Later the store was run by a Mr. Arbuckle, Leon
Reitz, Ralph Meyers, and Jim Emry. In 1928
Charles Crocker moved to Walrath with his family
and he ran the store and post office for several
years. Mrs. Walrath and her daughter and son-in-
aw - Betty and Casey Chase were the last to run
the store.
I haven't been able to find out who was the first
teacher in the school. One of the earliest was
Louise Stingle. Some of the teachers who taught
there after 1921 were Mrs. Van Soelen, Sigurd
Martinsen, Katherine Dresden, Mrs. Marks, Anna
Kettering, Jen Hiffernen, Nora Hiffernen, Grace
Heintz, Art Zuck, Roscoe Churchill, Emmet Kaul,
Ruth Johnson, Rose Stevens and Eva Bretag. For a
few years the school was divided and the first four
grades were held in the town hall. That year -
1922 and 23, they taught fifth through the ninth
grade in the school, the following year they taught
through the tenth grade and the year after that
through the ninth grade. That was the last year
they tried teaching high school. The school district
was consolidated with Glen Flora about 1953 and
the Walrath School was discontinued. The Town
Hall was sold to Frank Miller and moved to his
farm. The schoolhouse then became the town hall.
In the early days of the school there were several
Amish children attending school. There was a set-
tlement of Amish along Highway 73.
About 1936 Harry Strubbe bought the depot
and tore it down. Later he purchased the store
building and tore it down. Art Pflughoeft bought
the Walrath cottage and moved it to his farm on 73
north of Jump River. The houses were moved or
torn down and the railroad track was eventually
taken up.
At one time someone started a cheese factory in
the hotel building. It must have been sometime in
the early forties that the hotel burned down. Vern
Davis was living in the Marks house at the time
and after the hotel burned he moved the house to
where the hotel had been so it would be close to the
barn which he was using. Joe Rathsack lived there
later. When they left, Vern Davis came back for
awhile and then sold the place to Robert Scharen-
brock who is farming there now.
All that remains to show there had ever been a
village there is the school building, the Marks
house (now Scharenbrocks) and the barn.
Much of the information about the village
before 1921 came from Hilmer Olson. He went to
work for Mr. Walrath when he was about sixteen
and spent many years working around Walrath.
Marian Strubbe Barker, with info. from Hilmer
Olson, John Chmielowiec, Imogene Wichterman
Fults, and Mary Ruth Crocker Leroux
MEMORIES OF
WALRATH
The history of the village of Walrath is like a
huge puzzle to me: I have put together many of the
pieces but there are still many more which are
missing.
As nearly as I can ascertain, Alvin E. Walrath
owned the Vallee Manufacturing Company of
Chippewa Falls and had acquired most or all of the
land in Lawrence Township (which was also
known as tract 34-4). This land he had leased to
different lumber companies for logging purposes;
two of these companies were the Higbee Lumber
Company of Illinois and the Owen Lumber Com-
pany which owned the land west of the railroad
tracks. (There was a mill in Conrath called the
Conrath-Vallee Products Company which may
have, also, been owned by Mr. Walrath.) Mr. T.B.
Wilson, Mrs. Walrath's brother, owner of the
Wilson Lumber Company of Menomonie, logged
on the land he owned along the Jump River Road
(new Hwy. 73).
Within the small village, which was then known
as Vallee and the east-west road, Vallee Road,
there was a two-story building used as a store and
community hall (NE corner of the Vallee Rd. and
the narrow road to the north), a mill and box fac-
tory (1/4 mile directly south of the store), a 16
room boarding house and barn (SW corner), and a
large garden space for growing food needed for the
boarding house. Beyond this to the west was the

Walrath cottage. There were three or four small
houses north of the store. All of these buildings
were owned by Mr. Walrath. The Wilsons built a
log house 1/2 mile north of Vallee at the top of the
hill on the east side of the road where they lived
when they came to the area. Between 1916 and
1921, an ice house was built adjacent to the rear of
the store - this was made of logs and was partial-
ly filled with sawdust to preserve the blocks of ice
which the men of the community would cut from
Main Creek each winter.
During the logging era, the Stanley, Merrill and
Phillips Railroad ran a track into Vallee to pick up
the logs piled along the right of way. A spur track
went into the mill for the lumber and boxes which
were to be shipped out. Since there was no way for
the trains to turn around, it was necessary for them
to back into the village. When the mill closed, my
father bought it, as it was on the land he intended
to farm, and converted it to a large barn. So that
the cattle wouldn't get out, he fenced along the
tracks and put a gate across them at the road. I can
recall watching my sister, sometime in the 30's,
open the gate to let the train back through to load
the bolts still piled on the corner.
As the logging era was drawing to a close, Mr.
Walrath decided to parcel out his holdings and sell
the land for farms. He changed the name of the
village to Walrath and on September 8, 1916, the
Walrath post office was established and would
serve the area for seventeen years until it was
discontinued on September 15, 1933, when the
Glen Flora post office took over our mail service.
The village had five postmasters and one
postmistress during the years it was in operation.
Edward J. Reitz was appointed postmaster on
September 8, 1916; A.E. Walrath on August 22,
1918; Leon Reitz on May 5, 1922; Ralph Myers on
January 10, 1923; Mrs. John S. Bordner (my
mother) on May 12, 19q5 (although the Federal
records list my father as Nstmaster); and Charles
A. Crocker on October 25, t928.
Sig Overby was the rural mail carrier, during at
least part of the 20's, who brought the mail from
Glen Flora to Walrath. After our post office
closed, Roy Mohr was the mail carrier for many
years. There may have been other carriers whom I
do not remember; however, George W. Kettering,
who was born right in Walrath, has brought us our
mail for at least 20 years or longer.
