Local Features

Ron Wiedeman’s ancestors came here around 1900, as best as he can tell. It’s a swath of land along the Wisconsin River in the Town of Crescent, just southwest of Rhinelander. “I’ve lived in this area my whole life,” said Wiedeman, sitting at his kitchen table. When he was a kid, the spring now known as Crescent Spring was on his family’s property. “Just clean, fresh water, always clean, and good tasting water,” Wiedeman said. “I’ve [drunken] out of there since I was probably eight years old.”

Back in the 1950's, career criminal John Halasz didn't really like spending time in the Oneida County jail... so he escaped. Gary Entz has the story for this week's A Northwoods Moment in History.

Birchbark canoes take a long time to make, but master artist Wayne Valliere from the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa tells us that the process is an important one, and can serve as a metaphor for the value of teamwork. Mackenzie Martin continues our We Live Up Here series with the story.

Pete McGeshick III sometimes has a hard time explaining what being on a wild rice bed feels like for him. As he used a 16-foot pole to push a canoe across Rice Lake on the Sokaogon Chippewa reservation in Forest County, he said he feels the spirit of wild rice while on the water. “It talks to me. It’s something you feel in your heart. You can’t describe it,” McGeshick said. “All you can do is feel it.”

This week's A Northwoods Moment in History feature is in response to a recent Curious North question WXPR received. LJ Sommers asked: There have been rumors for years about tunnels underneath the streets of downtown Rhinelander used during prohibition. Is this a fact or simply a fictional take?

It’s the second Tuesday of the month, which is when we hear from our commentators in the field. This week, Gretchen Gerrish of UW-Madison’s Trout Lake Station tells us about darkness as a resource. Sitting on a boat in the middle of Crystal Lake under a full moon, I can see a few stars around the sky’s perimeter, clearly see the outline of trees, differentiate the light-colored concrete of the boat landing and see the details of my student intern’s face as she rows us out to the deep spot to

Imagine using a trained bird to do your fishing instead of a fishing pole. The Masked Biologist considers an ancient practice, cormorant fishing, in this week’s Wildlife Matters.

When someone lives to be a hundred years old, everyone asks them for the secrets to their longevity. Trees, on the other hand, live to be hundreds and hundreds of years old. How do they survive? Mackenzie Martin recently headed to an old-growth forest with naturalist John Bates to learn more.

Wartime was a difficult time for everyone, including the labor force here in the Northwoods. For this week's Northwoods Moment in History, Gary Entz tells us about the workers that came to fill the void in 1944.

Sometimes it can be interesting to read food containers. The Masked Biologist saw a sentence on a yogurt cup that inspired this week’s Wildlife Matters.