Local Features

This week's A Northwoods Moment in History tale from Tomahawk in the early 1940's has all the marks of a great story: a small-time group of bandits, a toy gun, and of course, an efficient Oneida County Sheriff. We'll let Gary Entz take it from here. Historians encounter lots of interesting stories, but once in a while a tale from the past resurfaces that just makes a person sit back and wonder how such a thing could have been allowed to happen. The experience of Earl Wing in the Northwoods is

In this month's installment of Field Notes , Scott Bowe of Kemp Station discusses snow load and how it impacts our homes. The snowfall this year has been incredible! We set a record in February with 57.5 inches of snow in the Rhinelander area, and we are on our way to setting an annual record for the 18/19 winter season. When I recoded this broadcast last week, we were at 97 inches, about a foot short of the 13/14 season record. And, I’m sure we added to this amount last weekend. This much snow

Is it time for Wisconsin to take drastic measures to attempt to get a handle on chronic wasting disease? Our commentator the Masked Biologist examines a proposal called “Payment for Positives” in this week's Wildlife Matters . Chronic Wasting Disease, or CWD, has recently achieved a level of notoriety close to when it was first detected in Wisconsin nearly 20 years ago. There was a flurry of disease surveillance and management going on; in the first deer season after the detection in the wild,

Thanks to recent funding from the Michigan legislature, there is a lot in store for the future of Copper Peak - the ski flying hill in Ironwood, Michigan. As part of our We Live Up Here series, Monie Shackleford tells us about Copper Peak’s backstory, as well as what we can expect for its future. In late December of 2018, the Michigan legislature funded 10 million dollars to two ski jumps of the western upper peninsula: Copper Peak, near Ironwood and Pine Ski Jump in Iron Mountain. Copper Peak

Throughout the last year, our local historian Gary Entz has uncovered why many towns in the Northwoods are named what they are. Some previous installments of A Northwoods Moment in History have included how the towns of Phelps, St. Germain, Sayner, and Rhinelander got their names. In this week’s installment, we hear how the community of Gagen got its name. Gagen is an unincorporated community located in the town of Piehl roughly 13 miles east of Rhinelander in Oneida County. Although small today

UPDATE: After this commentary was recorded, we were notified that Josephine Mandamin passed away on February 22nd, 2019, at the age of 77. Have you heard of the water walkers? Neither had the Masked Biologist, as he shares in this week’s Wildlife Matters . The first time I heard of the water walkers was after Josephine Mandamin’s last walk. Josephine is a respected Anishinaabe elder from Canada who began walking around Lake Superior in 2003 to raise awareness and to pray for the water. She

For literate adults, it might be hard to remember what the process of learning to read felt like. For kids with dyslexia in Wisconsin though, learning how to read can be maddening. Help might be on the way though as two dyslexia bills circulate in Madison. As part of our We Live Up Here series, Mackenzie Martin talks to a local reading specialist and a Rhinelander High School student with dyslexia. Dyslexia is the most common learning disability. Kids that have it have a hard time understanding

They say playing on sports teams in high school prepares you for the future in a lot of ways. For one former Rhinelander High School football player, the way he learned how to tackle in high school set him up to save a former president's life. Gary Entz has the story this week for A Northwoods Moment in History . Theodore Roosevelt was one of the most vigorous and intriguing presidents in American history. He delighted in his reputation as a robust individual always ready for adventure, but with

Depending on how you look at it, maybe groundhog day has come and gone, and maybe it hasn’t. In this week's episode of Wildlife Matters, the Masked Biologist takes a peek into the den of the groundhog. I have heard a number of people comment in recent weeks about how wrong the groundhog was about not seeing his shadow and winter coming to a fast close. I haven’t looked at the running history of Groundhog Day and the accuracy of the weather predictions, but I would guess that the accuracy of this

Archaeology in the Northwoods is different than it is downstate, and it can serve as a window into the everyday lives of former Northwoods residents. As part of WXPR's We Live Up Here series, Ardis Berghoff has the story. When most people think of archaeology, the discovery of ancient civilizations in places like Egypt, Greece or Peru come to mind. But archaeologists work in the Northwoods, too. Snow covers the ground now, but archaeologists from the Wisconsin Historical Society will resume work