In May 1920, my father and T.C. Jones, realtors
in Ladysmith, became land agents for Mr.
Walrath. They formed a company known as The
National Land Colonization Co. Dad and Mr.
Jones arranged an agreement with Mr. Higbee,
who had leased the mill from Mr. Walrath earlier,
to insure lumber for the new settlers to buy for
building. Mr. Walrath also drew up an agreement
with the Higbee Company to allow them to lease
the mill for $500 a month and the boarding house
for $30.00 a month from July 1, 1920 to
September 1, 1920. Mr. Walrath died suddenly,
intestate, on November 3, 1920. Dad and Mr.
Jones continued to sell land for the estate until Mr.
Jones terminated his contract in November 1921.
My father continued to sell for the estate advertis-
ing under the name of Vallee Farms, terminating
his contract on March 1, 1922.
In the 1920s the village of Walrath became the
hub of the community which included a 2-3 square
mile area. Within the next ten years, the popula-
tion increased. Names such as Crocker, Merritt,
Strubbe, Nicholsen, Bottorff, Kettering, Dunn,
Schmidt, Gardiner, Orheim, Wichterman, Riegel,
Hall, Gould, Haskins, Davis, Chimarinski,
Chmielowiec, Peters, Waters, Lessor, Arnold,
Dukatz, Carrington, Hientz, Rodin Decker, Pep-
per, Miller, Yoder, Hostetler, Bontrager, Hanson,
Hauser, Gilreath, Bordner, Bremer and Emry
were familiar to us all. And more were to be added
as the years rolled on - too many to be mentioned
but never to be foriotten.
A one room school was built to the west of the
cottage, also a town hall and a building for road
equipment and the two transportation sheds. A
small house for the teacher was built next to the
cottage. The school sheds were long, narrow,
wooden, horse drawn vehicles with two doors.
There were windows that could be lowered and the

children sat on benches facing each other. The
wheels had wooden spokes and iron rims with the
rear ones being larger. These could be exchanged
for runners when necessary. My father drove one
of the sheds part of the time. As the district grew,
the South Lawrence School and the East Lawrence
School were built. For a year or 2 until they were
built, it was necessary to hold classes for the lower
three grades in the town hall with Muriel Marks as
the teacher. Her husband Lester Marks taught the
upper grades. The house they built was just west of
the town hall and was finished by 1924. Sig Mar-
tinsen of the Tony area was the first teacher.
One of the first community get-togethers was
the 1922 Thanksgiving dinner which was cooked
by the men and held in our still unfinished house.
The cooking was done at the boarding house with
George Kettering as head chef; all of the food
came from the land - even the meat.
Settlers began to arrive by spring of 1921. As
many of the families who had purchased land
along the Vallee Road were from Indiana, the road
was often referred to as Indiana Ave. Other
families came from Illinois, Minnesota, various
places in Wisconsin and several from Michigan -
and so our community grew. Most of the families
lived in the uninsulated cottage, the boarding
house or any of the empty shacks in the village
while their own houses were being constructed.
Harry E. Strubbe, a carpenter and among the first
to arrive, helped build many of the houses. The
General Merritt house was the first one finished on
the Vallee Road a mile west of the village.
The community hall over the store, the town
hall, schools, as well as our home and others were
the scenes of many good times - parties, dances,
4-H meetings, etc. A non-denominational Sunday
School was held in the community hall each week.
Even the annual school meeting was an opportuni-
ty to gather. The end of school in May and the 4th
of July were occasions for a big pot-luck picnic.
In the mid 30's, Walrath became a boom town
for one summer when many families from Illinois
arrived. They had purchased, sight unseen, land
from an Illinois real estate firm unlicensed to sell
in Wisconsin. But the land was not as represented
- a few families stayed on the land they had pur-
chased and soon became a part of the community;
but, many returned to their former localities.
The big forest fire of 1936 threatened the ex-
istence of Walrath as nothing had ever done
before. It had been an extremely dry summer with
small fires breaking out all around the entire coun-
ty and northern part of the state. One of these fires
was burning about 6 miles to the southwest; on a
Friday in early August, high winds developed and
the fire began to travel at an alarming speed.
About 7:30 that evening we were told to get out
and go north - the fire had jumped B and was out
of control - all the buildings in Walrath were in
grave danger - especially if the fire should jump
the creek, the village would be lost. All the men
and boys in the area, the CCC personnel from the
camp north of Glen Flora and all other available
help from Ladysmith and the other towns around
the county stood shoulder to shoulder thru-out the
night to battle the flames. Thanks to their gallant
efforts, although there were few fence posts left
standing in Lawrence Township, not a single
building was lost.
The REA brought electricity in 1940 but even
that brighter light could not keep Walrath from
fading as it did in the late 30s and early 40s. The
village gradually disappeared - hard to say exact-
ly when. The railroad tracks were taken up; the
Bob Kettering house was moved; the small shacks
fell apart; the store and icehouse were torn down;
the depot vanished; fire claimed the boarding
house; our barn collapsed and the other buildings
were torn down or moved; one year the town hall
and shed were gone; the school became the town
hall; the Dunn-Emry house by the bridge folded
and the brush took over; other houses and barns
were destroyed. Walrath, as a village, had ceased
to be. However, Walrath as a community still ex-
ists. Some never left; former residents have re-
turned; new faces and names have started to ap-
pear; new houses and mobile homes are replacing
the old.        By Virginia Bordner Martinson