicolet is a celebrated individual in Wisconsin history and is credited as the first European to set foot in what is today the state of Wisconsin. Schoolchildren are familiar with the famous 1907 Edwin Willard Deming painting depicting Nicolet’s

Making national headlines, the 17-year cicadas were making a ruckus throughout eastern parts of the US leaving me to wonder, why don’t we see cicada swarms in the Northwoods of Wisconsin? Cicadas have a limited and mostly eastern distribution in the United States, reaching as far north as New York state, down to Louisiana and Georgia in the south and barely extending into Kansas and Oklahoma in the west. They hatch on 13- or 17-year cycles and specific cohorts, which are also known as broods,

Another Fourth of July holiday has come and gone. It was a happy experience for almost everyone in the Northwoods. A few people, though, yearn for the good old days when more potent fireworks were available. But did that make the holiday any better? Historian Gary Entz looks back at early earlier Fourth of July celebrations. A recent glance through a newspaper revealed this lament: “The small boy of today doesn’t know what he’s missing—though his father does. For the Fourth of July ain’t what it